California state funding has created a harvest cornucopia of clean energy programs ranging from solar energy for low income housing to familiarization test drives of electric vehicles. But each state agency has its own set of rules about who can get funding, what kind of matched private funding may be necessary, and how to go about getting access to the funds. To combat the various silos of information that these clean energy agencies have created, and to streamline pubic-private partnerships in clean energy, the California Assembly recently began hearings on a proposed bill — AB 383 — to create the Clean Energy Financing Clearinghouse (CEFC)…
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On Earth Day 2019, fifteen activists from the Extinction Rebellion carrying brightly colored signs and banners gathered at 12th and L Streets in in front of the State Capitol in Sacramento and then marched at 10:30 a.m. to the looming offices of the powerful Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), located at 14th & L Streets.
For over an hour, they protested against the oil industry’s grip on California and U.S. politics both in front and back of the building, including blocking the back door of the offices of WSPA, the most powerful corporate lobbying group in California and the West.…
The American Lung Association recently ranked “Fresno-Madera-Hanford” in the top four of the nation’s “most polluted cities.”
This week, the association’s 2019 State of the Air report ranked the area worst in year-round soot, second worst in 24-hour soot, and fourth worst in smog. The report covered data collected in 2015-2017. These, it noted, happened to be “the three hottest years on record” in the U.S. and included seven of the 20 “most destructive wildfires in California history.”…
California’s legacy of oil drilling should be just that, many environmentalists argue — relegated to the history books. They are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to ban new oil and gas drilling in California and completely phase out fossil fuel extraction in one of the nation’s top petroleum-producing — and gasoline-consuming — states…
One hundred and forty-three years after the first gusher spewed forth in California, it still comes as a surprise to people that the state produces as much oil as Alaska — and in some years even more. Oil production in California has been hidden on high school campuses, tucked in behind housing developments, surrounded by almond orchards. It pushes up against neighborhoods in Los Angeles, where heat, time and tectonic forces turned the remains of Miocene marine life into vast reserves of oil. It occupies the flatlands of the Central Valley, where in some places pumpjacks spread out for as far as the eye can see…
The air quality in San Joaquin County isn’t the best in the country, nor is it the worst. But it still failed standards set by a national health organization.
The American Lung Association this week released its 2019 State of the Air report, listing the cities across the United States with the cleanest air, as well as the most polluted between 2015 and 2017.
The report studied the number of high smog days in a region, year-round pollution levels and the number of days with 24-hour spikes in pollution…
The Trump Administration announced a plan this week to open up more than 1 million acres of land to fracking — a plan environmentalists argue could affect protected national parks.
The Bureau of Land Management released an environmental impact statement on Thursday that considers new oil and gas development on 1.6 million acres across central and Southern California, neighboring Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks. among other sites…
On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a new Environmental Impact Statement, outlining the impacts of fracking within its Bakersfield planning region. This proposal considers new oil and gas development on lands covering more than 1.6 million acres across Central and Southern California. The National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) and Central Valley Air Quality Coalition (CVAQ) are among the organizations raising concerns of threats over the sweeping energy development proposal…
The Trump Administration announced a plan this week to open up more than 1 million acres of land to fracking — a plan environmentalists argue could affect protected national parks.
The Bureau of Land Management released an environmental impact statement on Thursday that considers new oil and gas development on 1.6 million acres across central and Southern California, neighboring Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks. among other sites…
The Trump administration on Thursday released a plan to open up over 1 million acres of public and private land in California to oil drilling and fracking, which would end a five-year moratorium in the state on leasing federal public land to oil companies.
The Bureau of Land Management, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, released its 174-page “environmental impact statement” on Thursday with a proposal to open 1,011,470 acres of public land and federal mineral estate to fossil fuel extraction. The draft plan targets land in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura counties…