Greenpeace wants Facebook center off Coal Fuel

Greenpeace said about 500,000 Facebook users have urged the world's largest online social network to abandon plans to buy electricity from a coal-based energy company for its new data center in the U.S.

Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo sent a letter Wednesday to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg warning that the company risked its reputation and financial health if it ignored the environmental impacts of its actions.

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Thinking Big - And Smart

A nonpartisan think tank Wednesday outlined an ambitious plan to boost renewable energy development in America and placed Nevada and the West in the center of it.

The Brookings Institution proposes the federal government create and fund up to half a dozen “energy innovation centers” in the West to study solar, wind, geothermal, biofuels and nuclear energy. The centers would be a place for universities, government agencies, federally funded laboratories, military bases, utilities and companies to work together on ideas and new technology. Nevada, for example, would see UNLV involved in a center for solar development and UNR involved in a center for geothermal power.

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How the Stimulus Is Changing America

By MICHAEL GRUNWALD

Working Together

The West, particularly Nevada, would seem to be the perfect place to focus the nation’s renewable energy effort given the wide open spaces and abundance of solar, wind and geothermal resources. But one of the difficulties developers have run into is that much of the land is federally owned and energy plants can pose a problem.

Although developments are typically planned for sites overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, energy projects can cause problems for another federal landowner — the military. Wind turbines, for example, can create problems for radar, affecting military training.

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Banks Grow Wary of Environmental Risks

By TOM ZELLER JR

Blasting off mountaintops to reach coal in Appalachia or churning out millions of tons of carbon dioxide to extract oil from sand in Alberta are among environmentalists’ biggest industrial irritants. But they are also legal and lucrative.
For a growing number of banks, however, that does not seem to matter.
After years of legal entanglements arising from environmental messes and increased scrutiny of banks that finance the dirtiest industries, several large commercial lenders are taking a stand on industry practices that they regard as risky to their reputations and bottom lines.

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Planned wind farm near Searchlight clears county hurdle

By DYLAN SCOTT

Despite the protests of residents, more than 80 wind turbines, each more than 400 feet tall, could soon surround Searchlight.

On Wednesday, Clark County commissioners approved an application from Duke Energy, a national renewable energy firm, to move forward with the project. The proposal encompasses about 9,300 acres bordering Searchlight on three sides. The southern Clark County town has about 500 residents.

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NV Energy Promises Transparent Review of Grid for Rooftop Solar

By DAVID MCGRATH SCHWARTZ

Clean-energy advocates have conjured a vision of solar panels lining the rooftops of homes and businesses, powering Nevada with a plentiful and renewable source of energy. But, they say, it will remain nothing but a vision unless the 2011 Legislature requires power giant NV Energy to purchase this homemade electricity.

The state’s energy office says the deck will be stacked against any push for such widespread solar production because the only study of how much small-scale solar energy Nevada’s grid can handle is being conducted by NV Energy, which has opposed aggressive policies that favor rooftop solar power.

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Climate change: It's time to talk, and act, tough

Try to fit these facts together:

•According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months and the warmest April, May and June on record.

•A "staggering" new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.

•Nine nations so far have set their all-time temperature records this year, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May — a hair under 130 degrees.

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Utility’s Plan Clashes with Vision for National Monument

By JOE SCHOENMANN

Power lines connecting Northern and Southern Nevada are needed as dozens of green energy plants are being planned or built from the Amargosa Valley to Carson City.

But there’s a problem. NV Energy says it must carve out a 260-foot swath for transmission lines that would outline an area so full of ice age fossils that it is likely to be designated a national monument.

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Nevada Still Working Towards Going 'Green'