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STOCKTON, Calif. — Officials who have tried and failed to clean the air in California’s smog-filled San Joaquin Valley have seized on a new strategy: getting millions of drivers to shoulder more of the cost.

Faced with a fine of at least $29 million for exceeding federal ozone limits, the San Joaquin Valley’s air quality regulators are proposing an annual surcharge of $10 to $24 on registration fees for the region’s 2.7 million cars and trucks beginning next year. A decision is expected when the governing board meets on Thursday.

Although the surcharge is not expected to change how much people drive or what cars or trucks they buy, air pollution experts say it is a harbinger of the future. After decades of forcing industry to clean its smokestacks, retool car and truck engines and fine-tune gasoline, regulators are exploring what they can do to force consumers to face up to the pollution they cause.

Read the complete story at NY times

ScienceDaily (Oct. 14, 2010) — Sixty-three percent of Americans believe that global warming is happening, but many do not understand why, according to a national study conducted by researchers at Yale University.

The report titled “Americans’ Knowledge of Climate Change” found that only 57 percent know what the greenhouse effect is, only 45 percent of Americans understand that carbon dioxide traps heat from the Earth’s surface, and just 50 percent understand that global warming is caused mostly by human activities. Large majorities incorrectly think that the hole in the ozone layer and aerosol spray cans cause global warming. Meanwhile, 75 percent of Americans have never heard of the related problems of ocean acidification or coral bleaching.

The executive summary and full report are available online: http://environment.yale.edu/climate/publications/knowledge-of-climate-change

Public Architecture last month published their first collection of green building material re-use case studies.

Weighing in at 125 pages including glossary, directories and bibliography, the primer covers new construction and building recommissioning projects across multiple sectors and climates.

To download the Design for Reuse Primer, click here.

The Obama administration’s solar building boom continues. On Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed the first lease to build a large-scale photovoltaic project on federal land in Nevada.

“Yes, it’s about jobs and finding a new way forward but it’s also about dealing with the crises of our time facing America,” said Salazar during a speech in Los Angeles at the Solar Power International conference, the industry’s big annual get-together. “America’s foreign policy is held hostage by the politics of oil. It is imperative that we grab this new energy future.”

It’s a significant move. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management controls a huge chunk of Nevada, prime territory for big solar power projects due to the state’s intense sunshine and a licensing process that is far less arduous than the one in neighboring California.

Read the complete article at Grist

[Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series about Property Assessed Clean Energy financing. Part 1, “How the Fate of PACE Could Influence the Clean Energy Economy,” is available on GreenBiz.com.]

Property Assessed Clean Energy, and similar financing programs, have the potential to significantly impact a multitude of stakeholders — ranging from federal and local governments to lending institutions, bond markets, electric utilities, homeowners and individual contractors.

Although the growing momentum of PACE programs has been stifled by the FHFA, and the future of PACE is more uncertain than ever, the business implications of PACE are worth examining. Whether or not PACE survives the political mess it is currently in, understanding the implications of policy-enabled private financing programs on the ecosystem of stakeholders will inform future financing efforts.

This article examines the high-level implications of PACE on the following key stakeholders:

• Federal Government
• Municipal and City Governments
• Electric Utilities
• Mortgage Lenders
• Banks and Financiers
• Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Contractors
• Commercial Business and Home Owners

Federal Government

The administration needs to get some wins on the board with regard to spurring the uptake of clean energy adoption on a wide scale — and they can’t all depend on pouring stimulus dollars into R&D and traditional state incentive programs (though that is helpful). With climate legislation stalled, PACE programs represent a type of nationally applicable win-win policy ideas that are low risk, but have the potential to spur significant private sector activity.  With the concerns being voiced by the mortgage industry, the federal government’s involvement in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mean that federal agencies should be incented to push for tightly regulated, well-structured, PACE programs that both achieve the clean energy goals, but also contain their scope so as to not negatively impact the mortgage giants in government conservatorship.

Read the complete article at GreenBiz

By Chris Watts

As a national phenomenon, the framework for modern environmental policy and regulation in the United States began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Prior to the 1960s, the issue of pollution (largely in the form of air and water degradation) was considered to be a state and local problem.

The U.S. federal government’s perspective was that interference in state issues would be a violation of state sovereignty. But about 40 years ago, general awareness began to change. Both the world population and national population were exploding. Industrial development across the U.S. was creating increasing amounts of unclean air and water. Also, significant individuals and events helped to educate people about the growing environmental threats to their health and quality of life, along with dangers to ecosystems and wildlife. Examples range from the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a book on the dangers of pesticides to the environment, to the first Earth Day in 1970.

NEPA – the foundation

In 1969, shortly after the Santa Barbara oil spill, Congress passed the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). Still in force today, NEPA is the basis for other U.S. environmental laws and is considered a major guiding tool for regulating federal actions that would have significant effects on environmental quality.

Read the complete article at Environmental Leader