Three (Maybe Four) Energy Stories From the News

If you go to to Friday's New York Times and AZ Star, you'll find these three energy-related articles:

Sensing Gains Ahead Under Trump, the Kochs Court Minorities. The Koch Brothers have begun a well-funded, new nonprofit business association, Fueling U.S. Forward, which is spreading the fossil fuels gospel to minority communities — almost literally, by funding gospel concerts where Hosannas are sung in praise of God, Coal, Oil and Natural Gas.

Arizona Corporation Commission urged to fix solar net metering 'grandfathering' issue. The ACC slashed the compensation rooftop solar owners will receive for excess energy generation that makes its way onto the grid. The ACC is being asked to improve one small part of a very bad decision by amending the grandfathering rules so people who submit their energy interconnection applications before the deadline will receive the current net metering compensation, as well as people who have their interconnections completed by the deadline. [Note: On Tuesday the ACC amended the rules to include those who submit applications before the deadline.]

China Aims to Spend at Least $360 Billion on Renewable Energy by 2020. China is funding a huge push to add renewables to its energy grid, both to lower its ridiculously high pollution levels and to try and dominate the world's growing renewable energy markets.

To sum up: U.S. cities have less pollution than they had decades ago and far less pollution than China's smog-choked cities, but courtesy of the expected pro-fossil-fuels, anti-regulation push from the Trump administration, we may slide backwards while China pushes forward. The Brave New Trump Era could harm our environment and our health while it slows our technological advances in the renewable energy arena and loses us potential business worldwide.

The headline for a fourth story from a few days ago reads, Arizona still a force in solar power, despite other states' gains. It's about our growing solar energy sector, which is second in the nation to California. Apparently, we're OK with private businesses setting up vast solar power arrays so they can make lots of money off our abundant sunshine, but we're not so OK with encouraging individual homeowners to fill unused space on their rooftops with solar panels by giving them fair compensation for the energy they produce. Corporate and home solar both reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, but home solar can also reduce corporate profits, and that's just not the Arizona way.