This week Obama named one of his best cabinet picks yet: Dr. Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, former chair of Stanford University's physics department, and Nobel Prize-winning (for research in laser cooling and trapping of atoms) physicist, was named Obama's Energy Secretary. Chu also has been an early and strong supporter of alternative fuels and renewable energy research. THIS is the kind of leadership this country needs!

It should be noted that this is the FIRST Energy Secretary who is genuinely an expert on energy.

Dr. Chu's impressive biography can be found here.

Here's a video of Steve Chu at the Davos Annual Meeting, 2007, talking about Climate Change:  read more »

Apparently (and not surprisingly) some of those sales pitches you get about switching your energy provider are actually scams. I want to pass along a warning on the scams and pass along my own view of a legit energy choice.

From Concerned Citizens of Greenwood Heights (a group I was not previously aware of, and thanks to Park Slope Neighbors for pointing them out) comes this info on a scam hitting New Yorkers (PDF):  read more »

Here's an interesting rundown of the polluters in Brooklyn from the Josh Skaller for City Council website. The worst polluters in Brooklyn are (not in order): Con Edison - Hudson Ave Station, Gowanus Generating Station, Kings Plaza Total Energy Plant, American Sugar Refining Inc, Brooklyn Navy Yard Cogeneration Plant. These people are poisoning our air and water. Just a reminder of how bad pollution in Brooklyn can be, let me remind you of what the Gowanus Canal looks like: (two out of five lovely pictures of the canal taken by my wife July 26th, 2008)

See the lovely phase change between the solid slick and the water? Here's what it looked like on the opposite bank:

Yes...that is a glass bottle embedded and suspended by the muck.  read more »

Biodiesel is one of the most intriguing of those new possibilities...crops of soybeans and rapeseed and maybe even algae, grown by present day farmers, processed into a diesel fuel substitute that works just fine in modern Volkswagons and Mack trucks and school buses--even in the oil-burning furnace down in the basement. It is potentially a truely sweet solution, offering a new market for hard-pressed local farmers even as it begins to help solve some of our most pressing environmental problems. Greg Pahl's book...manages to raise the right questions (and raise them early enough) so that we can perhaps build a structure for this developing industry that serves local farmers and processors instead of simply corporate agribusiness giants.

--Bill McKibben in the Forward to Greg Pahl's Biodiesel

Biodiesel has been getting a bad name because of the potential for competition with food production. It has always struck me that some of the loudest voices criticizing biodiesel has come from the oil, coal and nuke lobbies. But it did seem like competition with food production may be a critical problem with biodiesel.  read more »

Not too long ago I highlighted some ideas I had regarding the role of biofuels in a sane American energy plan that could wean us off oil. Biofuels are controversial and are a minefield of problems. But, there are definitely very sane, smart and viable biofuel options that need to be considered as part of America's energy policy. The diary I mention above discusses several options I think need consideration.  read more »