Tag Archives: Climate

Cambridge Thermal Imaging Project

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This winter photo shows brightness where the most heat is escaping this home.

Cambridge! It’s finally here: a chance to vividly see the cool or warm air leaving your drafty home, without having to pay hefty fees to a thermal photographer. Thanks to the Thermal Imaging Project on which HEET has partnered with Sagewell Inc., Cambridge homeowners can request thermal (infrared) images of the outsides of their homes.

The images are taken with car-mounted cameras similar to those used for Google Maps street view, and taken on a “first come, first served” basis – with highest priority given to locations with highest demand.  With the slight air of a Groupon deal, Sagewell has asked for 400 requests from Cambridge before they will release our thermal images for free.

Because of fossil fuel prices skyrocketing and scientists projecting Cambridge’s summer temperatures will soon start looking more like Atlanta, GA temps, everyone’s heating AND cooling bills are only on their way up. High efficiency in your home is valid for every season.

Even better, the easiest time to work on your home’s energy efficiency is spring and summer, when the wait for weatherization services is short!

Request yours on Sagewell.com now.
It should take about a minute to do so;  just enter your address at the bottom of the home page, hit enter, and then enter your information on the next page that shows up by clicking the green “HERE” (see following photo).

This page appears after you enter your address at the bottom of Sagewell.com's home page.

There have already been over 100 requests for thermal images, so if 300 are generated in the next month, everyone will get to have this great service free of cost.  Tell your neighbors! We all want to save money and live a little lighter on the planet, don’t we?

The Extra Goods
You and other homeowners, condo owners, and landlords can access their images and an individualized report free of charge online via a password-protected account when the images are available (Sagewell will email you a link).  The individualized report shows what to work on, how much it will save you, and connects you with the needed free and rebated services. Commercial building owners and owners of more than one building will be able to view their images and analysis for a small fee.

Not all buildings can be analyzed (due to blocked views from trees, etc. or private way constraints), but Sagewell has agreed to image around 22,000 buildings in Cambridge!

The Thermal Imaging Project will enable residential and commercial building owners to lower costs while supporting our city’s climate and emission reduction goals. One more great tool to wield for average citizens and environmental warriors alike. Get to http://www.Sagewell.com now!

If you have any remaining questions, please contact Sagewell at info@Sagewell.com or HEET at heet.cambridge@gmail.com.

Search for the Solar Grail

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This is a guest post from Eric Grunebaum from the great blog, EnergySage.

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Part 1

Search for the Solar Grail

Hello to new EnergySagers –

I’m located in Massachusetts and I thought my recent experiences looking into solar PV for my house might be helpful for folks.

First off, I should say that I’m pretty lucky to have an unobstructed south-facing roof. I’ve been thinking about solar for a while, and watching prices go down, so a couple of months ago I started asking people who had installed solar PV panels if they could recommend companies. I found two through word of mouth and then I found three more via EnergySage.com.

I was definitely interested in the “social” benefits of cutting back on fossil-fuel generated electricity, but what really surprised me is just how financially beneficial the project might be. It turns out that all of those other benefits of cutting back on fossil and nuclear generated power—reducing the massive health, economic, balance of trade and national security costs (not to mention the environmental risks of climate disturbance)—are just icing on the cake.

So back to the question of finding a solar company and figuring out if it makes financial sense. It turns out that Massachusetts is an especially good place for solar right now. It starts with saving (or eliminating) electric utility bills and then there’s the 30% federal tax credit, and also MA tax credits when you build a system.

And perhaps best of all, for the foreseeable future, there are solar renewable energy credits (“SREC”s) which you can sell every year based on how much electricity you produce. To get one SREC takes 1,000 kWh of solar energy production and the value of the credits range from $285 to $523 depending on the market. So when I calculated the yearly financial benefits, I looked at a low and a high side. There is some debate about how long the state will offer SRECs but as best I can tell, the SRECs are guaranteed to continue for 10 years at a minimum value of $285 for each 1,000 kWh you produce.

As I wrote, I received several bids and I’ve included the two best options below. One important thing to keep in mind is that are a few options for paying for your system. You can buy the system outright, finance it, or lease it. Leasing has different flavors too, some of which require no money upfront. But if you pay nothing upfront you get a smaller financial return which for some people that might be the way to go. You still save some money and you (or we!) still get all of the social benefits noted above.

For me, I don’t mind paying something upfront for a bigger return in the years to come, so the lease I looked at is what they call the “pre-paid” lease where you pay it all upfront and have no monthly payments. I compared that approach with the outright purchase.

There are many other options, but I’m just including what I think are the best two approaches, and also the best two bids, so this doesn’t get too complicated:

Vendor 1 System Size: 2.15 kW
Option A:Purchase$7690Cost of installation per kW: $3.58
Option B:Pre-Pay lease$6680Cost of installation per kW: $3.11

This comes with a 20-year warranty and is supposed to produce about 2,600 kWh – which is about 67% of my usage so my electricity bill will not go down to zero.

Either with the Pre-Pay lease or the Purchase, the savings are the same — see below. The question is why do the purchase? As far as I can tell there’s no good reason. It costs more and provides no additional benefits. Under the lease, though, if anything stops working, the company will fix it.

Electricity Savings @ .19/kWh = $489
Annual SRECs: 2.6Low$741High$1359
Total annual return:$1230$1848
Vendor 2 System Size: 3.2 kW
Option A:Purchase$11,170Cost of installation per kW: $3.49
Option B:Pre-Pay lease$8,030Cost of installation per kW: $2.51

This also comes with good warranties: 15 years for the labor with a 20-year guaranty on the production under a lease and also a guaranty that the panels will be at least 80% efficient up until 25 years. This system is supposed to produce about: 4,000-4,400kWh, which is 100% of my usage so my electricity bill should go down to nearly zero.

Again, with either the Pre-Pay lease or the Purchase, the savings are the same — so why buy? Note that this system produces more electricity, which means it produces more SRECs and therefore more income.

Electricity Savings @ .19/kWh = $741
Annual SRECs: 4Low$1140High$2092
Total annual return:$1881$2833

The long and short of it is that you don’t have to think about this the same way you would a kitchen or bath renovation which have no financial returns. Right now, at least in MA—and maybe some other states—it’s more like a mutual fund. If I invest $7,000 or $8,000, I’ll get from $1200 to $2800 back annually. That’s an annual return of something like 18-35% if I do one of the pre-paid leases. That’s not bad for helping out the planet a little bit and honestly I don’t think you can find a mutual fund that’s nearly as good.

 

Part 2

 

10:30 AM – the doorbell rings on Martin Luther King day. It’s 12 degrees out and the guy at the door – in blue coveralls with the NStar logo – is from the electric utility company. Carmine – that’s his name – is here to install two “net-meters” to prep for our upcoming PhotoVoltaic installation. He explains that normal electric meters go only one direction, but net-meters go forwards and backwards as well.

In the last few weeks we’ve signed all of the paperwork and so we’re on our way to an early February installation date with our PV vendor who beat out four other bidders. If you saw my prior post, we went with “Vendor 2” which – drum-roll please – is Independent Power systems. Based in Boulder, Colorado with branches in Massachusetts and Montana, they offered the best price per kW of capacity and are using SunPower panels, some of the most efficient on the market. This means we can install more panels and produce more electricity. And that means we’ll make more money selling the SRECs and save more on our electricity bills. IPS was also the only company that took the time look inside the attic crawlspace at the roof structure and then clambered up on the roof to get exact measurements. IPS went the extra mile and consulting with EnergySage.com confirmed my review of all the numbers.

And about all that paperwork – there was a fair amount of it with all of the incentives and credits and companies involved. It’s something the industry should definitely try to streamline, but all told, it probably took no more than a few hours of work, even factoring in that I actually read every one of the 26 pages in the pre-paid lease contract.

So today the utility is getting its ducks lined up too. All of those documents and notifications have led NStar to my door. What I still find amazing, though, is that the electric utility which makes money by selling electricity is actually helping me to buy less electricity. I’d be remiss if I didn’t applaud the enlightened utility regulation which rewards them for saving electricity and not just for building new power plants. Sometimes this is referred to as selling “negawatts.” To paraphrase Ben Franklin, a power plant saved is a power plant earned.

And here’s how it works with our utility: those net-meters meters will give us credit for all of the electricity we generate on our roof. And when we’re making more than we’re using, the meter will run backwards, effectively storing up credit for us to use at night or on a rainy day. If our system is in balance, as our installer predicts, each year we should produce almost exactly what we use, and our bill will be a very amount of under $10 month for use of the transmission lines. At the end of the year, if we generate more than we use, although we can’t sell it, we can give the “extra” electricity credit to a relative or friend.

The thought that we will soon break a small link in the energy monopoly and help build a new distributed generation economy is appealing. There are many people today who say we cannot possibly run the world without fossil fuels. Yet the evidence tells us otherwise. There are more jobs in renewables and efficiency, and most of them cannot be “off-shored.” And when the cost of renewables is nearly on par with fossil fuels then we can see that the world is changing. We are truly at an inflection point and as Richard Branson’s Independent Power systemsCarbon War Room puts it, “Over 50% of the climate change challenge can be addressed today – and profitably – by existing technologies, under existing policy. This is an opportunity marked as a crisis – arguably the largest wealth creation opportunity of our lifetime.”

And if we actually priced coal and oil properly, with all of the hidden costs to society factored in, then the benefits of cutting fossil fuel use would be even more starkly defined.

Maybe because it was Martin Luther King Day I was reminded of a quote from another civil rights pioneer, Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy spoke about sending forth a “tiny ripple of hope” which would cross with “a million different centers of energy” to grow in strength and change the world. Our solar panels may only be a single installation, but they have the potential to inspire many more, and gradually we will wean ourselves from a dependence on fuels which harm our health and the planet.

Best of all, we can do this not only because we will leave our children a better planet, but also because it can save us some serious money while we’re here.

Eric Grunebaum
Cambridge, MA

Sink or swim? City of Cambridge Plans for Climate Adaptation

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If you’re a habitual reader of the environmentalist news stream, as I am, you notice that much of the discussion about climate change pertains to the urgent need for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a focus that’s well-warranted given both the huge scale and urgent timing of emissions reductions that are necessary to lessen (or ‘mitigate’) the amount of warming that occurs and avoid the severest impacts.

The flip-side of the climate science picture is the undoubtedly gloomy understanding that a certain amount of future warming is unavoidable regardless of how quickly emissions are drawn down. It’s in the spirit of realism and responsibility—not defeatism—then, that people are beginning to think about how we should prepare ourselves for the coming climatic changes. In the lingo of climate policy thinkers, this type of planning is called ‘adaptation.’

Low-lying areas along the Esplanade are at risk for more storm flooding as global sea levels rise

Serious adaptation planning is starting to move from an academic exercise to one that various levels of government are undertaking. Large cities—particularly ones situated on coastlines—have led the way. New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Miami, among others, have set the adaptation wheels in motion.

The City of Boston is following in their footsteps; in their recently published climate plan, they made it a goal to “give adaptation the same priority as mitigation,” and mentioned that a comprehensive adaption study is in the works. The State of Massachusetts, under the 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act, established an Advisory Committee of experts and stakeholders to report on and make recommendations regarding adaptation to the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Kathleen Baskin, manager of this committee, informed me that their first report, provisionally entitled the Massachusetts Climate Adaptation Plan, is now under review and should be published by late summer. The report will include a qualitative assessment of the state’s vulnerability to climate change and provide strategies for response under several predicted climate scenarios.

Last week, I sat down with John Bolduc, an environmental planner for the City of Cambridge, to learn about how the city is moving forward with adaptation. When the city began climate planning in 1999 with a resolution to join ICLEI’s Cities for Climate Protection program, attention was squarely on the potential for reducing Cambridge’s carbon footprint—that is, mitigation. And until the past couple of years, it remained this way, whether for fear that adaptation would divert attention and resources from mitigation or hope that civilization would be on course to avert crisis by now. Last year, Cambridge (in addition to Boston) was one of the inaugural cities in ICLEI’s new Climate Resilient Communities program.

The first step in the process is to conduct a vulnerability assessment, which involves analyzing climatic threats to Cambridge in detail. The Climate Protection Action Committee (CPAC), which advises the City Manager on climate change issues, presented some general vulnerability findings to him last year in a recommendation for a full assessment. Sea level rise—which is currently expected to be 1 to 2 meters by 2100—presents a major risk to Cambridge in the form of storm surge flooding from Boston Harbor. In the present climate, the Charles River Dam protects Cambridge against coastal storms that have more than one percent chance of happening in any year. By the middle of the century, the Charles River Dam and other coastal defenses could be overwhelmed regularly by sea level rise and coastal storms. A scenario involving sea level rise of 2 feet, a moderate estimate, and a current 100 year storm would see the Charles River Dam and other coastal barriers overtopped. In addition to sea level rise, direct effects on public health are expected—more hot summer days and nights (made worse by the urban heat island), increased ground-level ozone (smog) formation, and greater risk for insect-borne diseases are just a sampling of concerns articulated by CPAC. According to Mr. Bolduc, City Manager Healy has already acted on CPAC’s recommendation and the City will be starting a vulnerability assessment this summer.

Looking forward, Mr. Bolduc emphasized that potential adaptation measures shouldn’t be looked at in isolation—that is to say, adaptation strategies are not only about protecting citizens and infrastructure from climatic hazards. For example, tree-planting and ‘green roofs,’ which can help buildings stay cool in the summer, are also helpful for air quality—a ‘co-benefit’ of action. A city must be looked at holistically for the interconnected social-ecological-economic system that it is. The bottom line is that climate change adaptation planning is really a continuation of what the City already does to reduce and manage risks to the community from a range of potential threats. In the past we could count on a relatively stable climate, but now we have to expect conditions will change. To Mr. Bolduc, the goal is to make Cambridge a more “resilient” city.

Dresden Moving on Climate Protection

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Dresden, a city of 220,000 in the eastern part of Germany, was the target of Allied firebombing in World War II that largely destroyed the city.  The wonderful skyline of towers built by the Saxon kings was restored and the downtown area is vibrant.   While the eastern part of Germany has suffered from emigration to other regions, Dresden has been growing modestly.

The City is bisected by the Elbe River and has a number of tributaries that flow into it.  In 2002, Dresden saw a major flood that inundated the city center, including the central railway station.  Over 1 billion Euros in damage was inflicted by the floods and some lives were lost.  The flooding was the result of the Elbe River overtopping its banks, rising groundwater, and the Weisseritz River defying its re-direction and flowing in its historic route.  The 2002 flood is at the front of City officials’ minds as they develop responses to climate change.

Dresden has a small climate protection office formed in 2010 and headed by Ina Helzig.  The office focuses on climate mitigation initiatives.  Dresden’s goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2010 levels by 2030.   The City sees their climate and sustainability program as part of their economic development strategy.

Work on adaptation has been centered in a regional initiative called REGKLAM that is funded by the federal government.  The adaptation program is at the stage of assessing Dresden’s vulnerabilities in order to develop their strategy.  But they have already taken action to prevent a repeat of the 2002 flood.  The City’s strategy includes preventing additional development in floodplains, monitoring weather conditions, raising flood retention walls by about 1 meter, creating a system of temporary flood retention barriers to protect the city center, modifying the combined sewer system to store more water and reduce the frequency of sewage overflows to the Elbe, and lowering groundwater levels under key buildings.  An underground retention facility was constructed at a central pumping station to hold 35,000 cubic meters of storm flows.   The City has also installed additional gates in the combined sewer conduit system to shut down the pipes and use them for storage.  Dresden believes the improved system will help them minimize the flooding effects of climate change.

One other climate-related strategy that Dresden, and some other German cities, employs is to protect air flow channels coming down from of the surrounding mountains.  Most of the land within the city boundaries is open space.   There are valleys that slope down to the Elbe River that bring cooler air to the Elbe and into the city.  Land use changes and development that would reduce this effect are restricted.  While this wasn’t done as an adaptation measure, I think this strategy will help Dresden cope with rising temperatures.  This approach has not been taken in any American cities as far as I know.  But it would complement other efforts to reduce the urban heat island effect.

MIT Climate CoLab Contest

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What should we do about climate change?

Instead of waiting for policy makers to act, you can help figure out the answer at the Climate CoLab; previously discussed in Opening the [Copenhagen] talks. Working alone—or in teams of people from all over the world—you can create proposals for what to do about climate change. The winning proposals will be presented to key policy makers, including officials at the UN and the US Congress. And if your proposal is one of the top two, you’ll receive travel funding for a representative of your team to attend one of these briefings.

We especially encourage entries from teams of undergraduate and graduate students with an interest in climate and sustainability issues. As usual rules and restrictions apply.

The deadline for the contest is October 31, 2010.

“The Story of Cap and Trade”

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One possible step toward Climate Change mitigation, cap and trade is a prominent topic of discussion among government officials and environmentally-concerned citizens alike. This very short film (by the creators of “Story of Stuff”) offers a comprehensive look into the cap & trade system, and carefully questions its legitimacy. This is an informative piece on a very comfortable level that will boost your understanding of what the true philosophies behind, benefits of, and concerns with cap and trade systems are. I recommend taking a couple of minutes to check it out, and then sharing with your friends.

Or watch here.

Volunteers Take Energy Efficiency to Cambridge’s Main Streets

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CEA canvassing interns: Stephanie, Mira, Danit, Trevor, Federico, Laurence

On July 7th CEA’s six volunteers took to the streets for the first time, canvassing businesses in Inman Square, and eastward on Cambridge Street. Over the next three weeks, they would reach out to over 440 people in small local businesses—barber shops, cafes, hardware stores, book stores, florists, bars, convenience stores, restaurants, bike shops, you name it—in North Cambridge, Leslie and Porter Square, Harvard Square and Church Street, Mount Auburn and Brattle Street, Dana Hill, Bow Street, Central Square, Lafayette, Concord Ave, Huron, East Cambridge, and Broadway.

In 90+ degree heat, over previously unfamiliar terrain, and sometimes through rain storms, the teams of interns  met with over 190 business owners and discussed energy efficiency opportunities—programs and incentives from NSTAR—while also providing information on other sustainability resources, as detailed in my first canvass blog.

These canvassers, our 14 to 18 year-old Northeastern University Summer Discovery and Mayor’s Summer Youth Employment interns—Stephanie, Federico, Danit, Laurence, Mira, and Trevor—distributed information and opportunity all over Cambridge, and gained valuable life and work experiences. For that, they thank the small business community of Cambridge.

We can all thank them for something, too.

After canvassing for 12 days and following up with phone calls to visited businesses, CEA has received 100 requests for energy assessments through NSTAR’s Direct Install, Small Business Program. We expect many more to accrue, as folks have time to browse the literature and call to talk with our Energy Advisor, or sign up online.

If you own a small business in Cambridge, please feel free to call CEA to talk, or sign up online at any time; our canvassers have gone home, but the operation is not over, by any means.

Thanks to NSTAR, CEA, and our six interns, Cambridge has now taken one step further in the direction of reducing its carbon footprint, and thereby, toward taking a concrete stab at the Climate Change caused by Global Warming. Congratulations, Cambridge businesses!

Want a comprehensive Climate Change/Clean Energy bill?

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The Union of Concerned Scientists, a national non-profit of citizens and scientists for environmental solutions based in Harvard Square, have cleanly outlined several concrete actions for you to take to meet those ends. They have taken to the road, holding meetings focused on spreading the knowledge and skills to effectively use your constituency as leverage. Although yesterday the Senate majority leader Harry Reid announced that they will not look at climate legislation until September, others are firmly professing that all hope is not lost.

“This is not going to die, absolutely rest assured this is not going away,” Kerry told visitors to Congress.

“As long as I am in the Senate and I’ve got another four years … we are going to keep pounding away on this.”

The goal that the UCS promotes for the upcoming legislation fight is to inform our on-the-fence Senators (e.g. Senator Scott Brown) what their voters want — comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation, and the green jobs, health benefits, and world status that will come with it.

The methods discussed were as follows:

Letters to the Editor

Follow local newspapers, and when there is an article written that has anything to do with this topic, respond to it. Letters to the editor are a good way to reach a wide, local audience. Another perk to these is that Senators have their staff tracking editorials mentioning them, so their attention will be brought to these articles if you mention them. If you aren’t published, your article will still be one more on the topic that tells the editor what the readership is thinking about. Some tips: name a Senator, keep it brief (150 and 200 words) so that your arguments are less likely to be edited, make it personal (refer to your expertise if you have some), add a call to action or timeframe (e.g. Legislation, this summer!). If your article is printed, send it into the Senator’s office via email or online form, because snail mail will be delayed due to biohazard processing in D.C.

Phone calls to Senators

For Cambridge and all of Massachusetts, it is important to call Senator Scott Brown’s offices both in Washington D.C. (202-224-4543 – Staffer Nat Hoopes) and Boston (617-565-3170) to let his staff know that you, as a constituent, want a comprehensive climate and energy bill as soon as possible. Because the Senator is concerned about cost and jobs, these may be good points do to your homework on before calling.

We may also call Senator John Kerry, to let him know that we appreciate his championing Climate legislation in the past and are grateful for his continuation of that act.

Meetings with Legislators/their staff

You have a right to this as well. These are good places to bring in evidence that you have found to support your wishes, as well as to bring in experts you know, or others who are on your side that the Senator might relate to. If you ask a question, be sure to ask when you can follow up to get an answer, and be sure to do the same if you are asked to find out some information.

Online Networking

Senator Brown has a Facebook page, and presently is being berated by unhappy constituents; a civilly toned note might be taken quite significantly in such a climate. You can also pass word along about this topic to your friends via email as well as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or any other online vessel you might use.

It’s agreed that the drafts of bills presented so far are not perfect, and that whatever legislation is ultimately presented will likely also be imperfect. It may seem foolish to some, to seemingly throw caution to the wind and press for passage of any old climate/clean energy legislation that’s up for grabs. The discussed sentiment is that if this legislation is passed—if ANY climate/clean energy legislation is passed—it will act as a firm shoe in the door, allowing for the breeze of forward-thinking climate action to roll in a little bit more smoothly. The imperfection of whatever bill is passed is only an obstacle in that it takes time for amendments to be drafted, voted on, and adopted.

EIA finds cost of bill to address global warming is low

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A story from Greenwire in the New York Times summarizes the findings of the Energy Information Administration’s report on the costs of implementing the Kerry-Lieberman energy bill. It concludes that in a middle of the road scenario, adoption of the bill would result in a (basis point) reduction of GDP1 by 2‰ (2 thousandths) over more than two decades of growth. Thus given a rate of 2.2% growth annually, the cost of insurance to help forestall greater costs is 17.5 hours of growth each year.

Although the bill arguably does not go far enough, and so has a lower cost, it compares favorably with the figures from the famous Stern Review that suggests a cost of 2% of gross global product to address global warming, or forgoing about one week of growth per year.

1. Itself a flawed measure, particularly when considering broader social and environmental issues e.g; All of the money BP is spending to clean the Gulf are considered gains in GDP, whereas most of the environmental losses are not counted.

California’s global warming fight in jeopardy

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pollution by Gilbert R. As of this month, it’s official that California’s residents will be voting on the November ballot as to whether they would like to suspend the law that has been put in effect to help the state take responsibility for its greenhouse gas emissions.

When they announced a cutting-edge legislative initiative to fight the climate change caused by Global Warming in late 2009, California was hailed as ambitious, meant positively by some and negatively by others. Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32) was designed to aid California in meeting its goals of reaching 1990 level emissions by the year 2020, using a cap and trade program as well as other methods. The contention of some, was that cap and trade methods do not work to reduce the act of pollution but simply shift it around to those with the deepest pockets, and others suggested that the regulations would force citizens to purchase more costly energy options than other parts of the nation. Many were simply happy that someone was doing something concrete to fight Climate Change.

Thus far, a good portion of the law’s components have been approved and gone into effect. The industry of alternative energies has begun to bloom in California, but these successes may all be shut down in short order, should the people take the bate and vote it into suspension.

This move is, of course, backed by the oil industry that AB32 was designed, in part, to subdue. More surprising, perhaps, is that it is not only supported by those who make money through the oil industry, but it originated in the meeting rooms of Texas oil giants Valero Energy Inc. and Tesoro Corp. What they are calling the “California Jobs Initiative” paints AB 32 as a tax on homeowners, further suggests a definitive (unexplained) connection between this law and job loss, and devalues any and all progress that has been made and could be made in the direction of clean energy. The campaign, born in oil bureaucracy, uses the word “bureaucrat” to give AB 32 a negative taste several times in the few paragraphs on its home page.

The good news (for us, for Governor Schwarzenegger, for California, for the planet) is that there has been a push back- an organization called “Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs” has been formed by environmentalists and green tech professionals alike. They seem to be a group to reckon with, based on the bold imagery evident immediately upon arrival at their website’s home page.

As the opposing sides battle this controversial proposition out over the next 5 months, hopefully all truths will come to light so that citizens of California may make the most wise decisions, unskewed by false information.