Clean Energy Radio, Aviation Emissions, and Smart Grid

I’m not sure I made too many new friends on the talk radio show I did this morning on a politically conservative AM station in Arizona – a red state if there ever were one.  I mentioned that the U.S. is mixed in terms of environmental sensibilities, but that many other places on Earth, e.g., Europe, really “get this.” 

Of course, no region has a perfect record.  There are stories like this one, where the European Union, under pressure from enormously powerful international interests, reduced its regulation on aviation emissions.  That’s disappointing.  Or perhaps “disgraceful” is a better word, to pick up on the language of Bill Hemmings, aviation manager at Transport & Environment, who said:

It is disgraceful that foreign and industry pressure has obliged Europe to shrink its own aviation emissions law to the bare minimum. While aviation emissions are skyrocketing, Europe’s aviation climate measure has had its wings clipped. This is a grey day for the climate and for those that are serious about tackling aviation’s fast-growing warming impact.

But Europe is looking very strong in a great number of clean energy arenas, like smart grid, where, according to my colleague Jesse Berst at Smart Grid News, they are close to a real breakthrough in the implementation of “supergrid” high-voltage direct current (HVDC).