Articles by Alan Durning
Alan Durning directs Sightline Institute, a Seattle research and communication center working to promote sustainable solutions for the Pacific Northwest.
All Articles
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Mysteries of on-bill financing revealed!
In my last post, I described a nonprofit bank’s program for financing building energy retrofits, as a way to speed the green-collar recovery. Here, I describe two new, innovative approaches to financing efficiency upgrades in buildings — meter loans and local improvement districts — and one old-school, utility-run approach that may be the best bet […]
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A tool for the green-collar recovery
In “Retrofits for All,” I described an ingenious plan for extending retrofits to whole neighborhoods of energy-wasting buildings. Today, I want to take another look at one piece of that puzzle: financing. Energy conservation loans sound eminently reasonable: The loans pay for energy upgrades and, as long as the energy savings are bigger than the […]
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Federal spending, quick!
Paul Krugman was my favorite New York Times columnist even before he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics this week. His column on Friday lined right up with my current obsession: federal stimulus spending, quick, lots of it. He writes: “Right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about […]
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My worries about PHVs have mostly abated
In my post last fall on Rob Lowe’s plug-in hybrid, I argued that in the absence of a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, switching to plug-in hybrids might actually be worse for the climate than just switching to regular hybrids. I no longer believe that. Electric vehicles are winners for the climate in the Northwest. […]
