This section focuses on the broad spectrum of energy sources and uses, from non-renewable fuels to sustainable alternative energies. It includes articles, speeches, reports, interviews, book and anthology excerpts, PowerPoint presentations, and presentation transcripts.

How we produce and consume energy is one of the most critical environmental issues we face. Widespread burning of fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change, and alternative energy sources and conservation can reduce this impact dramatically. Learning about the impacts of our energy decisions will help us make wiser choices for a sustainable future. Some of the subject areas covered here are energy conservation, renewable electricity, and transportation energy. You will find articles on energy efficiency, insulation, solar panels, solar thermal energy, passive solar, fossil fuels, biofuels, clean cars, energy independence, ethanol, and more.

About Energy-Efficient Home Insulation. Article by Dan Chiras. Choosing the correct amount and kind of energy-efficient home insulation, and properly installing it in the walls, ceilings, floors and foundations of new and existing homes will make your home more energy efficient and economical. If extra insulation is paired with airtight home design and cost-effective, passive-solar heating and cooling, you can greatly reduce, even eliminate, the need for additional heating or cooling. Article >>

Build a Solar Home and Let the Sunshine In. Article by Dan Chiras. Practical suggestions for building a home that employs passive solar features at little additional cost but with great savings in both energy and money. Article >>

Buyer's Guide to Solar Heating. Article by Dan Chiras. A basic overview as well as buying and installing tips for solar air and water heating systems. Article >>

Damn the Torpedos & Torpedo the Dams. Article by Rob Caughlan. Four hundred miles of California's fabulous beaches are starving for sand, but surfers and other beach lovers have the muscle to bring them back. We know why they're starving and shrinking, and we know how to rescue them. Most of the sand on California beaches comes from rivers. Our beaches are starving because millions of tons of sand-laden sediments are now trapped behind the 1400 dams that were built in California between l850 and l970. Article >>

Ethanol's Failed Promise. Article by Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis. The "food-to-fuel" mandates should be changed because they do not move "America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change... the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis." Article >>

How Energy Issues Affected 2004 Race For President. Interview with Roger Ballentine. A John Kerry for President campaign advisor, Ballentine was interviewed in 2005 on how energy issues affected the 2004 race for President of the Unites States. Interview >>

Petroleum: Once Blessing, Now Curse. Article by Rod Diridon. Henry Ford's dream of mobility has had a staggering impact. The nation has been provided mobility, jobs, exports, and an auto-worshipping culture. But Ford’s dream has today become a strangling nightmare of fouled air, hopelessly congested highways, and a massive national balance of trade deficit. Article >>

Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030: The Disruption of Transportation and the Collapse of the ICE Vehicle and Oil Industries. Report co-authored by Tony Seba. This report provides a detailed analysis of data, market, consumer and regulatory dynamics. It finds that within 10 years of the regulatory approval of driverless vehicles, 95 percent of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand Autonomous Electric Vehicles owned by companies providing Transport as a Service. “We are on the cusp of one of the fastest, deepest, most consequential disruptions of transportation in history,” Seba explains. Report >>

Review of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Article by Lester Brown. In the landmark Plan B 3.0, Brown outlines a survival strategy for our early twenty-first-century civilization. The scale and complexity of issues facing our fast-forward world have no precedent. With Plan A, business as usual, we have neglected these issues. In Plan B 3.0, Brown warns that the only effective response now is a World War II-type mobilization like that in the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Article >>

Saving Cities, Saving Money: Toward A Sustainable San Jose. Book Chapter by John Hart. Tells the story of a ten-year process to develop a sustainability program for the City of San Jose. Covers many programs and policies, but most significantly it focuses on energy and water resources, community development, and municipal waste recycling. Using a slow but continuous process, the City moved step-by-step (both the Council and very importantly the City's top managers) to an embrace of sustainability as a policy goal. Chapter >>

Steps To A Sustainable Energy Future For Albuquerque. Speech by Dennis Church. Albuquerque’s potential for development of wind, geothermal and solar resources is nothing less than fantastic. You have first rate wind resources within a stone's throw, your geothermal resources are mind boggling. New Mexico experiences more hours of sunshine per year than most other states. So just how does sustainability apply to Albuquerque? Speech >>

Sunshine From a Tube. Article by Dan Chiras. Tubular skylights provide natural lighting and offer cost-savings. In commercial spaces, where lights often are on eight or more hours per day, one 10-inch tubular skylight providing 4,200 lumens of light for eight hours a day will save a business owner about $70 per year on the electrical bill. Article >>

Unburnable Fuels: Removing Reserves From The Balance Sheet. Article by Micha Tomkiewicz. The notion advanced in this article, that fossil fuel companies might be significantly overvalued, has the ring of truth while also having enormous strategic potential. Quantitative analysis shows clearly that most recoverable fossil fuels will need to be left in the ground if we are to hold climate disruption to tolerable levels. This cannot help but impact the value of all fossil fuel related assets, from oil fields to coal mines, from oil tankers to refineries, and from coal fired power plants to coal fired cement kilns. Article >>