Tag Archives: Investing

A Recently Bankrupt Coal Company Is Being Honored at Mar-a Lago

by HermanHallock Posted on March 22, 2017

Mother Jones

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President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort will host the opening reception Wednesday evening for a conference where a recently bankrupt coal company will be a guest of honor. The annual Distressed Investing Summit will bestow one of its “Restructuring Deal of the Year” awards to Arch Coal for clearing $5 billion in debt after it filed for bankruptcy in 2016.

“They emerged from bankruptcy in 2016 after shedding huge amount of debt, obligations to workers, and environmental cleanup,” Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal director Mary Anne Hitt says. “When a company is in bankruptcy, you don’t have a lot of leverage in there with all the lawyers and stakeholders. To have them feted at Mar-a-Lago as a turnaround is salt in the wound for workers and people representing the public interest.”

The summit, hosted by financial company The M&A Advisor, has held its opening cocktail reception at Mar-a-Lago for the past two years, ever since Trump emerged as a serious contender for president. In its invitation email, M&A Advisor names Arch Coal as one of its winners alongside a number of other firms, including energy companies Alpha Natural Resources, Midstates Petroleum Company, and Venoco, an oil and gas development company.

Here’s how the invitation describes Mar-a-Lago, “the new Winter White House”:

The agenda for roundtables that are held at a nearby hotel reads like a laundry list of Trump’s campaign themes: “Making America Great Again,” “Informing and Silencing The Media,” and the “Art of Dealmaking: Getting Deals Done In The New Economic Order.”

Not everyone agrees that Arch Coal’s 2016 bankruptcy deal warrants celebration. During the bankruptcy proceedings, environmental opposition forced the company to abandon its proposal that taxpayers should foot the entire bill to clean up its abandoned mines. The company also laid off hundreds of its miners that same year.

In the years before bankruptcy, United Mine Workers of America complained that Arch Coal moved 40 percent of its employees’ health care coverage to Patriot Coal, a volatile offshoot company. When Patriot went under, those health benefits were at risk and continue to be because of Arch Coal’s bankruptcy. Patriot and Arch Coal are only two examples of a larger problem. The union shop has been pressing Congress for a long-term solution for 22,000 miners’ benefits in jeopardy because of coal bankruptcies—an issue that won’t go away no matter what happens to federal environmental regulations.

The idea that the coal industry can recover is a cherished narrative for Trump. Earlier this week, at a campaign-style rally in Kentucky, the president claimed that he will “save our coal industry” and put miners back to work with executive orders that are expected any day. Trump likes to blame “terrible job-killing” regulations, but there are other pressures beyond federal regulation driving coal out of business, namely competitive natural gas.

Nonetheless, on Wednesday evening, a coal turnaround will be celebrated. Even though it might only be, as the Sierra Club’s Hitt notes, “one of many of the alternative facts they like to celebrate at Mar-a-Lago.”

Continued here – 

A Recently Bankrupt Coal Company Is Being Honored at Mar-a Lago

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Recently Bankrupt Coal Company Is Being Honored at Mar-a Lago

5 Freaky Ways To Have A Green Halloween

by EdmundoGutierre Posted on October 24, 2016

It can be quite challenging to maintain an eco-friendly lifestyle during holiday seasons, particularly Christmas and Halloween. It requires walking a fine line between successfully maintaining your environmentally conscious values and becoming a grouchy grinch who forbids fun in the name of the greater good.

Over the past few years, I think I’ve successfully refined my approach to major holidays, managing to navigate a happy balance between conscious consumption and celebration. With All Hallows’ Eve approaching, I’ve put together five ways to help you have a green Halloween.

1. Spookily Secondhand

Swapping your kids’ costumes can be a great way to save money and reduce waste. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

It seems like Halloween costume stores pop up in every empty storefront as soon as the first leaf falls from the tree in September, but despite the allure of these one-stop shops, secondhand stores are actually the best place to shop for a costume — either one you put together yourself or one you choose from a rack of store-bought options that were someone else’s creepy or cute aliases a year before.

These costumes will be a fraction of the price compared with buying new, and reusing a costume means you’ll not only save money, you’ll prevent that wicked witch or swashbuckling pirate from haunting a landfill somewhere.

This tip works especially well for kids’ costumes — often worn for just a few hours before being discarded, they’re usually in great shape and kids will enjoy choosing their own secondhand costume without price limitations.

2. Boo-tiful Reusable Decor

Halloween decor like these wooden blocks can be reused from year to year. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

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This year, eschew disposable decorations like police tape and spray-on cobwebs and opt for well-made decorations that can be used year after year instead (these can be found secondhand, too!). Choosing items made from sturdy materials like wood or cloth instead of plastic or Styrofoam means that they’ll last for years and be less likely to get damaged in storage.

Saving spooktacular decorations from one year to the next also means you can refine your sinister tableaus with each passing year instead of having to reinvent it from scratch each time.

3. Tricky Treats

Organic chocolates wrapped in foil are preferable to candy in plastic packaging. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

This one is perhaps the most challenging obstacle to overcoming a wasteful or polluting Halloween. Those teeny-tiny chocolate bars and fruit snacks are called “fun sized,” but the environmental impact of all those plastic candy wrappers is anything but — especially when you consider that we buy $2.2 billion in candy each Halloween season. All of those tiny wrappers add up, but handing out a box of raisins is sure to get your house egged — what’s a green ghoul to do?

Thankfully, there is an easy solution that can also help provide a happy Halloween for children with food sensitivities, too. Handing out a non-candy item like Halloween pencils or natural rubber pumpkin erasers allows you to sidestep the individually wrapped treats, but foil-wrapped organic chocolates are a great option, too.

If budget or tradition prohibits either of these options, don’t beat yourself up. It’s one day a year. Give in to the fun of the holiday and purchase normal Halloween candy, but buy a bit less of it (we all know that you end up eating a third of it anyway) and give out one piece per trick-or-treater.

4. Monstrous (in Moderation)

Limiting the number of houses your kids trick-or-treat at can cut down on waste (and sugar overload!). Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

Your kids are going to hate me for this one. (Please apologize to them on my behalf.) But limiting the number of houses your kids collect candy from while trick-or-treating will do a lot to decrease the amount of trash — not to mention nutritional damage — done by all of those chocolate bars and bags of chips.

Again, the goal isn’t to strip any shred of fun from the holiday, so don’t be stingy about it, but do set a limit — either a length of time or a number of street blocks. Parents can make this decision for kids under 5; kids older than 5 can work with you to find a limit that’s acceptable to you both. And rather than an exercise in deprivation, use it as a chance to talk to your kids about moderation, being happy with having “enough” and the effects — environmental and physical — of so much junk food.

5. Eco-Bash

Opt for real plates and utensils at your Halloween party instead of wasteful disposable items. Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

If you’re brave enough to host a Halloween party, remember to avoid one-time-use serving items like plastic utensils and plates, plastic cups, and paper napkins. Investing in a set of inexpensive secondhand dishware and cloth napkins hugely reduces the amount of waste generated by parties and can be stored and reused for any special occasion, meaning you can avoid a truly frightening amount of trash.

From everyone here at Earth911, we wish you a happy, green Halloween!

Stumped on what to do with that jack-o’-lantern? Watch our video “What to Do with That Halloween Pumpkin” for great tips!

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

About
Latest Posts

Madeleine Somerville

Madeleine Somerville is the author of

All You Need Is Less: An Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity

. She is a writer, wannabe hippie and lover of soft cheeses. She lives in Edmonton, Canada, with her daughter. You can also find Madeleine at her blog,

Sweet Madeleine

.

Latest posts by Madeleine Somerville (see all)

5 Freaky Ways To Have A Green Halloween – October 24, 2016
4 Brands Doing Clothes Recycling Right – October 18, 2016
Does Being An Environmentalist Require A Certain Look? – September 21, 2016

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5 Freaky Ways To Have A Green Halloween

Posted in Casio, eco-friendly, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, OXO, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 5 Freaky Ways To Have A Green Halloween

Here’s how to spur more investment in clean energy

by PattiIBRGhendz Posted on April 13, 2016

Here’s how to spur more investment in clean energy

By on 13 Apr 2016 2:31 amcommentsShare

Next Friday, dozens of world leaders will gather in New York to officially sign the U.N. climate deal they hashed out in Paris last December. But the Paris Agreement will have only limited impact unless the world figures out a way to pony up the money necessary for a global transition to clean energy. Analysts put the price tag around $1 trillion annually through 2050.

The researchers behind the New Climate Economy, an initiative of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, think they know how to get those ponies in line. In a report released Wednesday, they write that the key to generating investment in clean energy is making the investments less risky; not digging up new money per se. There’s plenty of private investment money that could be channeled toward clean energy — hiding anywhere from pension funds to insurance companies’ portfolios. National governments, multilateral development banks (MDBs) like the World Bank, and others just need to figure out how to steer it in the right direction.

Part of the challenge is that many investors currently think of renewable projects the same way they think about fossil fuel projects, write the authors of the report. Investing in the energy sector is investing in the energy sector, the logic goes. But because fuel is free for many types of renewable energy, up to 90 percent of the costs for these projects are borne up front, and that makes them fundamentally different investments from other types of energy infrastructure.

“Renewables have often been penalized because the financing structures are geared toward fossil fuel projects,” Helen Mountford, director of economics at the World Resources Institute and program director of the New Climate Economy, told Grist. And that means we need new models.

One of the solutions is to get national governments and MDBs directly investing early in renewable projects, which then makes it less risky and more appealing for the private sector to come in with additional dollars. The New Climate Economy authors write that for every dollar invested by MDBs, up to 20 can flow in from the private sector. A core question, then, is how to convince players like the World Bank to invest more in sustainable infrastructure.

John Roome, senior director of the World Bank Group’s climate change program, argues that the MDBs are already heading in that direction. “We believe this is critical for our poverty alleviation mission,” Roome told Grist. “I think there is significant demand out there” for decreasing carbon footprints and increasing climate resilience, he continued, and the Bank views the main challenge as one of implementation.

Last week, the World Bank released a new climate action plan that promises increases in climate-related funding, which Roome and his team believe will lead to more mobilization of private finance. The plan has the Bank supporting 30 new gigawatts of renewable energy capacity over five years, but “a lot of that is not necessarily directly fully financed by the Bank,” says Roome. Instead, it will come from the private sector. The action plan claims that the World Bank “will aim to mobilize $25 billion of commercial funding for clean energy over the next five years.”

Governments will also need to shift their policies to encourage private sector investment in clean energy. “National governments have a huge responsibility to get the policy framework right,” says Mountford. “We’re underpricing carbon. In most cases we’re pricing it at zero or pricing it very low.” Carbon taxes and carbon-trading systems could do a lot to spur investment in renewables, since taking the environmental and social costs of carbon into account helps keep renewables cost-competitive.

We also need to stop using public funds to support dirty energy, says Mountford. “Globally, there are something like $600 billion going to fossil fuel subsidies. That’s the wrong direction,” she says. The G20 alone spends $450 billion annually subsidizing fossil fuels.

MDBs, too, will need to move away from supporting dirty energy. The World Bank, for example, still hasn’t committed to halting funding for fossil fuel projects. While Roome says it hasn’t funded a coal project in five years, natural gas projects are still on the table (and in rare situations, developing countries can still qualify for coal funding). He sees these projects as a necessary evil of sorts. “If you look at heating in Eastern Europe, a lot of that heating is currently generated from coal,” he says. “If you want a central heating system, it’s pretty difficult to run that off the back of renewables. Gas, in that environment, is not only the cheapest and gives people the benefits of a heating system, but it has a much lower carbon footprint than the alternative.”

Overall, the plummeting cost of clean energy promises to help the world edge toward that $1 trillion annually, “but it’s not enough on its own,” says Mountford. “We have to get the financing right.”

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Here’s how to spur more investment in clean energy

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s how to spur more investment in clean energy

How Can You Benefit From Solar Energy In Your Home?

by Dallas Weiter Posted on November 20, 2013

There’s a growing interest in Sacramento, California regarding the use of solar power. Consumers are noticing that this eco-friendly and very efficient source of electricity is really worth the investment. It’s no longer a futuristic dream to have efficient clean power generated by this semi-infinite resource of power; the sun. We have long seen solar technology as something just utilized for small gadgets such as timepieces and solar calculators, but if you look very closely, solar energy is being utilized everywhere. From satellites in space, universities to your local households in Sacramento.

Curious to know how you can make solar power work in your home?

The very first thing you ought to do is have the solar panels mounted in your residence by a specialist. This is not a complex undertaking but if just anybody will do it, some important details might be missed.

When a reliable installer will do the task, he could assure the system’s good performance and prolonged life span. Ideally, you may put the solar energy panels on top of your house. Setting them up in open grounds and yards may also be an alternative when you have the necessary area.

With a solar panel, you have got a device that makes available electric power which is converted from the energy of sunlight. This ensues either instantly employing photovoltaics (PV), which convert light to an electric current employing the photoelectric effect.

A solar cell, also known as photovoltaic cell (PV), is a gadget, as we described that changes light into an electric current. It was Charles Fritts who made the very first solar cell in 1880 and since then much has changed in terms of its productivity.

The direct current (DC) power that solar cells produce is not the same each time but depends on the intensity of the heat of the sun. Therefore, inverters are needed to routinely alter to get the required voltages or alternating current (AC).

Solar cells are connected in series within what’s known as modules. Then these units are connected together to create arrays, after which hooked to an inverter, which collects the energy at the desired voltage, and for the alternating current, the desired frequency/phase.

One query which plenty of people ask in Sacramento, California is how about during the night? Could i also employ solar power during the night?

This is rather simple; grid energy storage likewise known as large-scale energy storage, stores during periods when the production exceeds usage and then can use that extra energy when usage is greater than production.

This not just assures the consumer that he is going to have enough energy during night time or cloudy weather, but it preserves a regular amount of electrical current.

Connecting your property to the utility grid will allow you to simply buy power when you require it. Additionally, even better is, you can sell and generate income from the energy that you’re not utilizing. Therefore, by means of this system, you are certain that no power is ever lost. Total dependence on power from solar panels which have been set up accurately, therefore, is achievable.

Government policies vary depending on location and are typically subject to modification. The payback price is dependent upon the company providing the grid stores. With the grid store, you may conserve your excess energy for use later on or it can be sold back to the company.

Installing solar power is now an essential part of living in Sacramento, CA, the location is ideal for this kind of energy, and it appears to be productive due to the consistent sunlight in the region.

As for solar energy panels, which technology has been pushing to develop, will only make a great investment in your house, and will add, without a doubt, extra value to your property.

Getting solar power panels put in on your home is a great purchase that a lot of people still do not comprehend. Follow the link for more details so you can inform yourself about this great technological innovation.

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Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature

by Myrna Posted on April 16, 2013

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