Biden’s proposed tenfold increase in solar power would remake the US electricity system

  President Joe Biden has called for major clean energy investments as a way to curb climate change and generate jobs. On Sept. 8, the White House released a report produced by the U.S. Department of Energy that found that solar power could generate up to 45% of the U.S. electricity supply by 2050, compared to less than 4% today. We asked Joshua D. Rhodes, an energy technology and policy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, what it would take to meet this target.

Gary Palmer and Cameron Smith: Coal-fired Alabama on EPA's "most wanted" list

  As if an economy struggling to recover were not enough, Alabamians are truly starting to feel the financial pinch of trips to the gas pump and higher monthly electric bills. The cost increases impact more than just travel and utility bills; they are built into virtually every item made or transported in the United States. From groceries to clothes, kitchen table discussions about budgets are becoming more difficult for families across Alabama.

  To make matters worse, the federal government is adding to the mounting fiscal burden. Taxpayers face an army of federal bureaucrats tasked with regulatory development and oversight – more than 270,000 of them at the end of 2010.  Each regulatory employee enforces specific regulations published in the Federal Register. The register has grown by more than 3,000% since 1936, from 2,620 pages of regulations to more than 80,000 at the end of 2011.