Bloomberg: Buffett Scores Cheapest Electricity Rate With Nevada Solar Farms

Warren Buffett’s Nevada utility has lined up what may be the cheapest electricity in the U.S., and it’s from a solar farm.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s NV Energy agreed to pay 3.87 cents a kilowatt-hour for power from a 100-megawatt project that First Solar Inc. is developing, according to a filing with regulators. That’s a bargain. Last year the utility was paying 13.77 cents a kilowatt-hour for renewable energy.

Denver Post: Marijuana Growing Spikes Denver Electric Demand

Surging electricity consumption by Colorado's booming marijuana industry is sabotaging Denver's push to use less energy -- just as the White House perfects a Clean Power Plan to cut carbon pollution.

Citywide electricity use has been rising at the rate of 1.2 percent a year, and 45 percent of that increase comes from marijuana-growing facilities, Denver officials said Wednesday.

Denver has a goal of capping energy use at 2012 levels. Electricity is a big part of that.

Climate Progress: Kenya’s New Wind Farm Will Provide Nearly One Fifth Of The Country’s Power

Last week Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta broke ground on a major renewable energy project for the country and for the African continent as a whole: a 310-megawatt wind farm some 300 miles north of the capital city of Nairobi.

The farm, which will consist of 365 turbines when fully completed in mid-2017, will be the largest in Africa -- overpowering Morocco’s Tarfaya wind farm, currently Africa’s biggest project with 131 turbines. It is also expected to provide around 17 percent of Kenya’s power demand.

Los Angeles Times: California Issues Toughest-in-the-Nation Fracking Rules

State officials on Wednesday formally adopted new rules governing hydraulic fracturing in California, setting in motion some of the toughest guidelines in the nation for the controversial oil extraction practice. The oil and gas agency also released its environmental impact report that concluded fracking could have “significant and unavoidable impacts” on a number of fronts, including air quality, greenhouse gas emissions and public safety.

The regulations, which lawmakers approved in 2013, require oil companies to expand monitoring and reporting of water use and water quality, conduct broad analysis of potential engineering and seismic impacts of their operations, and comprehensively disclose chemicals used during fracking and other operations.

City Lab: Ford Tries to Figure Out Bicycles

More than a century after Ford itself fatally disrupted the horse carriage industry, the people at the prototypical 20th-century manufacturing company are confronting a proliferation of 21st-century alternatives to the old paradigm of one person, one car, in which simply pushing new models off assembly lines each year won’t cut it.

One of the ways Ford is dealing with this is by revisiting a strangely persistent 19th-century technology. Ford is looking at bicycles.