Grist: Climate Coverage by TV Networks Falls Precipitously

Major TV networks spent just 50 minutes on climate change -- combined -- last year. That’s a dramatic 66 percent drop in coverage from 2015 across evening and Sunday news programs airing on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, according to a new study from Media Matters. ABC, for one, spent just six minutes on climate issues in 2016.

The networks can’t claim there was a shortage of important climate stories to cover. Hurricane Matthew, the Great Barrier Reef’s continued slow death, record-shattering heat, and the official beginning of the Paris climate deal all took place last year.

Interestingly, the coverage drop doesn’t seem to be an election-year phenomenon. In fact, climate coverage increased by 43 percent during the previous election cycle, between 2011 and 2012.

PV-Tech: GE to Develop 13 Solar Projects in Northeast U.S.

Solar solutions provider Current, a subsidiary of GE, announced that it is developing more than 17 MW in solar carport and ground-mounted projects across six states in the northeastern U.S.

Erik Schiemann, general manager of solar at Current, said: “The clean energy movement continues to surge ahead, and businesses all over the Northeast are leading the charge, including right here at GE. Smart companies are realizing that solar isn’t just good for the environment, but it can help their bottom lines too.”

Current is installing more than 9 MW of onsite solar power across eight different GE facilities across the region, along with several outside customer projects.

BostInno: What Really Happened to Next Step Living

In March 2016, one of the fastest-growing companies in Boston, a potential rival to Elon Musk’s SolarCity, shut its doors abruptly, putting about 200 people out of work.

Next Step Living had raised a reported $80 million in venture capital and reached $100 million in revenue on founder Geoff Chapin’s mission to change the world by becoming the Amazon of home energy-efficiency installations. And yet, the company leaned sideways and fell apart, seemingly overnight.

This is the story of how venture capitalists’ overreach, a huge fiscal blind spot, and New England’s worst winter ever brought Next Step Living to its knees. Even as it tightened its belt, cash flowed freely inside Next Step’s South Boston headquarters, employees said. A venture capital power move provided the coup de grace that swiftly ended it all. Now, its owners are plotting a new company out of the ashes.

New York Times: Trump Says Regulations Impede. Perhaps Not in the Electric Car Business.

President Trump is not fond of regulations. Within weeks of taking office, he and his appointees began to roll back rules that govern the financial industry, guns, the energy business and broadband internet providers.

Last week was the auto industry’s turn. In a speech in Ypsilanti, Mich., Mr. Trump said he would alter rules imposed by the Obama administration to raise vehicles’ fuel standards, which are aimed at curbing greenhouse gases. The rules, Mr. Trump said, are killing jobs. Getting rid of them would prompt a resurgence in the auto industry that would make America “the car capital of the world again,” he said.

That’s one possibility. We also have to consider another scenario: Loosening the fuel-economy rules could remove a primary incentive for big carmakers to catch up with innovative upstarts like Tesla and leave the American car industry out of step with a future ruled by electric motors rather than the internal combustion engine.

Automotive News: California Snubs Free EVs, Auto Industry Says in Push Back on New Emissions Mandate

The proportion of Californians making electric cars their new set of wheels has stayed flat for years even though incentives make some models basically free to lease, a trade group told state regulators that may toughen up already-stringent rules.

With state rebates, federal tax credits and manufacturer discounts, the effective monthly payments in California for zero-emission vehicles including the Nissan Motor Co. Leaf and Ford Motor Co. Focus Electric can add up to zero -- or less -- a month, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said in written comments to the California Air Resources Board.

“Yet the ZEV market share has remained at the 3 to 3.5 percent level,” the alliance said in its 80-page submission, asking the agency known as CARB to ease up on plans to require more sales of the vehicles.