Energy Group’s ‘Revolution Now’ Monitors Electric Car Progress
The Natural Resource Defense Council is picking up where the Department of Energy left off.
The Natural Resource Defense Council launched a new tool this week to track the development and cost reductions of wind energy, solar power, LED lighting and electric vehicles.
The "Revolution Now" website compiles publicly available data and industry reports and presents as user-friendly charts. The point is to illustrate how technology had been breaking records and lowering costs.
When it comes to electric vehicles, the NRDC hosts easily digestible graphs and pages about the council has worked to improve vehicle efficiency, advance cleaner fuels and promote electric vehicles.
According to its website, the council helped launch the Charge Ahead California initiative to bring one million electric cars, trucks, and buses to the state by 2025. They are pushing for similar initiatives in Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut and Maryland.
A similar report has traditionally been published by the Department of Energy but has since stopped under the Trump administration, according to a statement from the NRDC.
When Trump unveiled the proposed budget in early February, it called for a 65 percent cut in spending for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, cutting its budget to $ 696 million, Reuters reported.
According to Nature, the revised budget proposal adds back $120 million to the office but it is unclear how the money would be distributed. The budget also called for more than a 19 percent increase in fossil fuel research and development, to $502 million.
“The DOE’s clean energy research and development investments are propelling breakthrough innovations from the lab into our everyday lives,” said Elizabeth Noll, NRDC’s Climate and Clean Energy Program deputy director of congressional and external affairs to Solar Industry Magazine. “They’re reducing our energy bills, creating local jobs and avoiding the pollution that harms our health and climate.”
