Perfect timing!  73 grants to help public schools and community colleges across PA go solar and save big were announced.  Five Philly public schools and Community College of Philadelphia are among the 25 winners in southeast PA. 

Attorneys general from 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Monday against the Trump administration, asking a district court to block the president’s ban on wind energy approvals and declare it unlawful.

A group of Bryn Mawr math majors partnered with PSEA last year to help schools do the preliminary solar audits and analyses needed to determine whether the school district should invest in on-site solar.  The students caught on so quickly to all the online modeling tools, the Solar Schools Toolkit and its proformas that they were able to complete detailed analyses for two School Districts.  Two of the students stayed with the project after the semester had ended and took it all the way to the finish line, with the School District deciding to go solar on an elementary school. 

Electricity customers in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland (PJM) region are facing a looming cost crisis stemming from two major issues: (a) worsening barriers to building and connecting new generation resources needed to supply the electric grid, and (b) unprecedented increases in projected electricity demand. Accelerating new resource deployment will be necessary to reliably serve new and existing load without greatly increasing energy costs to electricity customers.

Renewable energy companies are shifting strategy under President Trump, emphasizing the economic benefits of low-carbon electricity.

Akira Drake Rodriguez, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has studied inequities in housing and schools, has repeatedly visited a school in west Philadelphia to install weather sensors. Kids there were hot and frustrated, squeezed into overcrowded classrooms, and unable even to get a drink of water because school water fountains didn’t work.

“Every time I walked through that school, whether it was June or October, the kids were like, ‘It’s so f-ing hot in here,’” she said.