As we say in the battle over net metering, distributed energy resources (DER) and net metering in Nevada recently, opponents of clean energy scaling continue to spew out Arguments Against Rooftop Solar such as disinformation, distortions and demonstrable falsehoods. Unfortunately, in the case of Nevada, that campaign appears to have had some success, with the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) all but destroying rooftop solar in the state. As the New York Times reported:

In a recent TED talk, former Vice President Al Gore laid out the case for optimism on climate change, and the root cause for the optimism turns out to be clean energy. Here are a few key points well worth highlighting. Of course, if you work in the cleantech industry, you already know much of this. Still, it's worth repeating and spreading to a broader audience, as many people are not aware of the extent to which (and how rapidly) cleantech is scaling up.

This morning, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) held a highly-informative webinar entitled, "What's in store for clean energy in 2016?" It's about an hour long, and we strongly recommend that you check it out if you have the time. If not, here are some highlights.

Following a string of successes over the last few years, the clean energy landscape looks extremely bright. Last December in Paris, 196 countries, working with major corporations, agreed to a historic deal to address the challenges of climate disruption by limiting carbon pollution to 2 degrees C or less.

Congress also recently passed a five-year extension of both the wind Production Tax Credit and the solar Investment Tax Credit, which will create a reliable and predictable market environment that encourages growth and investment.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is out with an important new report, "Re-powering Markets: Market design and regulation during the transition to low-carbon power systems." This is notable for being "the first official publication of the IEA that analyses the electricity market framework for low-carbon power systems." Among other things, the report "offers guidance to governments, regulators, companies and investors on how to transition to low-carbon generation" as "the push for low-carbon power generation shifts the industry towards high investment in renewables and other new technologies." It's a lengthy (246-page) report, filled with detail, and is well worth reading if you have the time. For now, here are a few highlights.

A new study, Four billion people facing severe water scarcity, finds that freshwater scarcity constitutes "a global systemic risk," and that previous studies seriously underestimated water scarcity. The report's conclusion is worth reprinting here.

We've been beating the drum for several years about the need for cleantech to play "full contact" against the fossil fuel lobby. Back in December 2010, for instance, Tigercomm Founder and President Mike Casey argued that the growing success of solar and wind power had caused "dirty energy industries [to spend] significant resources to harden the marketing and sales environment against cleantech's success." Casey related key lessons learned from a panel of cleantech communicators convened during the 2010 Solar Power International (SPI) trade show:

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court surprised almost everybody by issuing a "stay" on the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan (CPP), the goal of which is "to combat global warming by regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants" and to hasten the transition to cleaner forms of power. That doesn't mean the CPP is dead, by any means, but it does "[increase] the chances that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court would take the case after a lower court issues a decision on the legality of the regulations and ultimately would strike it down." The next step: "the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which denied a similar stay request last month, will hear oral arguments in the case on June 2 and decide whether the regulations are lawful."

A new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, produced for the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, concludes that "It is a new era for American energy," as a "revolution transform[s] how the US produces, delivers, and consumes energy." A few highlights from the 158-page, "Sustainable Energy in America Factbook" for 2016 include: