ILSR’s series of workshops, supported by the Community Foundation of Dubuque and the Four Mounds Foundation, in 2008 led to the scope of work for this technical report. The report was completed by Huls Environmental Management, LLC. under the direction of the Dubuque Office of Sustainability. Read the executive summary (PDF)
Michael Krasny’s Forum program on KQED, the NPR affiliate in Northern California, featured ILSR’s Stacy Mitchell as part of a panel discussion on the decline of shopping malls. … Read More
The Department of Justice has begun an initial review to determine whether large U.S. telecom companies such as AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have abused the market power they’ve amassed in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter.
A strong and smart grid can be developed with distributed renewable energy, without need for new high-voltage transmission. This 6-minute video explains how.… Read More
Community Choice Aggregation lets cities and counties select their own electricity provider, prioritize renewable energy and encourage conservation, without having to own the utility or the power lines. It has expanded in California, and this paper provides an update on this innovative policy. For years, the U.S. has been served by four forms of electric utility: investor-owned, cooperative, municipal, and federal (e.g. Tennessee Valley Authority). This list is changing.
A 10-min video on Germany’s rewarding feed-in tariff renewable energy program … Read More
In the 1990s, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and other energy activists in Minnesota undertook an effort to get Minnesota to adopt a billion dollar "tax shift" that would have raised the cost of energy while reducing taxes on income and/or property. ILSR was integrally involved in the design of the legislative proposal and examined the impacts on various sectors of Minnesota’s economy. Below you will find the archive of the materials that were prepared to support the initiative. Over several years, the proposal was debated extensively but never enacted into law. … Read More
Presented at the 16th Annual Maine Recycling & Solid Waste Conference in Bar Harbor, Maine
The SBC’s Guidelines for Sustainable Bioplastics proposes goals and a roadmap for improving the sustainability of bioplastics – defined for this document as plastics in which 100% of the carbon is derived from renewable agricultural and forestry resources. While these Guidelines focus on biobased plastic replacements for fossil-fuel-based plastics, many of the principles apply to other … Read More
