Calgary Herald: Fossil fuels Are 'Probably Dead,' Says Canadian Pacific Railway CEO Hunter Harrison

People need to get their heads around the idea that fossil fuels are “probably dead,” the CEO of Canadian Pacific Railway said Wednesday.

“I’m not maybe as green as I should be, but I happen to think the climate is changing [and] they’re not going to fool me anymore,” Hunter Harrison told a J.P. Morgan transportation conference in New York.

The veteran rail executive said the transition to alternative fuels will be long, but new investments in traditional energy sources will dry up because of environmental hurdles.

PV-Tech: Spanish Parliament Rallies Against Punitive ‘Sun Tax’

Spanish parties representing a majority in parliament have signed an agreement to remove the controversial Royal Decree against self-consumption of solar energy within 100 days of a government being formed, according to Spain’s solar association Union Espanola Fotovoltaica (UNEF).

Spain has still not formed a government despite holding general elections last year, but 227 members of parliament agreed last week to remove several damaging policies against solar self-consumption should a majority government be formed out of the signatories of the agreement. The conservative Partido Popular party, which supports the punitive policies against solar self-consumption, the so-called ‘sun tax’ on energy produced and consumed without feeding the grid, currently has just 120 seats.

Yahoo Tech: The Fastest Street-Legal EV Is Now a Corvette Z06

When you think of fast electric vehicles, the Tesla Model S and its “Ludicrous Mode” probably come to mind, and rightly so. With the equivalent of 762 horsepower in the Model S P90D and a 0 to 60 mph time of just 2.8 seconds, few supercars could even match the electric sedan’s performance.

But what about top speed? That’s been a tough nut to crack for electric-vehicle manufacturers, because while instant torque helps an EV rocket off the line, all that “electric juice” runs thin as the runway gets longer. That’s where Genovation Cars comes in.

The EV tuner took a 2006 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and turned it into the “Genovation eXtreme Electric,” or GXE for short.

The Hill: Obama Pays $500 Million to Global Climate Fund

The Obama administration has made the first of its promised payments to the United Nations’ controversial climate change fund.

A State Department official said that the United States made the $500 million payment on Monday to the South Korea-based Green Climate Fund.

It's the first of a series of payments President Obama has pledged.

Forbes: Argonne Scientist Urges Next-Generation Solar: 'We Have No Choice'

Only next-generation solar technology can offset humanity’s use of fossil fuels, meet our energy needs, and do so with the urgency dictated by climate change, an Argonne National Laboratory scientist said in Chicago last night.

Argonne materials scientist Seth Darling told about 50 people that next generation technologies -- like organic solar modules and perovskite solar voltaics -- just need more research and development.

“If we really want to scale up solar super fast, which we’ve got to do -- the market’s growing already by something like 30 percent a year, massive growth, but that’s nowhere near enough -- it’s got to grow much faster to solve this problem in the time frame dictated by climate disruption,” Darling said in a talk at 1871, a startup incubator in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart.