This is refreshing: the Ivanpah solar facility in California has been given a delightful media makeover at Gizmodo, where it was dubbed “insane”. The article’s author describes it, as seen from the 15 freeway, as “a rippling, mirage-like, silvery blur that feels like it might sear your retinas if you look at it too long”…a bit more literary than your average solar story. [Gizmodo]

Angela Merkel’s push to transition the German economy away from nuclear and fossil fuels towards renewables is proving costly. “So attractive are the incentives, or feed-in tariffs, that the rapid expansion of renewable power has driven up the surcharges which fund them and are paid for by consumers.” Reuters uses the same language BP Chief Economist Christof Rühl used when describing some of Europe’s more successful efforts to expand renewables – “victims of their own success“. [Reuters]

An opinion piece in the Denver Post, penned by Director of University of Denver Sturm College of Law’s Environmental & Natural Resources Program and a former assistant secretary of the Interior, makes a succinct and logical point about hydraulic fracturing. “Many modern activities have environmental or human health risks. The reasonable response is sensible regulation, not wholesale bans.” [Denver Post]