The White House has announced an array of new measures to extend access to solar energy for low-income communities and individuals who rent, rather than owning their own homes. “That includes a new initiative to ramp up so-called “community solar” projects across the country — programs in which one solar installation supplies energy to multiple different homes or individuals – with a focus on serving low- and middle- income Americans.

It also includes a pledge to install a total of 300 megawatts of solar and other renewables in federally subsidized housing developments by the year 2020.” [The Washington Post]

An energy service company providing electricity and gas throughout New York state will pay $1.25 million in customer refunds after falsely promising big savings before charging customers higher rates, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced earlier today. “HIKO Energy LLC, which sells energy products in Central New York and other areas of the state, lured customers with promises of lower rates but “fleeced customers with much higher bills,” according to the attorney general’s news release.

HIKO also enrolled new customers without their knowledge and made it difficult for customers to cancel their enrollments, Schneiderman said.” [Syracuse.com]

The Bureau of Reclamation must completely rebuild 20th-century infrastructure so that it can efficiently conserve and distribute water amid drafts across the Western United States. “The bureau is headed into a frightening new world, an uncertain new world,” said Jeffrey Mount, an expert on water resource management with the Public Policy Institute of California.

For most of the 1900s, the bureau’s system — which grew into the largest wholesale water utility in the country — worked. But the West of the 21st century is not the West of Roosevelt. There are now millions more people who want water, but there is far less of it. The science of climate change shows that in the future, there will be less still.” [The NY Times]