Visit the World Business Academy Booth at the Santa Barbara Earth Day Festival April 27 & 28 at Alameda Park. The world has problems, and Santa Barbara County is no exception. The World Business Academy’s mission is to encourage businesses to create innovative solutions both locally and globally to the planet’s pressing environmental challenges. […]
energy
Methane: One More Reason for the Green New Deal
I think we all remember the horrific tragedy of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an event brought closer to home through media and online resources showing real-time videos and estimates of the massive oil plume that ultimately spewed ~4.9 billion barrels (210 million gallons) of oil over a five-month period, affecting 68,000 square miles […]
Greening Our Infrastructure: Transportation
We are now on the precipice of systemic change to our planetary climate system… The near-unanimous consensus at last year’s IPCC 1.5 conference, combined with an initial wave of climate change impacts in the form of stronger hurricanes, more violent storms/floods and longer drought, demands a holistic transition of all economic sectors to a carbon-free […]
2019: The Year of Climate Mobilization
By Robert Perry, Director of Energy Research “For the world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.” – Treebeard, from The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. For many, 2018’s seemingly endless succession of hurricanes, wildfires, and torrential storms, combined […]
2018 in Retrospect: Focusing on Safety, Resilience and Citizen Engagement
Last year on December 5, our friends, supporters and staff gathered at Rinaldo’s and Lalla’s house to celebrate the closing of 2017. It was a lovely evening, and we left the gathering with our hearts full of cheer. But there was also an undercurrent of foreboding as the Thomas Fire had just begun its destructive […]
Wildfires Tell Us We Already Live in a Climate-Changed World
Once again, California is up in flames. It’s beginning to look like a recurring seasonal phenomena much like hurricane or tornado season in the Southeast and Midwest. The Camp Fire is currently the deadliest wildfire in California’s recorded history at 81 deaths (with ~870 persons still missing). We can only pray that another massive fire […]
Montecito Community Microgrid Initiative Public Meeting
The World Business Academy and the Clean Coalition have teamed up to provide the Montecito community with a sustainable energy solution during times of crisis. When completed, the Montecito Community Microgrid Initiative (MCMI) will ensure that vital services remain running during emergencies, and serve as a replicable model for other communities looking to transition California […]
Learn All About the Montecito Community Microgrid at a Public Meeting on Nov. 14
One of the most important ongoing projects of the World Business Academy is the Montecito Community Microgrid, an energy system that would deliver local energy daily and power emergency facilities during outages caused by extreme weather events and system failures. A Community Microgrid is a new approach for designing and operating an electric grid based […]
SCE Acknowledges Causation of Thomas Fire: a Prelude to Public Safety Power Shutoffs
On October 30, 2018, Southern California Edison (SCE) issued a press release acknowledging that their equipment started the Thomas Fire in at least one of the two locations identified as flashpoints. This admission is material, as SCE will now be exposed to an undetermined amount of liability from a variety of claims. SCE simultaneously disclosed […]
UPDATE on PCIA CTA: Expect Negative Impact on Community Choice Movement (Sigh!)
Thanks to all our members who sent opposition letters to their California legislators and the acting Public Utility Commissioners earlier this month. For those not familiar with this specific call to action, the letters urged the CPUC not adopt a decision that would dramatically increase costs associated with the Power Charge Indifference Adjustment (PCIA) charge, […]
Call to Action: Tell BLM to Stop Drilling and Fracking in Central California!
The Trump Administration is on the move to expose roughly 273,000 acres of federal public lands and mineral rights, to hydraulic fracking and oil drilling in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties. The watchdog organization, Los Padres ForestWatch, performed an analysis of official GIS data that pointed to the administration’s efforts and disclosed […]
AB 813: Regional Grid Not The Best Path to Fight Climate Change
World Business Academy Opposes Proposed Bill to Create a Multi-State Power Grid In energy, there is only one end game: transitioning our planet away from fossil fuels to a resilient, renewable energy system that reliably provides energy with little to no impact to the environment. How we get there is an entirely different matter, and […]
