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As Kansas legislators argue about whether climate change is happening, European leaders act. Read the newest article by Andy Marso, a 2014 recipient of the Transatlantic Energy and Climate Network's Energy and Climate Media Fellowship.

On a recent Monday morning, Jan Peter Klatt sat in his office in Germany’s Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and strained to hear a recording of an interview with Kansas Sen. Forrest Knox, R-Altoona. Knox was making one last unsuccessful pitch to repeal Kansas’ renewable energy standards by citing Germany, where he said the transition from fossil fuels to renewables was “de-industrializing” the nation. “It isn’t,” Klatt says. “And especially it wouldn’t be de-industrializing for the States (now). We have to differentiate between the past and the future.”

Terrence Henry reports on energy and the environment for StateImpact Texas, a project of KUT Austin. His radio, print and television work has appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, The Texas Tribune, The History Channel and other outlets. He has previously worked at The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He has a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Brigham Young University. During his fellowship Terrence will focus on the policies that led to the successful deployment of offshore wind and large-scale solar in Europe and the lessons they offer for the development and expansion of offshore and solar in Texas. 

Andy Marso has written about Kansas energy policy, including the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), for more than two years as a state government reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He has a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Kansas and a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and has also worked at the Daily Record (Baltimore), Washington Post and St. Cloud (Minn.) Times. During his fellowship Andy plans to report about renewable energy targets in Europe, how concerns about climate change affect European energy policy, and how RPS factors into the decisions of European companies to invest in the power infrastructure in Kansas.

Peter Thomson is the environment editor of the PRI/BBC daily public radio news program The World and author of the acclaimed book Sacred Sea:A Journey to Lake Baikal, about the world's largest and deepest lake, in Siberia. He was the founding editor and producer of NPR’s groundbreaking environmental news program Living on Earth, in 1991, where his reporting also took him from Alaska to Mexico to Morocco. He served 15 years on the board of Directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists and currently sits on the advisory board of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting. During his fellowship Peter will be reporting on efforts to build the missing links in Europe’s ongoing energy transition from conventional to renewable sources: energy storage and efficiency.

Up in Smoke - Climate Desk Watch on YouTube This external content requires your consent. Please note our privacy policy. Holzweiler, a tidy village of stone houses clustered around an aging cathedral, is  precariously close to one of Europe's largest open-pit coal mines.

What if there were a way for Boulder to visualize what would happen if the city were to take more aggressive action for reducing carbon emissions, or to map what it would look like to meet its renewable energy targets through municipalization? Lego blocks and “Change Cards” provide just such a tool, offering insight into the technological, economic and political challenges to making Boulder’s clean-energy and carbon-reducing visions a reality. 

Wind turbines, bikeable cities, clean air and water. How do they do that?