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Economics

Corrupted Skies: Uncovering the Dark Side of California’s Solar Boom

California s solar energy boom is often hailed as a green success story but a new study reveals a murkier reality beneath the sunlit panels. Researchers uncover seven distinct forms of corruption threatening the integrity of the state s clean energy expansion, including favoritism, land grabs, and misleading environmental claims. Perhaps most eyebrow-raising are allegations of romantic entanglements between senior officials and solar lobbyists, blurring the lines between personal influence and public interest. The report paints a picture of a solar sector racing ahead while governance and ethical safeguards fall dangerously behind.
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California is leading the way as the nation’s top producer of solar electricity, but beneath its surface lies a dark side – rampant corruption in the state’s solar market. A recent study published in Energy Strategy Reviews has shed light on this hidden issue, revealing patterns of public and private sector corruption that threaten to undermine the solar industry’s potential for a just energy transition.

According to researchers at the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), California’s breakneck pace for solar investment, deployment, and adoption has led to seven distinct types of corruption abuses and risks. Favoritism in project approvals, including high-profile incidents involving intimate relationships with lobbyists, is one of these corrupt practices. To address this issue, the study’s authors recommend major solar reforms in California.

“It’s a wake-up call that the solar industry cannot continue on its current trajectory of bad governance and bad behavior,” says lead author Benjamin Sovacool, director of IGS and a Boston University professor of earth and environment. “We find that efforts to accelerate solar infrastructure deployment in California end up contributing to a sobering array of corruption practices and risks.”

The study’s authors conducted extensive research, combining literature reviews, original interviews, and fieldwork to document patterns of perceived corruption from various voices, including residents impacted by solar energy development, solar construction workers, non-governmental organizations, solar company employees, federal agencies, and state and local governments. While confirming individual claims of corruption is challenging, their mixed-methods research approach uses personal assertions in conjunction with analysis of news stories, court testimony, and other official sources to support their findings.

The researchers point to a blend of public, private, social, and political patterns of corruption in the California solar energy market. To remedy this, they recommend:

1. Corruption risk mapping to document problematic practices and entities
2. Subsidy registers and sunset clauses to deter rent-seeking and tax evasion
3. Transparency initiatives aimed at environmental changes and data production (for Environmental Impact Assessment)
4. Strong enforcement of anti-corruption laws
5. Shared ownership models for solar to improve accountability

As California increasingly relies on solar energy to decarbonize its electricity sector, addressing corruption in the state’s solar market is crucial for a just energy transition. The newly published study, “Sex for Solar? Examining Patterns of Public and Private Sector Corruption within the Booming California Solar Energy Market,” is part of a larger IGS research project looking at injustices in U.S. solar and wind energy supply chains.

Source:Boston University
Original Link:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250611083736.htm
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Ancient Civilizations

Archaeologists Uncover Surprising Patterns in Ancient House Sizes, Challenging Notions of Inevitable Inequality

We’re living in a period where the gap between rich and poor is dramatic, and it’s continuing to widen. But inequality is nothing new. In a new study researchers compared house size distributions from more than 1,000 sites around the world, covering the last 10,000 years. They found that while inequality is widespread throughout human history, it’s not inevitable, nor is it expressed to the same degree at every place and time.
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April 15, 2025

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We often think of inequality as a natural byproduct of human progress, but recent research suggests that this notion may be far from the truth. A new study published in the journal PNAS has analyzed over 50,000 ancient houses from more than 1,000 sites around the world, revealing surprising patterns in house size distributions that challenge long-held views on inequality.

The researchers, led by Gary Feinman, MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, aimed to use house sizes as a metric for wealth inequality over time. They discovered that while inequality is widespread throughout human history, it’s not inevitable, nor is it expressed to the same degree at every place and time.

“This paper is part of a larger study that looks at patterns of inequality over time,” says Feinman. “We see interpretable trends and patterns that cross-cut time and space, rather than just noise or chaos.”

The researchers compared house size distributions from different localities, finding variability in the extent of inequality across time and space. They also examined how inequality varied in relation to population, political organization, and other potential causal factors.

To quantify and compare economic inequality in different places, at different points in history, the researchers used the variable distributions of house sizes at more than 1000 settlements to calculate a Gini coefficient for each site. The coefficients were then compared across time and space to examine trends in inequality.

The results show that even while populations have risen over the years, inequality hasn’t always increased in a uniform way. “Human choice and governance and cooperation have played a role in damping down inequality at certain times and places,” says Feinman.

The study’s findings have significant implications for how we view the present and the past. While history has shown us that elements of technology and population growth can raise the potential for inequality, this potential is not always realized, as people have implemented leveling mechanisms and systems of governance that mute that potential.

Ultimately, the research suggests that inequality is not inevitable, but rather a complex outcome of human choices and institutions. As Feinman notes, “The traditional thinking expects that once you get larger societies with formal leaders, or once you have farming, inequality is going to go way up. These ideas have been held for hundreds of years, and what we find is that it’s more complicated than that.”

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Earth & Climate

Marine Shipping Emissions on Track to Meet 2030 Goals, But Still Faces Challenge in Reaching 2050 Net-Zero Target

The United Nations organization responsible for international marine shipping today approved new emission reduction policies. A new paper highlights the need. Researchers surveyed 149 marine shipping experts in 2021 and found they expect the sector to see a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent in the carbon intensity of shipping — a measure of the amount of CO2 emitted to ship cargo over a given distance — by 2030 compared with 2008 levels. But they expect the sector won’t meet its net-zero goal for 2050, instead achieving about 40 to 75 per cent reductions from 2008 levels.
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April 14, 2025

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The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) has recently approved new emission reduction policies for marine shipping, which is a significant step towards reducing the sector’s carbon footprint. A study published in Earth’s Future highlights the need for further action to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

According to researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC), who surveyed 149 marine shipping experts in 2021, the industry is expected to see a reduction of 30 to 40 percent in carbon intensity by 2030 compared to 2008 levels. This is a positive development, but it still falls short of the sector’s net-zero goal for 2050.

The study found that respondents with less than 10 years of experience in the maritime sector were the most optimistic about emission reductions, while those with more than 30 years of experience were the least optimistic. This suggests that there is a need for policy certainty and investment in green energy to drive change in the industry.

Dr. Amanda Giang, senior author of the study, notes that operational and technical measures can help achieve near-term reductions, but transitioning to green-energy fleets would require significant investments over the long term. Imranul Laskar, first author of the study, emphasizes the importance of policy certainty for the sector to make these investments.

The IMO’s approval of proposed regulations is a positive step towards reducing marine shipping emissions. However, it is clear that more needs to be done to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The maritime industry has the potential to drive global energy transition, but it requires continued effort and investment in green energy and policy certainty.

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