Frontier Group June Update

Frontier Group’s monthly update highlights our recent reports and activities.

Solar Power Takes Off in America’s “Shining Cities”

Twenty cities, covering just 0.1 percent of the land area of the United States, account for 7 percent of the nation’s solar photovoltaic capacity, according to Shining Cities, a first-of-its-kind city-by-city comparison of solar energy. The report, produced with Environment America Research & Policy Center, shows that strong pro-solar policies have helped these cities become leaders in the solar energy revolution. The report drew coverage from media outlets in several of the top 20 cities, including the Los Angeles Times and The Denver Post.

States Continue Progress Toward Spending Transparency

States continue to make progress in expanding public access to online government spending data, according to our fifth annual Following the Money scorecard, produced with U.S. PIRG Education Fund. This year, many states improved their transparency websites by adding new search features and disclosing new types of data, but progress is uneven; as reported in the Washington Post, just eight states received “A” grades for their transparency websites.

“Moving America Forward” Webinar Now Available

Former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter and David Gardiner, former executive director of the White House Climate Change Task Force, joined Frontier Group’s Elizabeth Ridlington and Environment America Research & Policy Center’s Travis Madsen for an April webinar to review the findings of Moving America Forward, our analysis of the role that state and federal clean energy policies are playing in the fight against global warming. Video of the webinar is now available on Frontier Group’s website.

In Other News

In her new memoir, A Fighting Chance, Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a shout-out to our series of reports with U.S. PIRG Education Fund analyzing information collected in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Consumer Complaint Database. Warren, who led the battle to create the CFPB, wrote that the role of the reports in “analyzing the CFPB data and expanding the audience for the data is critically important to the success of the agency.” … Tony Dutzik shared findings from In the Path of the Storm, our 2013 report on weather-related disasters, at the International Conference on Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response and Sustainable Reconstruction at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. … Frontier Group welcomed Jeff Inglis, a new analyst in our Boston office. Jeff was previously the managing editor of Maine’s Portland Phoenix.