Communications expert Susan Hassol presents her top list of reasons to be hopeful about climate change and recommends four websites with resources that help people understand potential solutions to climate change issues

Energy Innovation’s Energy Policy Simulator lets you model over three dozen different energy policies—from fuel economy standards to extending the life of existing nuclear to rice cultivation measures—to see how much they will cost and what impact they will have on greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s a lot of data out there — sometimes it can seem like too much — and a lot of it is unreliable. Climate data visualizations can help you sort through the noise to get at the signal.

“In the last six years,” said Hal Harvey, C.E.O. of Energy Innovation, a policy research group, “solar prices have dropped by more than 80 percent, and now cost less than a new coal plant. Wind is down 60 percent, and LED lights more than 90 percent.” The point, said Harvey, is that today’s chief executive doesn’t “have to be a hero anymore” to invest in clean power.

A conflicting range of policies is being put forth on how to deal with the threat of climate change. Given the complexity of sorting out the full range of options a new modeling tool has been developed which evaluates over 50 decarbonization strategies to meet the federal mandates from the Clean Power Plan. Known as the Energy Policy Simulator, it was developed by Energy Innovation of San Francisco and is the subject of an article by Gavin Bade.

Largely seen as fringe technologies just a decade ago, clean energy resources are becoming truly mainstream in the United States. Here are 12 charts that show the state of the clean energy revolution underway in the U.S. right now.

For years, energy companies have couched the possible effects of climate change-related regulations in public reports to investors as “uncertain,” “difficult,” or “not possible” to reasonably predict. Now a probe by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is raising questions as to whether the companies knew more than they were letting on.

“A zero-carbon future will cost the same or less than a carbon future.”

– Hal Harvey, chief executive of Energy Innovation, a policy and technology institute, speaking at The International New York Times Energy for Tomorrow conference in Paris.

Coal is in trouble, and that could be good news for a warming world. The representatives of nearly 200 nations who are gathered in Paris to discuss ways of limiting climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions will be talking a lot about coal.

Bill Gates will announce the creation of a multibillion-dollar clean energy fund on Monday at the opening of a Paris summit meeting intended to forge a global accord to cut planet-warming emissions, according to people with knowledge of the plans.