Community Solar: A Smart Approach to Bolstering the Renewables Market

A session at the World Renewable Energy Forumon Community Solar Energy Development was full of informative presentations on how to think outside the box a bit to help make solar PV and wind energy more prevalent in our world. Traditional solar applications tend to focus on a small slice of individual homes, which have south facing roofs unencumbered by shading. Financing for a solar array is often difficult to obtain and buying outright is difficult for many homeowners. This session provided innovative methods on how to provide solar to the many instead of the few.

Photo Credit: Akhil Jariwala, Creative Commons

• Clean Energy Collective presented and mentioned that their goal was to have community solar farms which create a win-win for the utility and its customers. Solar farms have a few benefits for customers including accessibility to as many utility customers as possible with very small minimums. Also, another benefit is of extending rooftop solar incentives that would be normally declined to the homeowner because of poor rooftop solar access. Utilities can benefit from community solar farms by the provision of automated monthly bill credit information from the solar developer without any burden to the utility and real-time telemetry monitoring to adequately track and schedule facility production.

• FLS Energy presented next and started off saying that their goal is to provide solar energy to everyone. The way they do this is to own the solar assets whether they be PV or solar thermal and then provide a power purchase agreement. This model works for a business or community that lacks the upfront funding, for non-profits, or for groups that want long-term maintenance and performance guarantees. FLS Energy works on Section 8 housing to provide tenants with low-cost solar thermal units and recently offered a solar thermal power agreement to a university because this university wasn’t allowed to take advantage of the tax incentives.

• Regenesis Solar Power in Fort Myers, Florida provides solar thermal to a community through the local gas or electric utility. They act on behalf of the utility and go door-to-door offering solar thermal for no upfront costs, just a $34.95 monthly fee on their utility bill for 20 years. The utility can expand their renewable energy offerings with no effort as well as accelerate efficiency and demand reduction initiatives.

• Solar City leases solar modules to customers for a monthly fee. They are evolving into the community solar arena by working to install arrays on military housing at cheaper rates than the utility can provide and is working to install more solar on affordable housing. They are also proponents of “virtual net metering.”

With these innovative community leasing strategies, solar for everybody is no longer a distant pipe-dream. What are you folks doing to bring solar to your community?

Cross-posted at the 2012 World Renewable Energy Forum blog.

Efficiency Is No Waste of Energy

In the opening plenary session at the World Renewable Energy Forum, Dr. Dan Arvizu, Director of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory said it makes no sense to shove green electrons into an inefficient system. This is sage advice. Most of our residential and commercial structures across the globe are quietly consuming copious amounts of energy to keep computers and lights on and to heat and cool indoor spaces. Whether the energy is green or not, it behooves us to identify ways in which homes or commercial buildings can consume less energy to reduce each structure’s carbon footprint and to save money. Thankfully there are methods that can be incorporated into new building design or into existing building retrofits that can save energy.

Freiburg Heliotrop. Photo Credit: Andrew Glaser, Wikimedia Commons

The Ignite session I attended on building design provided a glimpse into strategies to attain zero-energy buildings. Whether it was rebuilding a safe and eco-friendly city in Kaimishi, Japan; retrofitting a cooling-intensive ice cream shop; or students building a passive solar residential home with solar PV, solar thermal, and geothermal we learned the techniques to make existing structures or even new construction energy efficient. Key highlights from the session included:

• Thomas Spiegelhalter’s “Designing Carbon Neutral Plus Energy Buildings With Site Adaptive Heliotropism Cycles”: I must admit I had to look up heliotropism but this was by far the most interesting presentation since it involved a bit ofbiomimicry, a subject close to my heart. These German presenters studied how native plants in the area used their flowers or leaves to follow the sun (heliotropism). The engineers then incorporated the physics of this motion into the building design. Essentially, the building’s solar PV module on the roof mimicked the motion of these native area plants through the day to maximize the capture of solar radiation. The building ends up with a surplus of energy at the end of the year.

• Dan Staley’s “Trees and Solar Power, Coexisting in Urban Forest Near You”: We all know solar PV’s nemesis is tree shading. However, trees are an effective means of cooling, air cleaning, storing carbon, and providing natural beauty to the urban environment. How can we solve this dilemma? Through cooperation of course. Staley provided a blueprint of how arborists and solar providers can work together and plan an urban environment so that structures receive maximum benefit from trees and solar radiation. Staley suggested designing houses and tree placement before the lots are built and also changing street orientation for optimum solar gain. And he advised that there should be plant lists for neighborhoods with information on how fast they will grow and the canopy size as well as training arborists on solar smart pruning.

We all know the importance of making our buildings more energy efficient first and then adding renewables second and from the sound of it these presenters not only did it in that order, but it seemed like they came up with some unique methods in the process. What are others doing to make buildings more energy efficient?

Cross-posted at the 2012 World Renewable Energy Forum blog.

WREF 2012: A Delicious Potpourri of Renewable Energy

Photo Credit: Ryan Somma,
Creative Commons [CC-BY-SA-2.0]

I must admit, I have butterflies in my stomach. I've been invited to blog and tweet during the World Renewable Energy Forum 2012 in Denver, Colorado, May 13-17. There really aren't enough positive adjectives to describe how remarkable this event is going to be. There are 900 presentations on renewable energy and sustainability topics being presented by speakers from all over planet Earth. I was hoping that I could clone myself so that I could attend every single presentation. Here's a link to the full list of presentation titles and below is just a tiny sampling of the diverse topics at this years WREF:

• Quantum Dots, Nanoscience and the Future of Photovoltaics 
• The Mexican Earthen Roof, An Ancient Antecedent to The European Green Roof 
• Approaches for Planning and Implementing Sustainable Energy Growth in a Complex World 
• Hispanics and their Solar Energy Adoption Patterns 
• Rural Solar Electrification in Nigeria: Renewable Energy Potentials and Distribution for Rural Development 

Some of the sessions will use the "Ignite" presentation method. Speakers using the Ignite method use just 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total presentation time of just five minutes. The Ignite method really forces a speaker to get to the crux of the topic being presented. These Ignite sessions will definitely be fun and engaging.

I'm honored and jazzed to spend the week with hundreds of passionate people that are working towards a more renewable, efficient, and sustainable world. Won't you join us?

Cross-posted at the 2012 World Renewable Energy Forum blog.

Grappling With a Garbage Glut

Landfill Compactor

It's the elephant in the room. It's your crazy old uncle that everybody ignores at family gatherings. We have a problem and it's related to our consumption. I say "we" and "our" because I am just as guilty of blindly consuming and watching the by-products of this consumption go out to the curb each week and get taken away to somewhere, out there, wherever that is. Out of sight out of mind.

I go to the store, buy stuff (food, clothes, electronics, appliances, home improvement items, etc.) that I think I need. This stuff comes wrapped in cardboard and plastic packaging that I typically can't reuse and I throw that packaging out if it can't be recycled. I also throw out food that wasn't eaten. All of this discarded packing and spoiled food gets wrapped up in a plastic trash bag (plastic takes about a 1,000 years to decompose) and goes off to spend the rest of its long life in the landfill. Landfills are large swaths of land where all of our discarded stuff is moved around, compacted, buried and spends the rest of its life decomposing.

This article in the Wall Street Journal speaks to us about our garbage problem. It's a problem because we can't continue to indefinitely consume and throw away the stuff that we manufacture. That behavior is not sustainable. Municipalities are beginning to grapple with the garbage problem by thinking of innovative ways to deal with all of that trash. The WSJ article shows us how European nations are "shunning landfills" by increasing their recycling efforts as well as building "waste-to-energy" plants.

Yet we shouldn't just leave the problem up to government considering that the problem is caused by every one of us living breathing humans. Each of us has the responsibility and power to solve this garbage problem. The best and easiest thing we can do, which was brought up in the last paragraph of the WSJ article, is to figure out ways to divert waste from the landfill in our homes and businesses. For myself, I've started a compost bin at home where I take all of those landfill-bound food scraps (no meat) and throw them into the bin. This compost will then be added to the soil to help my garden grow healthy vegetables for my family. Composting has reduced my weekly landfill contribution by a third. Recycling cardboard, plastic containers, glass, and aluminum helps reduce my weekly landfill contribution by at least a half. My weekly landfill contribution is now composed of meat scraps and packaging that is not recyclable. And composting and recycling are pretty easy.

There are many other things that each of us can do to help divert stuff from our community landfills, but we first need to admit that we have a garbage problem, which in essence is a consumption problem. Once we do that it will be easier to understand ways to divert waste from our landfills. What are your thoughts dear readers?

New Solar Modules Blossomed Despite a Tough Year for the Industry

From the NY Times Green Blog we have a bit of good news. Despite all of the doom of gloom that some would have you believe, the solar industry doubled its solar capacity from 887 to 1855 megawatts of sweet clean and free solar energy. I think the solar industry shows a surprising resilience and will continue to in the future. And the steep plummet in solar PV prices is beginning to raise the eyebrows of the most cost conscious among us. So, congratulations to all of the solar installers across the United States for your hard work doubling our solar capacity. The planet thanks you.

Six Surprising Sustainability Facts

This article in Environmental Leader is so beautiful in its simplicity. The six sustainable facts the author mentions could be the basis for sound policy decisions and even sound business decisions. Some of the questions posed in the article are profound, for me at least:

• Why has fuel efficiency gone backwards since Henry Ford released a 25 mpg Model-T?
• Why does our government subsidize the most profitable industry in the world?
• Since reducing carbon is profitable why don't businesses fund more carbon reduction efforts?
• Why don't office buildings turn off all desktop computers at night?

I know it's possible for us to both reduce our carbon footprint and to enhance investment in renewable energy technologies even though sometimes on the surface it seems as though these challenges are insurmountable. By digging a little deeper using business sustainability tools we can find social, environmental, and economic profit in a low carbon world.

Green Energy Puts Green in Homeowner Wallets

In this Reuters article a homeowner purchases a windmill and estimates his return on investment (ROI) will happen in about seven years. Seven years. And while he waits for seven years to go by he is paying zero dollars for his electricity. And sometimes he even sells power back to the grid and makes some money. Not bad eh?

But beyond that is the larger trend that the cost of residential renewable energy technology is dropping quickly whether due to cheap hardware from Asian markets, government subsidies, or utility incentives. Once the initial capital expenditures occur for renewable energy, the fuel is free for the foreseeable future. Free fuel is the most exciting prospect to me. Can you imagine a world where every house, business, and community (see solar gardens) is generating clean power from the sun and wind? I know its blasphemous to some, but like it or not we are headed that way.

First things first - get an energy audit for your building. It is important to make your structure as efficient as possible before adding your own renewable power. An energy audit and subsequent weatherization / retrofits are a good way to put more greenbacks in your pocket, whether you want renewable power or not.

IKEA Marches Toward 100% Renewable Energy

Woah. Imagine the company you work for or even the home you live in is powered with 100% renewable energy. It sounds like an audacious goal, but a very large company also known as IKEA, is moving towards just that. In IKEA's 2011 Sustainability Report, the company reveals that they are halfway to their goal of 100% renewable energy to power all of their facilities. They use mainly solar PV and wind turbines but they did install a geothermal system in their new Denver, Colorado store built in 2011 (check out my post titled IKEA Denver Leads the Way for Big Box Geothermal Installations). This is pretty cool and I can't wait for them to get to 100% renewables. This also shows that giant corporations, if they put they mind to it, can really contribute to a more renewable, efficient, and sustainable world.

CU-Boulder Student-funded Facilities Reach Carbon Neutrality

Congrats to the University of Colorado students for working to achieve carbon neutrality in three student-funded buildings on the Boulder campus. They reduced their carbon emissions to zero by reducing the energy consumption in each of the three buildings, adding renewable energy and purchasing carbon offsets by helping to add solar thermal water heating to low-income houses in Loveland. Plus they did all this in 5 years! Pretty impressive sustainability initiative.

Energy Efficiency Is Good Policy, Good for Economy

I'd have to agree with Sen. Jeanne Shaheene (D-NH): "We should use less energy." The Senator lays out a compelling argument for making our residential and commercial buildings more energy efficient. Not only is the return on investment in energy efficiency quick but it helps to create local jobs that can't be outsourced. We need HVAC experts, window installers, energy auditors, and lighting experts to help teach us the way our buildings consume energy and the way to get them to consume less. Really, energy efficiency is a big win for our economy. And why would you want to waste energy when you don't have too?