We believe that energy efficiency and clean energy lead to a better quality of life. Follow our blog for news on energy efforts in California's San Joaquin Valley, green jobs, sustainability and occasionally odes to our self-appointed Energy Ambassador, Lionel Richie. Please leave a comment.
An old man skirts the wreckage of civilization avoiding packs of feral dogs and even more feral sub-humans as he hunts for a hint of salvation.
Most preserved food has long since been picked clean and anything overtly useful taken by those who came before. But something may be waiting over the next hill or valley. His life and the lives of his fellow villagers -- who were too afraid to join his quest -- depend on his success.
The narrative is basically the gist of a book I just plowed through. It's the latest in a series of end-of-world novels I've burned through in the past year and a half. Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," a haunting tale of pointless survival of a man and his son in a world without hope, got me started. I saw it on the "Read This" shelf at the Clovis, Calif. library and read it in six hours.
Blew me away.
End of the world
Since then I've read two series by S.M. Stirling that deconstruct the world in different ways. The first, "Island in the Sea of Time," transports the entire island of Nantucket thousands of years into the past. A follow-up, "The Change" series, unravels society by unceremoniously causing all electrical, combustion and modern mechanical devices to stop working. The result is death and massive destruction by mobs of hungry people.
Just to mix it up, I read Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island," which tosses five men from a balloon on a remote Pacific Island and serves as a sequel to "20,000 Leagues Under Sea." That enticed me to finally tackle "Robinson Crusoe." Both have world-ending elements but create characters who thrive on the challenge of recreating society.
The latest to absorb my full attention is Nick Cole's "Old Man and the Wasteland." Think of it as the follow to McCarthy's ode to destruction. Depressing definitely but Old Man has a spark of hope. It cost me 99 cents via my Kindle wireless, by the way.
Big gain in 'we're doomed' genre
I had forgotten the title of Old Man, so I searched for it on Amazon using the key words "end of the world." The search turned up way too many hits. Some I'd read long ago. One was a Phillip K. Dick novel (gotta read that one). But many were new.
It's that end-of-days trend that got me thinking. American society has been running at 60, 70, 80 mph for the past century. Faster and better, consume and discard. We're tearing it up. Live hard, die young.
Unfortunately, pollution, climate change, environmental destruction and dwindling sources of cheap burnable fuel have revealed all-too-real and scary limits. We don't need the nuclear winter concept to scare our children, just a couple more decades of rising tides, foul air and super nasty weather to drive home the message.
Now authors and screen writers have picked up the torch. Note the plethora of zombie movies.
Studies show danger ahead
The barrage of news that we could be doomed continues unabated. Providing further support are two studies: the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index and the Civil Society Institute's energy economics report.
The data rich NOAA Index says the growth rate of carbon dioxide averaged about 1.68 parts per million per year from 1979 to 2010. It averaged about 1.43 ppm per year before 1995 and 1.94 ppm per year since. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 390 ppm.
Charts show steady increases in CO2, nitrious oxide and methane.
The unwritten message: If this continues, we're doomed.
We do have alternatives
The CSI report has a bit of an optimistic feel, saying that a transition to clean energy would save $83 billion over the next 40 years. The report, "Toward a Sustainable Future for the U.S. Power Sector: Beyond Business as Usual 2011," says the move would avoid tens of thousands of premature deaths due to pollution, would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, would force sharp cuts in carbon pollution and would curtail water consumption for power production.
Institute President Pam Solo says: "The truth is that America can and should embrace a workable and cost-effective future that is built on safe, renewable energy. Not only is it feasible and less expensive to do so, but we really have no other choice as a nation."
Would you prefer to envision your 20-year-old son as the old man wandering a desolate world in 40 years?
I prefer optimistic endings
Not what I want for my boy, especially after paying $32,000 a year to send him to Seattle University. I would hope the investment pays off.
I vote for the responsible option. The Institute says 65 percent of Republicans, 75 percent of Independents, 88 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Tea Party members (77 percent overall) agree with the following statement: "The U.S. needs to be a clean energy technology leader and it should invest in the research and domestic manufacturing of wind, solar and energy efficiency technologies."
Others are on board, but a switch won't be easy. And it won't be fast. I hope it's inevitable. And I'll just keep reading this stuff until I'm lured away by another genre.
For more than a decade, the 160-acre Crazy Horse Sanitary Landfill was a repository of some pretty icky stuff. So much rubber, oil and solvents were dumped on the property five miles outside Salinas that it was declared a Superfund site and closed to the public in 2009.
More than 500 miles to the southeast is the infamous Stringfellow landfill in Riverside County, where 34 million gallons of acid, solvent, heavy metal and pesticide-manufacturing byproducts were dumped over 17 acres from 1956 to 1972. In 1983, it achieved the dubious distinction of California's most serious hazardous waste site, and today contains not one, not two but three groundwater extraction and treatment systems operated by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.
It's too bad those properties are so polluted that they can't be put to good use. Or can they? In an intriguing study, the federal government is assessing the possibility of developing renewable-energy sources, including wind and solar power, on those sites and 24 others. A total of five contaminated or potentially contaminated sites totaling almost 29,000 acres in California are being reviewed.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy are evaluating Superfund, brownfields, former landfill or mining sites and even former gas stations through the new "Re-Powering America's Land Initiative."
It is hoped that some of the blighted property could be used to generate solar, wind, biomass or geothermal power. "These studies are the first step to transforming these sites from eyesores today to community assets tomorrow," Mathy Stanislaus, an EPA assistant administrator said.
Here's a link to the original press release, and one to a list of sites being studied.
This isn't a new idea. Restoration of brownfields is a serious mission of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, which has restored sites to commercial use. But using them as power sources is not as common, although a six-megawatt solar array powers the restoration of an Aerojet General Corporation Superfund dump near Sacramento. And in Chicago, the Exelon City Solar facility - built on an abandoned commercial site called a "brownfield" - is the largest urban solar power plant in the United States.
The Superfund toxic landfills are pretty horrible. The environmental protection regulators call them "the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites identified by the EPA for cleanup." Brownfields aren't much better: "They are properties at which expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence of contaminants."
Double Ick.
But toxic sites can be ideal for clean energy. "They often can leverage existing utility infrastructure, and this redevelopment may be allowed under existing zoning, " federal officials said in a news release.
The former Fort Ord military base in Marina is the largest side being assessed in California. The most remote is 253 acres in tiny Alpine County. The former open-pit sulfur mine is at 7,000 feet elevation on the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada.
This really is a great idea. California has one of the most ambitious renewable-power mandates in the nation, and targeting tainted soil that can't be used for anything else toward that effort makes sense.
Video by State Department of Toxic Substances Control
The San Joaquin Valley isn't the hottest place in California, but it's close. The I-think-I'm-going-to-spontaneously combust summer temperatures often reach triple digits. As a result, the region's power bills and energy consumption are often among the highest in the state.
But, an interesting thing has happened since the nonprofit San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization, which developed out of the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, was formed in 2007. Electricity use in the Valley dropped 11 percent between 2007 and 2009, which contrasted with a 4.5 percent dip statewide, according to the Partnership's 2010-11 report.
Energy efficiency is a big part of SJVCEO's mission. It partners with local governments and utilities to help implement programs designed to slash energy consumption, thus saving residents and local government money in this era of austerity and tight budgets. The programs also lead to smaller carbon footprints at a time when environmental issues are rising to the fore.
The SJVCEO's Valley Innovative Energy Watch (VIEW) partnership with Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas Company and eight local governments in the South Valley has led to substantial energy savings in those communities. The projected savings from this partnership is expected to exceed 4 million kWh.
The organization also is helping implement the Clean Energy Partnership, an ambitious program that also includes the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, two Investor Owned Utilities, and 36 local governments. The goal is to replace inefficient equipment in publicly-owned buildings from Stanislaus to Kern counties.
In addition, SJVCEO promotes and conducts outreach for the City of Fresno's Home Energy Tune-Up program, which is available to residents of Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties. The initiative is funded by a federal grant in collaboration with the state's Energy Upgrade California Program, and enables property owners to replace lighting, increase insulation or make other improvements that will significantly lower their power bills.
The cost of the upgrades is usually recouped in a few years through energy savings. The great thing is that those savings continue, which gives those families more money to invest or use for other purposes. It also helps offset any utility rate increases.
The SJVCEO expects energy usage to continue to decline as the existing programs mature and as more initiatives come on line. The organization will soon begin a grant-funded effort to help cities "benchmark" energy consumption and prepare energy action plans.
Energy efficiency has been described as the "low-hanging fruit" of the clean-energy movement, so it makes sense for an organization based in one of the state's most energy-intensive areas to start picking it.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency compiled some of the winners of its nationwide video challenge, and I tossed in a couple more.
The agency encouraged people earlier in the year around Earth Day to take part in the “Be an Energy Star” video challenge. People were asked to pick up their home video cameras and document energy-efficient behavior they discovered or participated in at home, school, workplace and community.
The names of the videos are featured on the Energy Star facebook page, but the links are gone since it's been partially decommissioned. Members of the public viewed and voted for their favorite videos this fall and the winners were listed last month.
Of course, I just heard about it.
In addition to the video challenge, EPA encouraged those interested to take the “Change the World, Start with Energy Star” pledge. The pledge is hardly binding but encourages people to embrace energy efficiency in their homes and daily activities.
Apparently it's a big deal. The EPA says more than 2.7 million Americans have taken the pledge, "resulting in a reduction of more than 8 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to the emissions from using more than 400 million gallons of gasoline."
These include switching to more efficient lighting, choosing Energy Star products, sealing and insulating homes and using power management features -- like eco or power strips -- on home computers and monitors.
This one may be a little rough around the edges but gets the idea across.
Many of them appear to be kid-driven. This next one reflects the new economic reality facing parents and college students who move back home.
There has been lots of "he said she said" over green jobs, and whether they are truly benefiting the economy. Part of the controversy is related to semantics and differing interpretations of "green," but there is one segment that appears to be expanding.
Sustainability departments.
Big businesses are expanding their green teams as they become more aware of the environment and of carbon footprints. If this study by GreenBiz.com is correct, budgets and the number of employees devoted to sustainability at billion-dollar firms each expanded an average of 6 percent.
GreenBiz.com also reported that, "Management takes sustainability more seriously: Fifty-six percent of respondents said that sustainability is "on the agenda permanently, but not core" to operations, while another 29 percent called it "a permanent fixture and core strategic consideration."
This may come as a surprise to those who listen only to what politicians in full election mode, but not to those of us who work in this business. Corporate America is developing a definite green hue, as this blog post notes. In this report, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company notes that more executives say such programs increase value and reduce costs.
Here is a quote from the survey: "In just the past year, we’ve seen a shift in the results from our annual salary survey where the word sustainability is etched on a manager’s or senior manager’s business card more than twice as often as it was the previous year (56% of the time in 2011 and just 26% in 2010). Similarly, almost 50% more vice presidents and senior vice presidents have sustainability in their title compared to 2010."
Here from GreenBiz.com is a hint of specific sustainability jobs that could gain a higher profile in 2012.
We are also finding that younger people care about sustainability, and are making it part of their decision-making process. Studies show that students are attracted to colleges that practice sustainability, and that more campuses are adding related programs. UC Davis, for example, just announced a new major in sustainable agriculture. Community colleges also are getting into the act.
Sustainability not only is a growth industry, but it pays well too. GreenBiz.com says, "Vice President-level sustainability execs make an average of $218,409 annually; Director-level leaders earn $161,510; and Manager-level leaders make $105,345 annually."
The economy may look like it's been on the losing end of a street brawl, but optimism could be lurking in the shadows.
Certainly the mood is glum. The news, when it isn't fixating on celebrity missteps or political scandal, highlights Greek default, an irritated 99 percent and prospects for job creation that appear as likely as J. Edgar Hoover returning to run the FBI.
Maybe I'm biased or I'm watching too many trailers for the new Clint Eastwood film. But I'm seeing things differently.
Perhaps it's just me, or my co-worker Sandy Nax. But we're seeing some pretty positive stuff coming from our perch in the green energy sector.
Reason No.1: Solar flare. Here's a landmark. A San Jose Mercury News post San Jose Mercury Newsmarks the achievement of California reaching 1 gigawatt of installed solar. As reporter Dana Hull says, it's 1,000 megawatts and "roughly the size of two coal-fired power plants."
Sun is good. Coal not so much, even though it's a domestic energy source. Regardless, the news is huge. And solar growth is expected to continue. The reason some solar manufacturers -- think failed Solyndra for a moment -- are having a tough time doesn't have much to do with popularity of the renewable energy.
There's nothing wrong with sales. It's price that's killing these companies. As predicted, the cost of solar and wind prices have dropped, nearing ever closer to energy produced by fossil fuels. Parity it's called.
And it can't come too soon.
Solar is dominating my interest lately partly because I've been swayed by an argument by Derek Abbott, a professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia. In a series of YouTube posts, he argues that enough energy from the sun could be easily captured to power the world's energy need of 15 terawatts.
Abbott believes solar thermal is the best option as it is the cleanest to produce. It requires no photovoltaic panels just mirrors and a system for superheating a substance to produce heat and subsequently energy.
Job rating: Excellent.
Reason No. 2: Concentrated or thermal solar. And that leads to this forecast from CleanTechies.com that concentrated solar is on the verge of becoming a serious contender in the clean energy spectrum. The piece says concentrated solar's simplicity will help sell it to consumers. "Solar thermal has been around for decades and is extremely reliable," CleanTechies says.
The positives are similar to those across the green energy spectrum: Costs are decreasing, state and local governments are getting interested in assisting projects, systems can be applied to commercial buildings, cooling is an option (although I'm still uncertain how that works), more people are getting into the business and innovation is making systems better.
Job rating: There's potential.
Reason No. 3: Solar mountain. Got a landfill? Who doesn't? They're not pretty. However, in Conley, Ga. Republic Services has transformed 9 million cubic yards of trash into a solar energy farm. The solid waste company covered the massive hill of garbage with a geomembrane on which it attached thin-film solar panels.
The panels produce 1 megawatt, but more could be added, according to Silvio Marcacci at cleantechnica.com. The site is one of just a few in the country. However, its success could drive more to adopt the concept.
"A lot of these landfills are built in urban settings, and they’re close to transmission lines," Tony Walker of Republic Services tells Marcacci. “We think this type of system can be built across the country."
Maybe so. There certainly is a lot of garbage.
Job rating: Fermenting.
Reason No. 4: Decentralized energy. I first read of this concept after stumbling across a report by sustainable energy advocate and writer Al Weinrub. He argues that decentralized energy, or putting renewable systems in as many places in a community as possible, generates wealth, spurs economic revitalization and helps adapt to climate change.
Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, says in a piece on Huffington Post that decentralized and renewable energy are the key to solving the looming crisis of sustainability. He says that a massive public-private partnership is needed to develop smart-grid, distributed generation technology via tax credit and other government and private sector driven incentives.
"Ultimately, each home and business should be capable of generating, storing and sharing energy," Cohen says. "Solar, wind, geothermal, and perhaps some other technology yet to be invented must be subsidized to make them cheaper than fossil fuels."
He says at some point, the subsidies will no longer be needed.
But change is coming or at least it should. The air just can't take what we're pumping into by way of coal fires, automobile exhaust and general toxic-laden combustion. And that brings me to my next point.
Job rating: Strong.
Reason No. 5: The real cost of fossil fuels. According to the most recent World Energy Outlook report by the International Energy Agency, investing in clean energy now is far more effective than attempting to clean up the mess later.
Eric Wesoff of greentechmedia.com pored over the report and came up with this quote from Fatih Birol, IEA chief economist: "As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the 'lock-in' of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals."
Wesoff writes: "For every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions."
Succinct point. It makes me wonder how politicians who say they would obliterate any regulations in favor of jobs will be viewed in 10 years. The regulation busters line up on one side of the aisle, but both parties are guilty of promoting ill-fated policies that add to the nation's graying skies.
The jobs that apparently need fewer regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or other agencies are noble but usually controversial. They include mining coal from mountaintops, drilling offshore for oil, tapping the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, building a cross-country straw to suck out Canada's oil sand and allowing the hydraulic fracturing.
Job creation can be done other ways. I recall sitting on spit on Nantucket one summer with my brother-in-law. We were inspired by the long delayed Cape Wind offshore turbines. He speculated that President Bush would have produced a far longer lasting legacy had he established just a smidgen of support for alternative energies rather than invading Iraq or even if he did.
Bush had the right idea -- domestic energy security. Just a different way of getting there.
Job rating: Depends on political winds. Reason No. 6: Energy and fuel efficiency. Energy author Daniel Yergin writes in a piece on Huffington Post about how Boeing's Dreamliner won the hearts of airline executives not with its speed but with its 20 percent better fuel efficiency. "The airlines were voting their pocketbooks," he says.
Nearly every week, another big publicly traded Wall Street powerhouse embraces the cost savings of installing energy efficient lighting and electrical upgrades. And many are taking the concept further, entering the tricky yet individually lucrative realm of sustainability. Big companies that see the light have discovered not only savings in multiple aspects of their operations but have learned to reap the value of the public goodwill that comes with it.
Home builders are another group that has found value in efficiencies. Commercial builders also have come aboard, slowly incorporating building information modeling into design to reduce energy and operations costs with a slew of new technologies and products.
The EPA reports that more than 400 home builders have "committed to meeting the updated and more rigorous requirements for new homes that earn the Energy Star label in 2012." Those builders discovered value by inching closer to homes that use less energy. Net-zero homes may not be far off.
The EPA says that since 1995, about 1.2 million new homes have earned its Energy Star rating, which translates to savings of about $350 million on utility bills. The list of builders includes six of the country’s largest: Ashton Woods Homes, Beazer Homes, KB Home, Meritage Homes, M/I Homes and NVR Inc.
Job rating: Good but depends on consumer acceptance.
Reason No. 7: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This particular topic is close to home for me. I am employed because of stimulus money. My mission these past two years has been to maximize kilowatt hour savings at 36 cities and three counties in California's San Joaquin Valley. On that front, I'm getting closer.
My team and I will get it done. We will help our jurisdictions save money and start them on a diet of energy efficiency and clean energy. My boss says it's pre-ordained.
To me, it made a lot of sense. I've been immersed in this world for many moons, speaking a language of kWh, T8s, VFDs, SEER, LEED and even less interesting terms.
What's great about the report is that it shows cities beaten roughly about the head and shoulders by the economy can navigate the many bureaucratic requirements and restrictions and actually implement money meant to do them good. I hope to pass these success stories onto my cities and counties.
Job rating: Steady.
Yep. We can save energy. We can figure out how to be better stewards of our communities and nation. Every one of the issues I listed translates to development and growth. Some could be really significant. Maybe we could clean that air a bit and get some jobs at the same time.
Replacing lights, beefing up insulation, weatherizing and other energy-efficiency measures can cut power consumption and costs. In fact, the nation's energy chief, Steven Chu, calls efficiency the "low-hanging fruit" of the clean-energy movement.
Commercial and residential buildings are responsible for 40 percent of the nation's energy consumption, according to this study. Even a Math-challenged Journalism grad like myself can see the potential for significant savings. How significant? Up to $33 billion per year by 2030.
Closer to home, officials in the city of Fresno crunched utility data and determined that a citywide reduction in energy use of 30 percent would save property owners a whopping $260 million. That windfall would then be spent in the community to help stimulate the economy. Here's more on the Fresno analysis.
What's in it for you? A free energy audit of my 1,400-square-foot, 18-year-old house in Clovis determined that $1,700 worth of upgrades (after rebates) would shave $50 per month off my electricity bill - which equates to a three-year payback. It's free money after that point. That's not a bad investment.
My audit was through the Home Energy Tune-Up offered by the city of Fresno in cooperation with Energy Upgrade California - and available in Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Kern counties. A list of recommended contractors who can do the work is provided.
A similar Energy Upgrade California program is available in the service areas of Pacific Gas & Electric and Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) through GreenerSolutions of Stockton.
Sometimes it costs money to make money. Energy efficiency is that way, but Hayden Logan, owner of GreenerSolutions, says the investment is well worth it. "You can see how much energy you can save by spending only a little money," he said.
Many property owners have to finance the energy improvements, but there are ways to do that. One of the most common is the CHF Residential Energy Retrofit Program, for which GreenerSolutions is an approved contractor. The program provides no-and low-interest loans (up to 3%) without requiring a home appraisal or a minimum credit score.
However, there are income requirements, which can be found here (some examples: $32,820-$87,500 in Fresno County; $39,240-$104,640 in San Joaquin County; and $45,060-$120,160 in Sacramento County.)
GreenerSolutions also offers financing through its own in-house program, or through energy-efficient mortgages (which are used in conjunction with purchases or refinancing).
Energy Upgrade California and similar programs offer an opportunity for property owners to get more green in their pocketbooks while living a greener lifestyle.
Officials at UC Merced sometimes refer to the San Joaquin Valley as "Solar Valley" to distinguish the emerging clean- energy potential of the 250-mile region from Stockton to the base of the Grapevine.
We are closer to achieving that designation after five solar applications were approved or recommended for approval this week. They include four proposals in Kings County and one just south of Fresno in Fresno County. Together, they total 663 acres.
The proposal south of Fresno is one of about 30 solar plants pitched for various places in Fresno County. However, the emergence of a solar industry in one of the largest agricultural regions in the United States - the San Joaquin Valley is often referred to as the nation's salad bowl - is not without controversy. Applications are carefully scrutinized because farmers worry about solar displacing prime agriculture land.
A lawsuit has been filed, and guidelines are being prepared. The above-referenced Hanford Sentinel story by Seth Nidever notes that solar developers on prime farm land in Kings County must set aside other property for agriculture. In one creative approach, a solar developer is allowing farming between rows of solar panels.
The Fresno Bee, in this editorial, suggests that a balance be struck: "There is much room for compromise on this issue and the board, the solar industry and farming interests must be willing to find it. Solar and other renewable energy technologies are in their infancy. Fresno County cannot ignore their potential," the editorial states.
It remains to be seen how large the solar industry becomes in the Valley, but Gov. Jerry Brown is a big supporter of solar generally. One milestone has already been reached; Rooftop solar power in California has reached 1 gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, That's enough to power 750,000 houses, according to this San Jose Mercury News article. In an interesting side note, Facebook is installing a rooftop solar system that provides hot water as well. Here's more on that.
The San Joaquin Valley, which its ample sun resources and midstate location, could be a major player in the solar industry.
Energy efficiency is something our nonprofit knows well. A relatively modest investment can net impressive yields. Local governments and businesses can reap big rewards, but many homeowners see good returns too.
But energy efficiency outreach can be a tough sell. My wife says it is because efficiency comes with a price tag. The initial expenditure (insulation, new lights and air conditioners and the like) turns people off. "People want it for free," Mary Lou says, even though there can be an associated tax deduction.
I think of energy efficiency as an investment. I could pay a relatively modest amount to reap greater returns in the future. But, the whole efficiency thing is difficult for some to grasp. People ask, "How can changing lights and similar measures possibly make a significant difference in my future?"
By reducing your power bill. That means you are spending less, which means you have more money in your pocket. Money you can sock away for college or retirement, or spend on something else - thus stimulating our moribund economy. By some estimates, a nationwide cut of 30% would save $40 billion ANNUALLY by 2030, and could be a bright spot in the jobs market. Home builders are adopting guidelines and buying into the idea, as are schools and others.
Consider University of California at Santa Cruz. Officials there are spending, after rebates, $104,000 to change out lights in the library. The project will pay off in three years.
Still, more than one person has called energy efficiency "intangible," although it is anything but. In this post, Sara Hayes of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), explores that myth, and others.
The end of the year is approaching, and people are starting to make plans for 2012. When you make that resolution or get that tax return, take a few moments to consider making your home or office more energy efficient. It really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Keeping current on all the advancements in clean energy could be a full time gig. Technology is changing fast and furious, which is helping to lower prices and boost the industry.
Today's gee whiz moment is brought to you by the Spectral Power Cap, a thin membrane integrated with solar panels that is covering a landfill in Georgia. It provides enough energy for 224 houses. Learn more here. A representative of the landfill operator notes that many of the nation's dumps are in urban areas close to the power grid and provide similar opportunities.
Of course, the greatest potential for fast energy savings is through efficiency (something our nonprofit is heavily involved with), and an upstart company born from University of California, Berkeley, is drawing raves in the lighting industry.
Lighting doesn't have the "wow" appeal of solar, but is important when one considers that buildings gobble up two-thirds of the electricity in this country. Read this UC story for more information.
Add in advancements in energy storage and other new technology (including this from NASA), and, well, you get the picture. The arrows being shot at Solyndra and other fallen solar stars are propelled mostly by politics, and the magnitude of the fallout remains to be seen. However, as New Times columnist Paul Krugman notes, Solyndra's demise was linked not to government waste but to its own inability to stay competitive in a fast-moving industry.
Momentum for a clean-energy policy is accelerating. Big Business and the military are already on board. Now, surveys show the public's overwhelming support for clean energy, especially among young people. (Grist has more here.)
There will be some stumbles, but the green movement is under way.
