Green News

The momentum for a big push into community solar projects appears to be gathering pace, with several different organisations planning public launches in the next month, and suggestions that several dozen projects could be built on NSW rooftops in coming years.

Among plans revealed this week are the launch of a community solar network Farming the Sun in the northern Rivers region, to be followed soon by similar groups in New England and the Riverina. This is the work of community energy advocate Embark and Starfish Enterprises, which has identified 7 different projects of at least 80kW that could be commissioned in the next 18 months.

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Last year, California's community shared solar bill SB843 came very close to passing.  The Solar Gardens Institute supported the bill with some reservations.  This year, the bill has been reintroduced as SB43 in the Senate and AB1014 in the Assembly with changes that merit enthusiastic support from anyone who supports equable offsite solar.  It is probably the most thoroughly thought through legislative treatment of the subject to date.

SB43 would create a 500 Megawatt pilot program, while AB1014 would authorize 1000 Megawatts.  Projects can be up to 20 Megawatts in size.  20% of the capacity is reserved for residential participants, and 20% for projects less than 1 Megawatt in areas affected by pollution or with socioeconomic vulnerability.  It also prevents solar gardens from displacing prime farmland, and allows for many other types of renewable energy besides solar.

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Evan Wynns founded the San Francisco Energy Cooperative in 2011 with the 75% in mind. He began with the question of why we don’t have more green energy in the United States: “It’s frustrating because we have this technology which can take off a lot of the load of consuming fossil fuels, and we have the will -- we see green energy growing in popularity all the time -- and the question is why don’t we have more. We thought about that, and the benefits of green energy, and how can we distribute those benefits to more people.”

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Andreas Karelas founded RE-volv in 2011. He started the organization, he says, “out of a sense of frustration felt by many of us working for clean energy. The change isn't happening fast enough and if it's going to happen now, we'll have to do it ourselves. There's a huge opportunity here to mobilize people who care about renewable energy to take meaningful action that will help deliver renewables to more and more communities." RE-volv’s mission is to empower people and communities to invest collectively in renewable energy.

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Habitat for Humanity, Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), and the City of Oakland recently teamed up to pair solar power with affordable housing – providing a solid renewable energy choice for low income people.  Thanks to the PG&E’s Solar Habitat’s program, a new twelve unit low-income housing project located in Oakland’s District Seven included solar panels, reducing the utility bills for the new home-owners.

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The United States is likely to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 16.3 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, falling just shy of the 17 percent target pledged by President Obama at the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to a new study. 

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Assembly Bill 1532, by Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, D-Los Angeles, requires that the money be spent on environmental purposes, with an emphasis on improving air quality.

Senate Bill 535, by Sen. Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, requires that at least 25 percent of the money be spent on projects that help "identified disadvantaged communities" – mainly poorer communities that tend to suffer the worst air pollution. At least 10 percent must be spent on projects specifically within those communities. 

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San Francisco just took a huge step to lower its reliance on dirty fossil fuels. The city’s board of supervisors green-lighted Clean Power SF, San Francisco’s version of a Community Choice Aggregation program. It will allow San Franciscans to pool their purchasing power and buy electricity from 100 percent renewable energy sources. 

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Xcel Energy recently launched their Community Solar Garden program. SGI is seeking subscribers for your local community solar arrays in Colorado. As a subscriber, you can go solar, save money on your electricity bill, pay no maintenance fees, and help provide clean renewable energy to your community.

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Finally this fall, thanks to a five-year, $2 million dollar grant from our long-time supporter Wells Fargo, GRID Alternatives is stepping into the national arena with a project in the Denver, Colorado area. From September 24-29, we’ll be installing solar electric systems for 11 deserving families living in homes built by Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver. This project will be a public showcase of all aspects of our work, not least the model of partnering - with funders, affordable housing organizations, job training groups and local communities.

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Where do you plant a solar garden? In Colorado they’ll be found on the roof of an old airplane hangar, on pillars hovering over a vegetable field and a school parking lot. Those are a few of the places that the first solar gardens – photovoltaic arrays that residents will able to buy shares in – are set to be built under a new program.

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Sullivan Solar Power is one of California’s largest solar power companies, and it recently launched the Chula Vista Solar Program, which not only resulted in 204,412 watts of solar power deployed in the city, but also provided 29 solar panels to three low-income houses in the city.

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Some in the solar industry dare to imagine a combination of energy from the sun and the energy around the crowd cloud. Convergence seems to be happening in two ways but both are underpinned by the same simple theory that if two brains are better than one, just imagine what you can achieve with 2,000 brains or even 2m.

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There are a lot of Americans who would love to get their energy from solar, but can't. They live in apartments and condos and don't own their rooftop. Or they do own a home or business, but really like the old oak tree that shades their roof... 

Enter community shared solar, an emerging model that expands participation in the solar energy market.

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With the passage of the Clean Local Energy Accessible Now (CLEAN) program, locals will be able to sell electricity generated by renewable sources, such as photovoltaic panels, back to the city utility. 

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