Here’s a back to the future idea we found on the Huffington Post: rediscover the thrift of previous generations by renewing and restoring objects instead of sending serviceable things to the landfill!
A Rescued Seal Pup is fed at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. The Center just received a grant to go solar.
At NEW HOME, we love animals. And we love solar and renewable energy. So talk about a win-win. The Marine Mammal Center here in Sausalito is going solar. With the help of a donation from our local utility company, Pacific Gas and Electric, will get a new solar installation that will help keep injured and ill sea lions warm.
PG&E’s $150,000 donation will create a 20 kilowatt solar installation at the Center’s new headquarters. This solar addition with work together with the Center’s current 23 kilowatt array and will allow the Center to produce an additional 35,000 kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable energy. This is the equivalent of powering up to 4 homes. Equally important, the Center will save $4,000 a year just from harnessing the power of the sun. And that savings will no doubt go into helping our beloved local seal population. Continue reading ‘Solar Energy Will Warm Seals at Sausalito Marine Mammal Center’ »
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Pumping Solar: Governor Signs Bill Doubling Net Metering Cap
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a new measure doubling California’s cap on net metering to five percent. In his speech, the Governor suggested that the cap should be increasingly raised to 50 percent.
He said, “Now, you probably ask yourself, why do we need a cap in the first place? It’s a good question. We really don’t need a cap. But you know, in order to get things done you compromise. So you start out with 2.5 percent and then you promise, everyone promises each other that OK, when that hits the ceiling then you go to 5 percent and that’s what we did now. And then when we need to raise it again we’ll raise it to 7.5 percent and that’s how we inch up, hopefully at one time to 50 percent. So anyway, this is what it is.”
The Governor, who is greener than most of his GOP colleagues, further noted, “It’s not simple to bring together businesses, to bring together the environmentalists, the utilities. And to bring Democrats and Republicans together, think about that. But we did it. But this is much more than just about that. This is also about job creation, this is also about being independent of foreign oil. This is good for the environment, this is good for the economy, for everything.”
San Francisco Offers New Solar Financing Program
As part of a new $150 million effort to help local property owners green their structures, San Francisco’s GreenFinance SF program will offer attractive financing for solar panels and solar water heaters along with other eco-friendly improvements for residential and commercial buildings.
Under the new measure signed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom on February 8, property owners can take out a loan to finance their renewable-energy project and pay it back through a surcharge levied on their annual property tax bill. First adopted by Berkeley two years ago, the approach is called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing.
“This green financing program is going to create green jobs and fuel the next wave of energy and water efficiency and renewable energy development in San Francisco,” said Mayor Newsom. “It helps home and property owners overcome the large up-front costs of major environmental improvements to their buildings.”
A key advantage to the new program is that it ties the loans to the property itself rather than the owner allowing for easier transfer if the property is sold. According to the program’s website, city officials are still finalizing project qualification criteria.
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Solar is a big part of what we do here at New Home. Because we’re headquartered in California, we are very excited about a new measure passed almost unanimously (1 dissenting vote) by the California legislature last week. It makes rooftop solar a lot more attractive to homeowners.
The state Assembly bill, overwhelmingly passed on Thursday, would expand a credit program for Californians who generate excess electricity through their home solar power systems.
The bill, AB 510 , sponsored by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), has already passed the Senate and now goes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is expected to sign the measure into law next week.
New York passed a similar measure. Jennifer Kho at Earth2Tech explains it here:
Rooftop solar companies are breathing a sigh of relief – and are getting ready to install more projects in New York and California. That’s because legislatures in the two states have passed new rules that boost net metering, an arrangement that allows customers with small-scale solar and wind installations to get credit for the electricity they deliver back to the grid.
With net metering, as the arrangement is called, customers pay only for their net electricity usage. Their meters run forward when they are using more electricity than they are producing and run backward when they are producing more electricity than they are using. The absence of net metering could cut out much of the economic benefit of building solar systems, at least in places without other financial incentives, such as a feed-in tariff.
In California, the solar installation industry faced the possibility of suffering from a lack of effective net metering rules up until last week. Utilities in the state were limited to accepting only up to 2.5 percent of their electricity from net-metering customers, and one utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, is expected to reach that amount this year. Last year, Adam Browning, the executive director of Vote Solar, said installations would “grind to a halt” in PG&E territory if the net-metering cap wasn’t raised. And Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, who wrote the bill to raise the cap, called net metering “absolutely fundamental” to the success of solar in the state.
The new California plan doubles the cap to 5 percent. The increase “sends a clear signal to the growing solar industry that California intends to be open for business tomorrow and for years to come,” said Sara Birmingham, western policy director for the Solar Alliance, in a press release.
“The boost in net metering will create a heightened demand for solar – from residential through commercial – leaving the weak link in the solar chain financing for these systems,” said Jason Hamilton, general manager of the renewable energy division at NEW HOME. ” NEW HOME has leveraged its relationships with various financial partners to offer an array of financing solutions to home owners and business owners wanting to create a new revenue stream (the sale of their surplus electricity) while greening their homes and businesses.”
Overall, the two net metering wins on both coasts are part of a trend toward net metering around the country. According to a Vote Solar report released in November, 27 states have solid net-metering standards (which received A or B grades from the group), up from 13 in 2007.
Good news. It’s not all doom and gloom about the environment after all. A new report from ABC News in Australia finds that environmental protection measures are making a difference in the Great Barrier Reef.
Continue reading ‘Good Eco News: Scientific Evidence Shows Green Protection Saving Great Barrier Reef Eco-System’ »
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Morning sunlight streams through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls. A tantalizing aroma wafts from the kitchen signaling that breakfast is cooking. Home? Well, yes. NEW HOME. Welcome to the offices of NEW HOME GREEN MATERIALS AND LEARNING CENTER, an eco-friendly home improvement start-up in the innovative San Francisco Bay Area. Entrepreneur Rich Rifkin, clad in his customary bamboo-spun NEW HOME logo shirt and Crocs, greets arriving staff with a welcoming grin and the offer of one of his special breakfast burritos.
“All organic, low-fat and low-carb,” Rifkin says with a grin. In addition to launching a new ecommerce platform and bricks and mortar chain for wholesale-priced green building materials, he is also an amateur chef.
Staff members working at their computers take him up on his offer and Rifkin is soon delivering fresh-cooked meals to their work stations. Several staff members however are not in the office to partake today because they are telecommuting – a green option NEW HOME makes available. One staffer, a solar energy account manager, is leaving at noon to attend his second grader’s school performance and will work at his home office for the rest of the day. Rifkin sometimes takes care of his toddler son and a corner of his own work space is adorned with brightly colored toys. The controller usually brings his full-size poodle with him to work and she sits quietly by his side, only greeting the other NEW HOME staffers with a friendly wag of the tail and extended paw when she and her owner leave for the day.
The sounds of gentle music from a New Age station on Pandora wafts through the open airy room punctuated with ringing phones but seldom by a photo copier. NEW HOME runs a nearly paperless office.
Trucks pull up to pick up solar panels ordered by installers. Curious visitors stop in to inquire when the first store is going to open (April but the ecommerce site launches next month).
Flexible hours, telecommuting, shared meals, children, dogs and solar panels – it’s all part of a healthy green workday at NEW HOME, a model green workplace for the 21st century.
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“How much energy we can generate with wind and solar power projects depends, of course, on the wind and the sun. So being smart about where we put solar panels and turbines will is pretty important. A company called 3TIER has made a business out of providing “prospecting tools” for renewable energy,” writes Andrew Price in a recent blog post at the site he helps edit called Good. Read more: http://www.good.is/post/where-wind-and-solar-power-make-sense/#ixzz0feUn4hGq
