Clean Energy Springfield

Ninety solar-powered homes and buildings across the state will be open for public tours on Saturday, October 6th, from 10 AM to 3 PM. The Illinois Solar Energy Association is sponsoring the event. The group has prepared a 28-page tour guidebook that you can purchase online or pick up for free at tour sponsor locations. The Central Illinois area has seven tour sites, including homes in Williamsville and Jacksonville. This will be a great opportunity to see solar energy at work in Illinois.

Over 20 utilities and other organizations were recognized last week for their efforts to help customers reduce energy use and energy costs through energy efficiency. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, D.C., issued its Second National Review and Recognition of Exemplary Energy Efficiency Programs.

The program categories covered a wide range of customer types and technologies, including low-income energy assistance; residential lighting and appliance upgrades; commercial motor and HVAC replacement; industrial lighting efficiency; emerging technologies; and small business assistance. Several municipal utilities were recognized, including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Eugene Water & Electric Board, Long Island Power Authority and Tucson Electric Power.

The profiles of these top quality programs should be a great resource for CWLP’s energy planners. They can be used to benchmark existing energy efficiency efforts and serve as a model for new programs and initiatives.

Coming out of the Schnucks on Chatham Road yesterday, I got stuck in congestion. Not vehicular congestion, this was a slow-moving conga line of shoppers. I veered out of the path, off to the right, preferring the longer walk at a faster pace to the slower, shorter trudge. As I did so, something caught my eye: the plastic bag recycling bin had gotten a makeover: What had been, I think, a blue plastic bin with slogans draped around the slot in the top had become a faux-wood box.

My first reaction was not, I confess, very big-hearted: "That's tacky." But my eyes dropped down to the sign on the front of the bin, and I got interested. The faux wood is Trex, a wood and plastic composite molded into beams for use outside. The sign said that Trex is one of the materials made from recovered plastic bags.

This, I thought with the fervor of a convert, is pretty great. Whoever came up with this is pretty brilliant. One of the big problems with non-regulatory approaches to environmentalism is keying people into how the environment and economy interact, the way that individual actions build toward something ecologically sound or ecologically disastrous. Stuff like Fair Trade and Bird-Friendly labels on coffee is one way to work it on the consumer side. This, on the waste management side, is another. One of the problems with recycling is that at the point of disposal recycling and just throwing something away sort of feel the same. The blue bin counteracts it somewhat, but there's little in the way of positive feedback to help keep you going. (Seeing products advertised as made with recycled materials is another way, but that's complex since it's also a selling tool. The Trex box nicely reinforces what you're doing.

[cross posted to The Other Leading Blog]

The first place to start in reducing your energy use has always been an energy audit. CWLP, which has long offered such audits, appears to have just revamped them a little bit by adding a money-back guarantee. This isn't your regular money-back guarantee, though. After CWLP comes out, does a blower door test, and walks through your house showing you what you can do, if you do any of the recommended actions and bring them back in to check your work, you can get the $25 cost of the audit refunded, along with up to $25 in expenses for some of those retrofits.

Not only that, if you don't know the business end of a caulking gun, you can attend a low-cost/no-cost energy efficiency workshop (which covers most of the things you'll probably hear about when you get an audit)--the next one is November 3.

Halloween is just around the corner, but it’s not too late to think about ways to “green” this black and orange holiday. Here are 10 tips to get you started:

1. If you decorate with lighting, look for LED holiday lights that use less energy, burn cooler and last longer than traditional incandescent lights.

2. Buy your pumpkin from the local farmer’s market or pumpkin patch, which will help save fuel in the transportation of products.

3. If you have to drive to take your kids trick-or-treating, carpool with family or friends to help reduce traffic and air pollution.

4. Try not to follow your children in the car as they walk from house to house. If the weather is good, join them and have fun while saving gas.

5. Use a canvass tote or pillowcase to collect treats instead of a disposable plastic or paper bag.

6. Make costumes from clothes you already have around the house instead of buying disposable ones from a store.

7. Minimize waste by purchasing candy that uses the least amount of packaging.

8. Start a compost pile and recycle your jack-o-lantern, along with leaves and other organic materials.

9. Purchase durable decorations that you can reuse from year to year.

10. Use this holiday to think about your daily habits and actions to protect the environment every day of the week.

When I signed up for Blog Action Day, I had a vision of myself really pouring stuff out today--I'm in between jobs with nothing pressing on the horizon. Sadly, move-related stuff wound up trumping everything today, so here I am squeezing this into the last few hours of the day. Ah, well.

I think cities are underappreciated in their potential to be environmental solutions. It's not simply that they allow for more efficient transportation, it's that cities can be, and should be, understood as a social extension of natural phenomena. As their own peculiar kind of ecosystem, they're not living, but they are lifelike (see, for example, urban metabolisms). Understanding these flows of energy and materials through our cities is crucial to minimizing our impact on the earth, but that's just the beginning. Once we've got a better feel for those flows, we can start to imagine our urban systems as more like ecosystems, with one energy input (sunlight) and endless material re-use cycles. We can also start to better understand the interplay of different actors--the varied functions that trees can provide (water purity, material recovery, energy source, energy saver, wind break, climate control, and on), the cycle of food and wastes, the distributed production of energy.

But since they're also fundamentally social, cities are places where memory becomes culture and biographies become histories. Cities are where we're most exposed to one another--where differences can be perceived and overcome, where we have many roles to play, many ways to relate to one another, in many combinations of cooperation and competition, equity and inequity.

A proper understanding of the role of cities doesn't just create respect for them, however. I think it also creates more respect for the role of rural areas. In William Cronon's book on the history of Chicago, Nature's Metropolis, he talks about hinterlands--the non-urban areas that feed raw resources into cities. I think "hinterland" has a perjorative taint to it, which is too bad, because it's an evocative way to reinvigorate how we think about cities and the areas around them. Too often, urban and rural are seen as opposed things--urbanites mock hicks in the sticks, while rural folk mistrust and reject the urbane. Which is bad, because we're not at opposite ends of a spectrum, we're different parts of a whole. This becomes plainly apparent when we look at the metabolism of cities.

Cross-posted.

Yesterday I attended CWLP’s Community Energy Meeting at UIS. This was the sixth in a series of community meetings designed to update the public on the utility’s energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, and solicit suggestions and ideas on opportunities to improve these efforts. The meeting was co-sponsored by the student environmental group, Students Allied for a Greener Earth or SAGE. SAGE deserves a huge “thumbs up” for the turnout. It was the best attended meeting so far with approximately 50 participants.

The most interesting aspect of the meeting was the introduction of a new manager and administrative assistant for CWLP’s Energy Services Office. This office has always been known for its dedicated and knowledgeable technical staff, but CWLP recognized the need to add expertise in program development, marketing and community outreach areas. Bolstering the energy office also became a priority for the utility under the Clean Energy Agreement it worked out with the Sierra Club as part of the construction of the new Dallman coal-fired power plant. The agreement calls for CWLP to make greater investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy to meet the energy needs of Springfield.

CWLP announced at the meeting that it plans to expand the rebate program for heat pumps, including geothermal units. The utility is also working on a series of initiatives to help seniors and low-income residents reduce energy costs by switching to compact fluorescent lights, replacing old, inefficient refrigerators and tuning up their air conditioners.

CWLP appears to be open to a range of new ideas so this would be a good time to contact the utility if you have a suggestion on how it could promote more energy efficiency practices, or help people take advantage of renewable energy like solar and wind power. The public can send ideas to smartenergy@cwlp.com, or CWLP Smart Energy, 800 E. Monroe, MCE, Springfield, IL 62757.

Is your local school strapped for cash due to rising energy costs? Working with three other institutions, the Alliance to Save Energy has produced a guidebook to help school districts develop an effective energy management plan. The guidebook lists easy practices that schools can implement to save energy, ranging from turning off lights in vending machines and turning off computer monitors, to performing scheduled maintenance on heating and air cooling units. These changes in operations can help schools reduce energy use by 5 percent to 15 percent, which could mean more money for educational programs. Many of these strategies can also improve the overall quality of classrooms, creating a better learning environment for students. Sounds like a "win-win" for everyone.

Berkeley may become the first city in the nation to allow residential and commercial property owners to pay for the installation of solar photovoltaic panels through an increase in their property taxes. The purpose of the program is to make it easier for property owners to generate solar power without having to put money up front to cover the high installation costs. Officials are banking on the program to help Berkeley meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

Under the program, the city would pay the upfront cost of installing solar panels to a home or business. The owner would pay it back over 20 years as an add-on to property taxes. Property owners would be charged interest and a one-time administrative fee. If the property is sold prior to the end of the repayment period, the property tax assessment would be passed on to the new owner. The City would pay for the installations using bonds and loans.

Currently, there are 400 residential solar panel systems in Berkeley. Officials estimate they cost from $10,000-$20,000. The Mayor hopes the number of solar installations will climb into the thousands with the new program.

The Berkeley City Council will consider the proposal November 6.

If this financing program works, it could be a model for Springfield and other communities to replicate as a creative way to overcome one of the biggest hurdles to getting solar panels.