Why San Diego is a Solar Leader (and Los Angeles is a Solar Loser)

FORBES. By David Ferris. 3.20.12. San Diego gets more of its power from the sun than anyplace in America. The city’s solar panels can produce almost 37 megawatts of electricity, more solar than exists in the entire nation of Mexico. San Diego has 500 more solar installations than its mega-neighbor, the city of Los Angeles, though L.A. is just as sunny and has nearly three times as many people. Why is solar so much more successful here than in L.A.? I visited San Diego earlier this month to find out, and learned that it has a lot to do with a friendly, solar-oriented culture — and fortunate political geography.

Both San Diego and Los Angeles enjoy a climate that is as welcoming to solar panels as it is to beachgoers. Endless sun and mild temperatures mean that photovoltaic solar panels work at maximum efficiency and bring a homeowner the most wattage for the buck. So why the difference? I spoke to Dan Sullivan, president of Sullivan Solar, which is the leading installer in San Diego and is now trying to crack the Los Angeles market. Sullivan is one of the industry’s success stories. He started the company in 2004 with one truck; now he has 68 employees (those “green jobs” that politicians talk about). Last year, he madeInc. magazine’s list of the fastest-growing companies, with 423 percent growth over three years. Last year’s revenues were $22 million.

To understand what works about San Diego, Sullivan said, it helps to understand how things work elsewhere. Los Angeles County is made up of 88 different cities, many of which have wildly diverging rules that dictate how solar can be installed. They require cumbersome paperwork that varies from city to city, and sometimes charge stiff fees. The electric utilities are also divided: Los Angeles Department of Water & Power covers the city of Los Angeles, while the suburbs are subjects of the vast utility empire known as Southern California Edison. San Diego, on the other hand, is comprised of only 18 cities, with one city — San Diego — overwhelmingly dominant in size. The entire county is served by one electric utility, San Diego Gas & Electric. This has made it easier to harmonize the rules for installing solar panels. Permitting rules are roughly the same in all areas of the county, and permits are issued quickly and for as much as 10 times less than in Los Angeles-area towns, Sullivan said. In unincorporated San Diego County, there’s no permit fees at all.

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The Tea Party Wants to Help You Go Solar

SLATE. By Josh Voorhees. April 23, 2014.  Photo by David McNew/Getty Images  Last week, with little fanfare and even less debate, Oklahoma lawmakers quietly voted to reverse a nearly four-decade-old law that had barred utility companies from charging customers who install solar panels on their homes more than those who don’t. The bill, which passed almost unanimously, would have effectively cleared the way for utilities in the Sooner State to force homeowners who install solar panels to pay for both the electricity they buy from the grid and for a portion of the electricity they sell back to it. The vote marked a rare victory for power companies in their quest to stymie the growth of the rooftop solar industry. It also represented a sharp departure from the wave of well-publicized, big-dollar federal and state efforts currently aimed at making solar energy cost competitive with more traditional energy sources like coal and natural gas.  TUSK boasts an impressive record of defeating the utility companies’ effort to make solar panels less appealing for homeowners.  Then, on Tuesday, to the surprise of pretty much everyone involved, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Mary Fallin, issued an executive order largely undercutting the provision, dealing an unexpected defeat to major utilities and their deep-pocketed backers—a group that includes the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful national membership group for conservative state lawmakers.  Perhaps the only thing more surprising was who had helped defeat Oklahoma’s power companies. Tucked among the usual green suspects were the type of advocates that typically don’t associate with the clean energy movement but have nonetheless proved crucial to securing a political victories in a string of dark-red states: Tea Party conservatives.

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New Solar Hot Water Incentives for Low-Income Residences in California!

California Solar Initiative- CSI-Thermal Program Low-Income Program.  Incentives are now available for Solar Water-Heating Systems for Low-Income Single and Multifamily Residences!

The CSI-Thermal Low-Income Program provides rebates to utility customers who install solar water heating (SWH) systems that displace natural gas usage. On October 6, 2011, the CPUC approved a Decision creating the CSI-Thermal Low-Income Program, which allocates $25 million to promote the installation of solar water heating (SWH) systems on qualifying low-income single-family and multifamily residences through a program of direct financial incentives. Incentives are available to customers who currently heat their water with natural gas in the service territories of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E), and Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas).

Single-family SWH systems that displace natural gas can qualify for incentives up to $3,750. Multifamily applicants can qualify for incentives up to $500,000. Actual incentive amounts will be based on the expected performance of the system as predicted by the SRCC rating and positioning, as is current practice in the CSI-Thermal General Market program. Single-family low-income SWH systems will be determined using the existing CSI-Thermal single-family calculator, and multifamily low-income SWH system will use the CSI-Thermal multifamily calculator. Incentive levels will decline in four steps as the program meets certain installation benchmarks. 
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Cost of Solar Power Still Falling, Falling, Falling

Barely three years ago, the Obama administration launched the SunShot Initiative, an ambitious effort to transform solar power from an exotic, expensive form of energy into a mainstream fuel that can compete on price with petroleum, coal, and natural gas. In the latest development for low-cost solar power, last week Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced that the program is already 60 percent of the way toward its goal of bringing the average price for a utility-scale solar power plant down to the target price of six cents per kilowatt-hour.  In raw numbers, that’s a steep slide from an average of 21 cents in 2010 to only 11 cents by the end of 2013. That’s now less than the average price of electricity in the U.S., which is about 12 cents per kWh, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The trend toward low-cost solar power is nowhere near at an end. The new announcement came with word of yet another SunShot initiative that will help bring the cost of solar power down even more in the coming years: A $25 million funding package for innovative technologies that focuses on manufacturing costs.  The SunShot initiative attacks the cost of solar power from all angles. One focus is on high-tech R&D that aims to make photovoltaic cells and other forms of solar energy harvesting more efficient. Another addresses the “soft costs” involved in installing solar equipment, including permits, administrative costs and labor.  A third area, which the new $25 million funding package is focused on, aims at bringing down the cost of manufacturing solar equipment, in addition to reducing the time and expense involved in installing that equipment.
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Solar Industry Seen as Winning Bet for $1.3 Billion Skagen Fund

Solar industry companies are set for a “boom” as falling costs make harnessing the sun’s energy a more competitive alternative, according to Norwegian fund manager Skagen AS. “We now have a situation where solar is competitive with traditional energy in the grid or off the grid,” Geir Tjetland, who helps manage the 960 million-euro ($1.3 billion) Skagen Vekst (STVEKST) fund, said in an interview in Stavanger yesterday. “About 0.4 to 0.5 percent of all energy consumed is solar. This will grow a lot in the next five to 10 years.” The industry is recovering from a two-year battering that was triggered by a slump in prices and industry overcapacity just as European governments reduced subsidies because of slowing economic growth. That led to sharp declines in the industry’s biggest companies, including GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd. (3800), and REC Silicon ASA. GCL-Poly has climbed 32 percent over the past year, REC Silicon has surged 278 percent. The benchmark BI Global Large Solar Energy Index of 15 manufacturers, which slumped 87 percent from a February 2011 peak through November 2012, has rallied more than fourfold from its trough. 
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How to Sniper-Proof the Electrical Grid

For years, lawmakers and critics have warned that our aging electrical grid is vulnerable not just to natural disasters, but to physical attack. “Our enemies have the motive, the means, and the capacity to attack our grid with potentially catastrophic consequences,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Bloomberg last year. “The question is whether the utilities have the same determination to protect our country against these threats.” A newly revealed incident is evidence they don't—or even the wherewithal to keep the public informed about said threats. The Wall Street Journal reports that nearly a year ago, snipers attacked a power plant operated by PG&E and nearly caused a blackout in parts of California. First, someone cut telephone cables in an underground vault. The Journal describes what happened next: "Within half an hour, snipers opened fire on a nearby electrical substation. Shooting for 19 minutes, they surgically knocked out 17 giant transformers that funnel power to Silicon Valley." None of the shooters have been caught. Officials were able to keep the lights on by routing power around the station, but the man who was serving as the chairmen of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission at the time, Jon Wellinghoff, is so concerned that another attack is immanent that he went public about the breach. Wellinghoff called it "the most significant incident of domestic terrorism involving the grid that has ever occurred." He says that if the attack were copied, and carried out to scale, it could knock out the grid "and black out much of the country." The problem, as he sees it, is that there are 2,000 such substations across the country, and if only a handful of them were knocked out at once, he believes widespread outages would follow. Naturally, Wellinghoff feels that security is inadequate, and is pushing for more protection at transformer sites. It's a familiar call to action that's been sounded in response to the rising specter of a number of grid-threatening events—hacker intrusions, downed power lines during a weather disaster, terrorist attacks aimed directly at power plants, even that mostly laughable EMP scenario—but this time with real life action at its core.
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With startup acquisition, Common Assets, SolarCity will open up solar investing to individuals

By By Katie Fehrenbacher Gigaom.  1/15/14. Massive, and growing, solar panel installer and financier SolarCity announced on Wednesday that it has acquired a startup called Common Assets, which has developed software that enables individuals and small companies to invest in its solar panel projects. Traditionally only large banks, institutional investors, and big companies were able to invest in funds that SolarCity would use to fund solar projects.  The move validates the emergence of new types of financing, like crowd funding, in recent years as a brand new way to develop clean power projects. SolarCity says it’s responsible for almost a third of all new solar panel projects being built on home rooftops in the U.S. these days, so the new investing platform will have a wide audience from the start.  A variety of startups, like Solar Mosaic, have developed software and services that enable accredited investors to put their money in solar projects, for returns between 4.5 percent and 5.5 percent. In some states, like California and New York, anyone can invest in Solar Mosaic’s solar projects.  SolarCity plans to launch its new investing website for individuals and companies soon. The company says the financing platform will be different than other crowd funding sites because they’ll be using debt investments, instead aggregating investments to provide loans for projects (which other crowd funding sites commonly do). Common Assets CEO Tim Newell and Chief Architect John Witchel will join SolarCity. Witchel was the co-founder and CTO of Prosper, one of the first crowd funding loan platforms launched. Private equity company U.S. Renewables Group (USRG) was a backer or Common Assets.
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WaterFX Sees Solar Desalination of Ag. Runoff As One Way To Address The World's Water Problem

1/07/2014 FORBES. By Peter Kelly-Detwiler. Aaron Mandell, Founder and Chairman of WaterFX, looks at California’s water issue like a classic entrepreneur. Where others see problems, he sees opportunity for improvement and profit. And that opportunity is huge. It is common knowledge that access to clean water is a mounting problem across the globe. However, few places have water issues as complex and challenging as California, which has been dealing with the water issue for generations (some may remember the 1974 Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway film ‘Chinatown’ that focused on the California Water Wars of the early 1900s). In that state, the issue is highly complex, layered in a complicated history of rights, claimants, and the physical reality of too much demand for a limited supply. Water issues are also inextricably linked to energy issues: it takes an enormous amount of energy to pump, treat, and move water. So the water problem is not only limited to H2O, it’s a costly energy issue as well. Mandell hopes to change that reality. He has a vision for how to make that happen, starting with a clean and modular technology and an open source approach that he hopes will stimulate a growing community of solutions providers. His company, WaterFX has created a solar-powered desalination system to treat agricultural drainage that is not only benign from an energy standpoint, but also leaves the agricultural environment in better shape. WaterFX has successfully piloted a 6,500 square foot system with California’s Panoche Water District over the past six months, producing almost 500 gallons of clean water per hour. Panoche is one of the water districts in California taking a leading role in addressing the state’s water crisis. Following on the pilot’s success, the Water District has now agreed to work with Mandell’s company to expand the system to produce 2,200 acre-feet per year.

Here’s how the system works:
Instead of the traditional desalination approach normally used to treat seawater, which uses a high-pressure reverse osmosis system that forces salt and other solids through a membrane, WaterFX cleans water through use of a Concentrated Solar Still. It uses existing technology, adapting 400 kilowatt parabolic solar troughs originally designed for power generation. The solar troughs concentrate the sun’s energy and heat a pipe containing heat transfer fluid that transfers the heat to a heat pump, further increasing efficiency. This heat is then utilized in a distillation process to evaporate clean water out of source water (in this case, agricultural drainage water that contains salts, fertilizers, and other impurities). The condensate is then recovered as pure H2O. Since the sun doesn’t always shine, a thermal storage system is used to hold the excess heat so that the process can function around the clock. Mandell – who studied groundwater engineering in school and has been involved in previous water-related start-ups – migrated to energy work in recent years and became convinced that the energy-water nexus was an area worth devoting attention to.
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Ford to unveil solar hybrid concept car at CES: it gets 100 mpg!

FOX NEWS. Published January 02, 2014. Associated Press Ford plans to unveil at this month's International CES gadget show a solar-powered concept car that offers the same performance as a plug-in hybrid but without the need for a plug. The C-MAX Solar Energi Concept car uses a gasoline engine combined with a gizmo that acts like a magnifying glass to concentrate the sun's rays on the vehicle's roof-mounted solar panels. The automaker says the vehicle's estimated combined city-highway mileage is 100 mpg. Ford says that by using solar power instead of an electric plug, a typical owner will reduce their annual greenhouse gas emissions by four metric tons. The company says it sold about 85,000 hybrid or electric vehicles in 2013, including 6,300 units of its C-MAX Energi plug-in hybrid. The sun-ray concentrator was developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and uses what is known as a Fresnel lens, which concentrates light but can be made thinner than a conventional lens. A full day of sunshine is equivalent to a four-hour battery charge, or 8 kilowatts, Ford says.
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Why China is building a massive solar power plant in the middle of nowhere?

FROM: QUARTZ by Todd Woody 12.31.13  Back in 2009 when China announced it would build the world’s largest photovoltaic power plant in the Mongolian desert, it choose a US company, First Solar, to construct the 2,000-megawatt (MW) project. Yesterday, China unveiled plans for another huge solar power plant, a 1,000 MW project in the remote Xinjiang Region. This time, though, a homegrown company, Trina Solar, won the contract.  That marks a significant shift in the global solar market, one that will accelerate in 2014. Over the past two years, China has emerged as one of the biggest markets for photovoltaic panels in addition to being the world’s solar manufacturing hub. In an effort to wean itself from coal-fired power polluting its cities, the government this year announced ambitious renewable energy targets, including the construction of 10,000 MW of solar projects.  The new policy came as China’s photovoltaic panel makers faced falling revenues and multibillion-dollar deficits after embarking on a manufacturing boom that allowed them to corner the global solar market but sent prices plummeting. Projects such as the power plant in Turpan Prefecture announced yesterday help soak up China’s excess manufacturing capacity while creating jobs for local workers. As part of the deal with local government, Trina will build a factory in Turpan.  

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Utilities fight back as rooftop solar heats up

http://bloom.bg/1g3jWt4 By Mark Chediak, Christopher Martin and Ken Wells Bloomberg News If you wonder why America’s utilities are rattled by the explosive growth in rooftop solar — and are pushing back — William Walker has a story for you. A flip-flop wearing Walker stands in his driveway pointing to a ubiquitous neighborhood feature – solar panels on the roofs of five of six houses nearby. He lives in Ewa Beach, a development on the sultry leeward coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu built on land cleared of sugar cane fields. Shade is scarce and residents here call their homes “hot boxes,” requiring almost round-the-clock air conditioning. Hawaii, which imports pricey oil to power its electricity grid, has the highest utility rates in the nation — at 37 cents a kilowatt-hour, they’re more than double California and triple the national average. With bills for 1,600 square foot houses like these running as high as $400 a month, solar is seen as less a green statement than an economic no-brainer given state and federal tax credits for as much as 65 percent of installation costs. Almost every day since Walker and his wife Mi Chong moved in last April, solar installers came rapping on the door, hawking a rooftop system. They finally bought one: an 18-panel, $35,000 installation producing 5.9 kilowatts of power financed for $305 a month. It would be connected to the grid under a system known as net metering that essentially lets residents deduct the value of their solar-produced electricity from their power bill and even be paid for electricity in excess of that.

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The Pros Pick Four Solar Stocks For 2014

By Tom Konrad, Contributor. FORBES. 12/20/2013. With the average solar stock having doubled in 2013, it’s much harder to find bargains in the solar industry than it was a year ago. But two of the professional green money managers think there is still value to be found. When I asked them for their top three green stock picks for 2014, they came back with two solar picks each. You can also read about my panel’s green income stock picks and green information technology picks the earlier articles in this series. Shawn Kravetz is the solar expert on my panel. He is President of Esplanade Capital LLC, a Boston based investment management company one of whose funds is focused on solar and companies impacted by the emergence of solar. Last year, he had the top pick of all my panelists, Amtech Systems (NASD:ASYS), which was up 160%. This year, Kravetz says “Finding extreme values is challenging” but he still was able to find two that he considers “quite compelling.” Shawn Kravetz His first pick is Meyer Burger (Swiss:MBTN), a “Leading solar equipment manufacturer whose business has finally troughed.” Kravetz thinks the company’s business is about to make a “substantial turn” for the better, but the stock has hardly advanced despite the large increase in price for other solar stocks. Even after a strong 2013, Kravetz says “Global solar installations will likely grow 20% in 2014. With demand finally nearing an equilibrium with cost efficient supply, this will drive leading players to modernize and expand. The hangover of the solar nuclear winter and a poorly timed acquisition of competitor Roth & Rau is ending, leaving Meyer Burger extremely well positioned for 2014.”
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Utility-Scale Solar Power To Be Cost Competitive With Natural Gas By 2025

By William Pentland, Contributor. 12/3/13.  Utility-scale solar power is poised to become cost competitive with natural gas by 2025, according to a new report by Lux Research. The report, “Cheap Natural Gas: Fracturing Dreams of a Solar Future,” evaluated the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for unsubsidized solar, natural gas, and hybrid solar/gas technologies through 2030 under a range of future natural gas price scenarios and across 10 different parts of the world. The bottom-up cost model assumed a 39% decrease in utility-scale system costs by 2030 and a delay in shale gas production due to anti-fracking policies in Europe and high capital costs in South America. The key take-away: the LCOE for unsubsidized utility-scale solar globally will be only about $0.02/kWh above the price of power produced by combined cycle gas turbines by 2025. “On the macroeconomic level, a ‘golden age of gas’ can be a bridge to a renewable future as gas will replace coal until solar becomes cost competitive without subsidies,” said Ed Cahill, an associate at New York City-based Lux Research and the lead author of the report. “On the micro-economic level, solar integrated with natural gas can lower costs and provide stable output.”
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Commercial Solar Hot Water Rebates & Tax Credits - Yields Profits for Apartment Owners in SoCal

By Ted Bavin. December 16th, 2013. For the first time in history, commercial solar hot water systems will pay for themselves in 1-3 years, yielding huge cost savings over gas. This is due to simultaneous incentives (cash rebate and tax credit) now being offered by the state of California and the Federal government. Ted Bavin, owner of All Valley Solar in Los Angeles, a true solar expert with over 30 years in the business, states, “this perfect storm of incentives has aligned to make this the most profitable time for businesses and apartment owners to invest in solar hot water systems. By the end of 2013, All Valley Solar will have secured over $940,000 in CSI rebates for SoCalGas customers; and this will continue to be a very popular program into 2014.” Eligibility for the commercial solar rebate includes: owners of multi-family apartment buildings and condos, schools, government buildings, military barracks, restaurants, Laundromats, food processors and other commercial hot water users. All Valley Solar are the solar experts, we are listed on google search under the keywords: solar Los Angeles, solar North Hollywood, solar hot water Los Angeles, solar thermal los angeles, solar companies los angeles, los angeles solar installer, los angeles solar panels.

So let’s take a look at how the economics of this “perfect storm” of incentives works. First, the Gas Company, through the California Solar Initiative, pays an average of 50% to 60% of the total cost (received within 30 days of completion). Then the IRS pays you back another 30% as a tax credit, even toward AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). Finally, bonus depreciation lets you write half of it off in 2013, with the other half depreciated over the next five years.  But in order to reap these benefits, the first step is to find a competent solar thermal contractor. Nine out of ten Internet search results will yield solar electric contractors who know little to nothing about solar thermal… but they may be hungry for business, so beware!  The CSI Thermal website (http://www.csithermal.com) has a map showing all the rebated projects in your area and the company that installed each system. Those companies may be looked up on the CA Contractors State License Board website (https://www2.cslb.ca.gov/OnlineServices/CheckLicenseII/checklicense.aspx) to ascertain their experience, specialty and whether there are any active complaints against them.  Bavin says, “look for a company with a C46 license (solar) with at least 15 years of experience, not just a C10 (electrical), C36 (plumbing), C39 (roofing), or B (general). Keep in mind, however, that the C46 (solar) license encompasses both thermal and photovoltaic electric solar disciplines, and most contractors are masters of one or the other...not usually both.” Bavin also suggests that “when hiring a company to install a solar hot water system, ask for a list of at least ten Thermal multi-family installation references and contact at least three.” Additional Tip: the six digit CA State License number is sequential from date of licensing, so the lower the number the longer the experience.
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Arizona's Solar Water Heating Industry on Verge of Collapse without Incentives

By Ryan Randazzo The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Dec 7, 2013. For the veterans of Arizona’s small solar water-heating industry, staring down an industry-crippling crisis is nothing new. Dozens of companies that installed about 130,000 solar water heaters in the state in the early 1980s were wiped out overnight when the government cut federal tax credits in 1985. Few companies withstood that blow, although dozens sprouted in 2005 when federal tax credits for the industry were reinstated. Now another potentially devastating policy change looms as the state’s biggest utility has ended its incentives for solar water heating. Arizona Public Service Co. is required to get 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025, and to accomplish that goal, it has provided rich incentives for rooftop solar electric and other technologies, including water heating. But because APS is ahead of schedule reaching its renewable-energy mandates, it has stopped offering incentives for solar water heating. The money the utility provided to offset the initial cost of the rooftop systems ran out in September, and APS is not seeking to repeat the offering in 2014. Along with federal and state tax credits, the utility incentives created a boom in recent years among the solar water-heating and solar electric, or photovoltaic, installations. The cost to manufacture photovoltaic solar panels has dropped dramatically, allowing that industry to thrive despite eliminating its APS incentives. Solar water heating, though much more affordable than solar electric, has not been able to reduce manufacturing costs as much and remains a difficult sell without incentives.

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Stevens Tech award-winning "solar smart house" to be C.S.U. San Marcos veterans center

By Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal December 03, 2013 at 6:50 PM, updated December 04, 2013. An award-wining “solar smart house” designed and built by Stevens’ Institute of Technology students in Hoboken has been donated to California State University, San Marcos, to serve as a veterans’ center at the campus located near Camp Pendleton. “The opportunity to turn ‘Ecohabit’ into a functioning facility for returning veterans made the Solar Decathlon competition a truly meaningful experience for our students,” Dean of Stevens’ School of Engineering and Science Michael Bruno said in a statement. The building constructed in Hoboken won fourth place overall and second place among United States entries for the team in October’s U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, which tasks global university teams with creating affordable, energy-efficient solar-powered houses. The 19 entries included teams from the Czech Republic, Canada and Australia. The team of 61 students from various disciplines built the high-tech house in Hoboken over the course of two years. It was built in two modules to facilitate shipping cross country. A groundbreaking for its installation was held at the campus on Nov. 8 and the house is to open next fall. It will function as a facility for veterans, service members and reservists to obtain GI benefits, register for courses, and access campus and career services. The 1000-square-foot home is equipped with solar shingles, a rainwater harvesting system and energy-saving heating, cooling and plumbing systems. And it was designed to learn from its occupants. “The smart detection system might notice that every morning at 7 a.m., you’re getting hot water for a shower, so it’ll learn that every day at 7 a.m., it should have hot water ready for you,” explained team communications manager Zak Moy. Every room in the house has a detector that monitors humidity, temperature and movement, and responds to maximize efficiency. Occupants can track how much energy they’re producing and using, and what appliances are drawing the most power.
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San Bernardino County Ends Moratorium on Commercial Solar Development

BY JANET ZIMMERMAN December 02, 2013. San Bernardino County supervisors on Tuesday, Dec. 3, will consider new regulations for commercial solar energy projects — including where they should be built — and end a temporary moratorium on such development. The ban has been in effect since June, when county staff was ordered to develop location criteria, design standards and rules for processing applications. Bright Source Energy's Ivanpah solar development covers 3,500 acres of federal land in San Bernardino County. Supervisors on Tuesday, Dec. 3, will discuss new regulations for commercial solar development that would effect future projects on private property and other land in the county's jurisdiction. The Board of Supervisors also is expected to vote on a per-acre fee schedule for renewable energy projects. Officials said the move was prompted by a rush of applications from developers and complaints from desert residents and environmental groups about the projects’ impacts on sensitive species, and increased dust, blight and reflected light. The California Desert Coalition, a grassroots organization that advocates building renewable energy projects on previously disturbed land and rooftops instead of pristine desert, has urged its members to speak at the meeting. See rest of original article

Salt Lake City to build 1 megawatt solar farm

(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker speaks during a ground-breaking ceremony on a solar farm in Salt Lake City Tuesday November 26, 2013. On completion, the solar array will produce 1 megawatt of renewable energy from 3,000 panels covering roughly four acres. The project was financed as part of the publicly approved new Public Safety Building and will help that facility achieve a net zero energy rating. Solar energy will help power the new $125M Public Safety Building. By Christopher Smart | The Salt Lake Tribune First Published Nov 26 2013. Let the sunshine in. Salt Lake City announced Tuesday it will build a solar farm that will increase by tenfold the municipality’s ability to create energy from the sun.  The four-acre facility at 1955 S. 500 West should go online by late winter or early spring. At a brief ceremony Tuesday, city officials said it would produce 1,000 kilowatts — or 1 megawatt — the energy equivalent to power about 150 homes for a year. The $3 million farm is to be constructed on a former four-acre landfill site that would be cost prohibitive for other types of development because it would require excavation. The solar project will pay for itself in 10 years, said Vicki Bennett, the city’s sustainability director. After that, the energy created by the facility will be free, except for maintenance costs. The solar farm will help power the new $125 million Public Safety Building, Bennett said. The building, which opened earlier this year, had space on its roof for enough solar panels to create about 40 kilowatts. Upon its opening, city officials said the Public Safety Building would be "net-zero" — creating as much energy as it uses. The net zero rating will soon be attained with the addition of the new solar farm, said Mayor Ralph Becker.
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Are 90 Companies Responsible For Nearly Two-Thirds Of Global Warming?

The Huffington Post | By James Gerken Posted: 11/21/2013. Can climate change be blamed on a handful of corporations? A new study from the Colorado-based Climate Accountability Institute suggests that 90 companies are responsible for almost two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The top 90 emitters include 50 investor-owned energy companies like BP, ExxonMobil and Shell, along with 31 state-owned companies and some nation-states themselves. 83 of the 90 are coal, oil and gas producers and the remaining seven are cement manufacturers. The researchers argue that this group is responsible for the equivalent of 914 gigatons of carbon dioxide, explained the Guardian, which accounts for 63 percent of industrial carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 1751 and 2010. In fact, half of the greenhouse gas emissions analyzed in the the study were reportedly emitted in the past 25 years.
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Via Trucks Solar Tonneau: an Electric Truck that Doesn't Need a Plug

By Sebastian Blanco Posted Nov 20th 2013 7:20pm. Via Motors knows a thing or two about standing on the shoulders of others. The plug-in hybrid utility vehicle company's entire business plan is to take big General Motors vehicles and convert them to something with a plug, with the support of Bob Lutz (pictured, with the VTrux, a converted Chevrolet Silverado). Here at the Los Angeles Auto Show, the company isn't on the press release schedule until tomorrow, but the brand new solar tonneau cover is just sitting out on the convention center floor. So we went to take a look. Jeffrey Esfeld, Via's director of national fleet sales and business development, told AutoblogGreen that the the idea is to use all the real estate available over the truck bed to increase the vehicle's efficiency. The industrial-grade solar panels will take a "fair amount" of abuse, Esfeld said. The new solar tonneau will be available in two versions, 800- and 400-watts, that will both help power the car's battery or, if used at a work site, any power tools running off of the truck's outboard power outlet. If you park the truck in the sun all day, the solar panels can add up to six (in the 400-watt model) and ten (800) miles of range to the battery pack. That's why the company's slogan is "an electric truck that doesn't need a plug." Via will not be announcing the price tomorrow, but since the truck and tonneau will be available in March, we don't expect we will have to wait too long. The truck is supposed to start at $79,000.
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