by John Farrell, via Energy Self Reliant States

When you subtract out shady roofs, renters, and other factors, only about 25% of Americans have a place to install solar power.  With the high upfront cost of a complete system, the potential solar universe shrinks further.

That changes with “community solar.”

After a long wait on the state’s Public Utilities Commission to finalize the rules, Colorado’s “community solar gardens” program (my summary here) sold out in 30 minutes when it opened yesterday, testament to the pent-up demand for solar among who don’t own a sunny roof.  The program allows individuals to subscribe or buy shares in a local solar project, and in return receive a share of the electricity output.

The community solar garden policy offers several significant benefits:

• Individuals can go solar without a sunny roof or without owning one at all.
• Individuals can buy as little as a 1 kW share or as much as produces 120% of their own consumption.
• The solar garden projects capture economies of scale by building more panels at a single, central location and capture the advantages of decentralization by interconnecting to the distribution (low voltage) part of the electricity grid close to demand.
• Solar gardens cultivate a sense of ownership and geographic connection, requiring subscribers to live in the same county as their shared solar array.  This can reduce political opposition to solar projects and increase local economic benefits.

Fortunately, Colorado isn’t the only state considering this policy.  California’s legislature is currently debating SB 843 to allow “community shared solar” and other renewable energy.  Several other states offer a blanket policy called “virtual net metering” that lets customers share the output from a single renewable energy facility, although sometimes it’s limited to certain types of customers (municipalities, residential, etc.)

John Farrell directs the Energy Self-Reliant States and Communities program at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This post was originally published at the Energy Self-Reliant States blog and was reprinted with permission.

by Auden Schendler

Not being served a cheeseburger because you’re African American is about as in-your-face as it gets. Climate change, while increasingly omnipresent, is never quite so personal. And that’s why calling for a civil rights style revolution on climate might not be the best analogy.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve used the comparison myself, and we certainly need to achieve the same scale as civil rights. But how we get there will be different.

When you’re denied service in a restaurant, there’s no questioning the level of effrontery. But when it’s extra hot, or when a corn crop fails, or if disease spreads or food prices go up, or even if you house gets burned down by a wildfire or flooded by a hurricane, it’s still one-off from obvious, even if it shouldn’t be.

That plausible deniability—fires and floods happen; it’s been really hot before—means it’s going to be harder to mobilize at the grassroots than it was for civil rights. Climate science is just too mercurial: it can be greased out of a layperson’s hands too easily; it falls prey to doubt and poor reporting far too readily. The same level of confusion could not be created around, say: apartheid, taxation without representation, or gay marriage. And therefore it’s going to be hard to generate the same outrage, a key ingredient of grassroots movements.

So if the civil rights model won’t work for us, how do we get the change we need as temperature records fall and a year long drought batters our families, food supply and economy?

The revolution will have to be led by those entities that are not being served cheeseburgers, the “lunch counter constituents.” By definition, these are not grassroots citizens, but more like treetrunk elements of society—much bigger, much more powerful. Treetrunk entities are equipped to understand climate, viscerally feel its impact, and drive big scale change. What, or who, are they? In particular, they are corporations—and their CEOs—who are seeing the threat posed by climate to businesses in every realm.

Last week, I had dinner with a friend who works for AT&T, which has great hopes for business development in Sub-Saharan Africa as governments become more stable. Their work there will create jobs, improve people’s lives, and make money. But not if we don’t fix climate change, which has a bullseye on Africa. International telecom is being denied its cheeseburger, and it should be pissed!

Other treetrunk activists include the insurance industry (Munich and Swiss Re have been active on climate for years), snowsports, agriculture, and coastal resorts. As an example, Mammoth ski resort lost $30 million last year and laid off a quarter of its employees, including their energy efficiency guy. The whole U.S. ski and snowboard industry got a taste of a climate changed world last winter. The industry’s hair should be on fire! Starbucks and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters are already quite active because of the threat posed by climate. Nike has been cranking on climate for years now. Other treetrunk mobilizers include professional athletes and celebrities. The Portland Trailblazers, crazily, are outspoken advocates of climate action. Citi has some of the most innovative financial solutions to climate change going, though it isn’t an activist on the issue…yet.

A group I serve on the board of, Protect Our Winters, is trying this sort of activism within the snow sports community (a part of the even bigger outdoor industry, worth some $650 billion) by mobilizing enormously influential and sexy winter athletes who care about climate change (all of them do), as well as the industry’s business leaders and event sponsors, to create pressure for policy change. Town governments are also taking charge, with many municipalities creating their own movements. New York, painting its roofs white, fully groks climate’s threat and key solutions, along with other leading cities like Chicago, Seattle, Austin, and Portland.

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A cyber-penny for your thoughts.

By Joel Pett, the Cartoonist Group