Cleaning Canton

The Tri-Town News has published an article about the work of the Canton (Connecticut) Energy Task Force. Check out this excerpt:

The Energy Task Force has also researched the status of two local dams, one in Canton and one in Burlington. The Energy Task Force is attempting to assist in the regulatory hurdles of revamping the dams and powerhouses to capture the energy of the Farmington River. Delany said years ago, Canton had an option to buy the energy rights to those two dams, energy sites that could potentially supply enough electricity for 1,500 houses. Delany said simple acts of energy conservation can make a difference, too. "Six compact fluorescents can reduce your consumption," said Delany. "Check out the local light bulb store in Collinsville, they have 200 different types of light bulbs." Delany said the Energy Task Force wants the town to install a special recycling bin at the transfer station for the new energy efficient light bulbs since the new bulbs contain mercury. As the town and individual residents switch over to clean renewable energy, the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund will purchase solar panels for municipal buildings. Delany said any new roofs on Canton buildings should be installed with solar panels to both capture the energy of the sun and to absorb heat, in return, requiring less energy to cool the building. "The electricity from solar panels is a third part source and will not cost the town anything," said Delany. "It will reduce the burden on the grid."With a $5,000 grant from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, the Energy Task Force is actively promoting clean renewable energy awareness and education through grants to local citizens, businesses, civic organizations, and non-profits. Residents interested in joining the committee should call Delany at 693-2561.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm
Enjoy discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Cornwall Energy Fair Nov. 17

Cornwall is the site of an AWESOME Energy Fair on November 17 from 10 am to 4 pm. The location is the Consolidated School, Rt. 128 and Cream Hill Road. Events/exhibits include:

Vendors inc. lighting, energy companies, local food

Auto show inc. electric, vegetable oil, hybrid and diesel

Kids program 10:30-noon (caluculate your ecological footprint)

Panel Discussion about Global and Connecticut Warming
-Roger Smith, Clean Water Action speaking to State Initiatives and home monitoring
_Rebecca Meye Rep. NE Utilities speaking to Green and Sustainable Building
-Jon Harkness, EBM Services

House Tour 1-4 pm featuring solar and geotherman

Film Festival 1-4

An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore Interview with Charlie Rose
Too Hot Not to Handle
Warming of Connecticut

Green: The Pope's New Favorite Color?

You probably always thought the pope's favorite color is red, right? (Exhibit A: those red Prada shoes!) Lately, though, the pope has gone crazy for green, according to a BBC News report published this past Sunday:

The Catholic Church has declared Sunday "Save Creation Day" as Pope Benedict joined about 300,000 young Roman Catholics for an eco-friendly festival.
The youth festival is being held at the shrine of Loreto, in Italy.
In his main homily the Pope urged young Catholics to take better care of the planet and called for "courageous decisions" to safeguard creation.
The weekend gathering is a run-up to the 2008 Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia which he will attend.
We need a decisive 'yes' to care for creation and a strong commitment to reverse those trends that risk making the situation of decay irreversible
Pope Benedict XVI
Wearing green vestments, the pontiff told the crowd it was up to them to save the planet from development which often upset "nature's delicate equilibrium".
"Before it's too late, we need to make courageous choices that will recreate a strong alliance between man and Earth," he said.
"We need a decisive 'yes' to care for creation and a strong commitment to reverse those trends that risk making the situation of decay irreversible."
He focused on water, which he described as a "precious" resource and a potential source of tension and conflict.
On Saturday, the Pope told the crowds to have faith that they can succeed in marriage and decried what he called a "failure of love" and the decline of family values.
But the BBC's David Willey in Rome says the emphasis of the festival as a whole is on the environment, with each participant receiving a free knapsack made out of recycled plastic.
It contains a hand-cranked battery charger, plates and cutlery made from bio-degradable plastic and bags for tying up their rubbish when they leave.
The Pope is also practising what he preaches, our correspondent adds.
He is installing solar panels on the roof of the main audience hall at the Vatican and is paying for a forestry project to offset the Vatican's carbon emissions.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm

Solar Seminar Sept. 8 East Hartford

A Seminar on " What is needed to make Solar Energy Utilization more widespread and effective ? " will be held on Saturday, Sept. 8 at 2 pm at the East Hartford Public Library, 840 Main Street, East Hartford, Conn. featuring presentations by David Henri on " The Example of the PV Initiative in California " and Eugene DeJoannis on " The Example of the German Solar Industry " and Contributions by other speakers. All interested persons are welcome. There is no charge, but please register in advance by calling
(860) 233-5684 or (860) 465-0368 or (860) 489-9555 or (203) 613-4363 or (845) 669-8341.

This event is presented by the Solar Energy Association of Connecticut, a NonProfit, Educational, Public-Awareness Organization. More details are on the Web Site at http://www.solarenergyofct.org/

Waiting for a Solar Power Breakthrough

The solar-powered revolution may require a breakthrough or two in order to become a reality, according to the New York Times article excerpted below:

Scientists long ago calculated that an hour’s worth of the sunlight bathing the planet held far more energy than humans worldwide could use in a year, and the first practical devices for converting light to electricity were designed more than half a century ago.
Yet research on solar power and methods for storing intermittent energy has long received less spending, both in the United States and in other industrialized countries, than energy options with more political support.
Indeed, there are few major programs looking for ways to drastically reduce the cost of converting sunlight to energy and — of equal if not more importance — of efficiently storing it for when the sun is not shining.
Scientists are hoping to expand the range of sunlight’s wavelengths that can be absorbed, and to cut the amount of energy the cells lose to heat. One goal is to make materials to force photons to ricochet around inside the silicon to give up more of their energy.
For decades, conventional nuclear power and nuclear fusion received dominant shares of government energy-research money. While venture capitalists often support the commercialization of new technologies, basic research money comes almost entirely from the federal government.
These days, a growing amount of government money is headed to the farm-state favorite, biofuels, and to research on burning coal while capturing the resulting carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping smokestack gas.
In the current fiscal year, the Energy Department plans to spend $159 million on solar research and development. It will spend nearly double, $303 million, on nuclear energy research and development, and nearly triple, $427 million, on coal, as well as $167 million on other fossil fuel research and development.
Raymond L. Orbach, the under secretary of energy for science, said the administration’s challenge was to spread a finite pot of money to all the technologies that will help supply energy without adding to global warming. “No one source of energy that we know of is going to solve it,” Dr. Orbach said. “This is about a portfolio.”
In the battle for money from Washington, solar lobbyists say they are outgunned by their counterparts representing coal, corn and the atom.
“Coal and nuclear count their lobbying budgets in the tens of millions,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “We count ours in the tens of thousands.”
Government spending on energy research has long been shaped by political constituencies. Nuclear power, for example, has enjoyed consistent support from the Senate Energy Committee no matter which party is in power — in large part because Senators Jeff Bingaman and Pete V. Domenici, the Democratic chairman and the ranking Republican, are both from New Mexico, home to Los Alamos National Laboratory and a branch of the Sandia National Laboratories.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at http://www.irejn.org/.

Mirror Power

The BBC reports about how a new power plant in Spain gets it's power from the sun in a novel way:

It is Europe's first commercially operating power station using the Sun's energy this way and at the moment its operator, Solucar, proudly claims that it generates 11 Megawatts (MW) of electricity without emitting a single puff of greenhouse gas. This current figure is enough to power up to 6,000 homes.
But ultimately, the entire plant should generate as much power as is used by the 600,000 people of Seville.
It works by focusing the reflected rays on one location, turning water into steam and then blasting it into turbines to generate power.

IREJN is Connecticut's Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Connecticut Towns Pledge to Use Clean Energy

A detailed article in the Hartford Courant discusses the 20 x 2010 campaign, and quotes or mentions several members of the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network.
Bloomfield and Branford. Canton and Cromwell. Hartford and Harwinton. West Hartford and Westport.One by one, cities and towns across Connecticut are buying into an energy program that its promoters promise will improve public health, free the nation from its addiction to foreign oil and combat global warming all at the same time.
The grand claims are matched by a born-again zeal. Local governments are asked to "take the pledge" or "make the commitment" to the program. It even uses its own numerology.The key numbers are "20 percent by 2010." They give the program its name and its goal. By joining, cities and towns dedicate themselves to getting 20 percent of the electricity used in their public buildings from clean power sources by 2010. Wind, water, landfill gas: yes; coal and oil: no.The next number is 100. If that many households agree to pay a clean energy premium on their monthly electric bills, a town that takes the 2010 pledge wins designation as a clean energy community. It's a kind of merit badge bestowed by the state, and comes with a prize of a solar energy unit worth $10,000.As of last month, 45 towns have joined the SmartPower 20% by 2010 Clean Energy Campaign, and 20 of those have qualified as clean energy communities. In some, new energy task forces have become permanent parts of local government, like inland wetlands commissions or zoning boards.Almost every week now a town council or board of selectmen hears the clean energy pitch from citizen activists, or from agents of the nonprofit groups nurturing the grass-roots movement.The Windsor Town Council in early April was confronted by two fourth-graders who made it their mission to get the town to join.Alex Simon and Tom McAuliffe said they were inspired by "An Inconvenient Truth," the Al Gore global warming documentary, and decided to research green power for a school project.Tom, in a navy blazer, and Alex, the son of a councilman, read from index cards as they gave a PowerPoint presentation to the council.Joining 20-10 "would provide Windsor kids with a safer, healthier future," Alex told the council.In Bloomfield, Marianne Horn, an attorney at the state Department of Public Health, said residents pushed the council to become a green community."I really think that's the way this change is going to happen and it seems to be mushrooming. I think people are afraid and they're concerned," Horn said. "One of the things that I think helps people feel empowered is to do something concrete like sign up for the clean energy option on their energy bills."West Hartford is a leader among towns already working toward the 20-10 goal. It has three solar panels on the roof of town hall and four more on the way. West Hartford has more residents, 700-plus, paying for the household clean energy option than any other town in the state.The town itself is buying about 1,500 megawatt hours of electricity that can be credited to clean sources, putting it halfway toward its 20 percent goal and way ahead of most other towns. Taking the pledge for clean energy is one thing. Budgeting for it is another.In early 2005, when West Hartford passed its 20-10 resolution and created an energy task force, people were most worried about gasoline and heating oil prices, said Mayor Scott Slifka. But that was before a surge in electricity prices, Hurricane Katrina and "An Inconvenient Truth.""We signed up for the program thinking it was the right thing. I know we didn't think it was going to become as big a deal as it has," Slifka said."Ten years ago, people went `Al Gore is a tree hugger.' Now people go, `Oh, I get it,'" Slifka said. "I think we're very much a model both for what the government is doing, but very much for what the residents are doing on their own."Meanwhile, Hartford may soon leap past West Hartford. On April 19, in honor of Earth Day, the city said it would reach its 20 percent goal by the end of this year.

Clean Power in China

China has a reputation as the world's fastest growing polluter, but that's not the whole story, according to an article in the New York Times.

Physicist Shi Zhengrong spent the 1990s in an Australian lab studying solar power, a field he picked by chance. He expected to devote his life to science.
Still, Shi saw signs of a blossoming industry as Germany, Japan and other countries invested in cleaner power. Excited by a trip home that showed him China's rapid development, he startled friends by abruptly moving his wife and two Australian-born sons to his homeland in 2001 to launch a solar equipment company.
Four years later, Shi's confidence paid off when his Suntech Power Holdings Ltd. went public on the New York Stock Exchange and investors snapped up shares, turning him into a billionaire. Last year, Shi ranked No. 7 on the Forbes magazine list of China's richest tycoons, with a $1.4 billion fortune.
Today, he has traded his research smock for blue business suits, a CEO's 63rd-floor corner office and a role advising the Chinese government on renewable energy policy.
''We believed the share price would go up, but not so quickly,'' said Shi, a 43-year-old with a boyish face, chuckling at what he says was a rise marked by lucky breaks and timing. ''I never thought I would be a rich guy.''
Shi is the leader of an emerging group of Chinese entrepreneurs who are striking it rich by meeting fast-growing demand in China and abroad for cleaner power.
They are getting a boost from China's efforts to curb environmental damage after two decades of breakneck growth that have left it with some of the world's most badly polluted air and water. Chinese leaders also are promoting renewable energy in hopes of reducing mounting dependence on imported oil, which they see as a strategic weakness.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Free Solar Panels Too Good To Be True?

Citizenre promises to install free solar panels on the roofs of thousands of customers who will pay the same price for electricity that they do now. Sound too good to be true? Maybe it is, according to an opinion piece on renewableenergyaccess.com. To date they have no factory and no funding, though they claim their funding is lined up.

So why is gambling on Citizenre's plan a problem? Author Jeff Wolfe sees it this way:

As soon as someone signs up for a Citizenre solar system, they are removed from the pool of potential customers for other reputable solar dealers in the U.S. Already, photovoltaic (PV) dealers are telling me that they are losing business because potential customers are signing up with Citizenre -- people are waiting until the reported 500 megawatt "largest fully-integrated PV manufacturing plant in the world" comes online this fall.But it will be September -- the deadline for the build out of the manufacturing facility and beginning installations will have come and gone -- before reality sets in for these customers when they do not receive their solar system on time as promised. Plans seem poised to fall apart, and at that point we'll have four results:

* A lot of very disappointed and upset people.

* A lot of traditional PV dealers who are out of business.

* Reduced or eliminated federal and state incentives for solar electricity due to a perceived lack of need.

* A solar electric industry in the U.S. that has been set backwards 5 years.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Reducing US Emissions Daunting

An article in the New York Times reports,

Electric power companies, which emit about one-third of America’s global warming gases, could reduce their emissions to below the levels of 1990, but that would take about 20 years, no matter how much the utilities spend, according to a new industry study.
The study also calls for cutting the growth in demand for electricity, which the Energy Department expects to increase at 1.5 percent a year. The study assumes growth of just 1.1 percent a year, which implies a steady decline in electricity use for each unit of economic production.
It also calls for vast growth in wind energy and some solar energy. Renewable energy (leaving out hydroelectricity) now comes to only a little over 2 percent of kilowatt-hours generated; by 2030, it would be 6.7 percent.
The biggest slice, though, is from coal plants that would capture their carbon dioxide, compress it and pipe it underground for sequestration. This is a technology that has been barely demonstrated at this point. But in a little over 20 years, it would have to produce 14.6 percent of electricity supplies.
The technologies required do exist, at least at laboratory scale. But the study does not predict costs and stipulate what is economically feasible.
Many of the changes forecast by the utility group depend on prices and on consumer attitudes. For example, it projects that 10 percent of new vehicle sales by 2017 will be plug-in hybrids, which would carry enough batteries to run a car for the first 20 or 30 miles daily; on days when a motorist went farther, the fuel would be gasoline.
There are no commercially available batteries for that task, however, and hybrids sold today constitute a tiny fraction of the market.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

New England's Largest Solar Facility Unveiled

The Staples distribution facility in Killingly, Connecticut will unveil its new 433-kilowatt solar voltaic power system today. The system, which covers 74,000 square feet of roof space, was installed by Baltimore-headquartered SunEdison through a $1.7 million grant by the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund , at no cost to Staples. The Clean Energy Fund, part of the quasi-state agency Connecticut Innovations Inc., reported that the system could produce enough energy to power 36 homes per year.

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Solar Power gets Hot

Spurred by financial incentives, California residents are adding solar panels to their properities, according to this article in the New York Times.

Companies like NextEnergy provide homeowners with a complete package that includes system design, permit applications, rebate processing, installation, maintenance and warranty. “It was a seamless, painless process,” said Mr. Yuen, whose system cost $16,000 after the California rebate and the federal tax credit, which together saved him $10,000. It was “comparable to having a sprinkler system put in,” he said.

Mr. Yuen, 47, was the first on his block to install a solar system: “In my circle I’m the eco-nut,” he said. But, he said, less than a year later they are quite common in his neighborhood. “A lot of people are really paying attention and beginning to think about the whole environmental cycle,” he added.

A related article about an increase in solar usage in the Northeast includes links to companies who do installation and information about state-based incentives and tax breaks in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. Incentives can cover 40-70% of installation costs. According to the article, consumers in the Northeast can expect to receive about 90% as much power from solar panels as people in California.



Visit us at www.irejn.org.