solar panels

Get your solar panels now! While stockpiled supplies of Chinese panels last!

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It may never be a better time to get solar panels for your home or business. Net metering has not gone away, and prescient solar installers still have reserves of low-cost Chinese solar panels.

As Trump was signing his tariffs on Chinese solar panels into law, solar installers like ICON, located outside Cincinnati, were deliberately stockpiling the cheaper, foreign panels.

ICON System Designer Jaye Meier says he wouldn’t call it “stockpiling.”

“I’d call it smart business,” Meier says.

ICON estimates that the installed cost of solar panels will rise ten percent, once tariffs affect local distributors and installers.

Despite those tariffs, the immediate future for solar is so bright, we’re hearing a term we never thought we would hear: “solar investors.” Depending on your state and the amount of sun exposure on your roof, solar panels will actually make a modest return on investment for some purchasers.

Businesses, in particular, can benefit. A tax policy called MACRS (Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System) allows businesses to depreciate the cost of solar panels directly off their income over five years. Or, if it’s beneficial, a business can take one hundred percent of the costs off its one-year income, according to John Vann, a volunteer with Solarize Indiana.

Vann, himself, is getting his first installation of thirty solar panels. According to his calculations, they will pay for themselves over the next ten years. After that, “it’s free energy,” he says.

With incentives and a discount afforded by Solarize Indiana, his array will cost only $15,000.

You might not think of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky as sunshine states, but ICON started up in 2011, serving just those three states, and business has doubled every year.

“We get more sun than Germany where half the energy is from renewable, says Meier, suggesting that going solar in the U.S. is, maybe, more about will than sunshine.

ICON’s clientele is diverse. They get their expected share of college professors wanting to do the right thing.

But, “It’s not one type of person that I’ve seen,” Meier says. “We’ve got farmers who hate the utilities, got screwed over by them once or twice.”

The Indiana legislature has not incentivized solar power. Instead the state legislature has ruled that it will phase out net metering over the next ten years. Net metering is a system which reimburses solar investors for the excess energy they create at a retail rate.

In Indiana and other states, net metering will be replaced or has already been replaced with “net billing” which reimburses the same investors at wholesale rate. Home owners who take the solar challenge count on net metering to defray the initial outlay for solar power which typically costs something like $20,000 for a full array on an average-size house.

So eliminating net metering hurts the growth of the solar industry. And Trump solar panel tariffs could hurt it some more when stockpiles of Chinese panels run dry.

So why did the use of solar power in Indiana increase twenty percent last year despite politicians at every level legislating against it?

It helps that the cost of solar panels, across the board has fallen eighty percent since 2009, Vann says. And groups like Solarize Indiana are stepping into the breach, securing deep discounts that make solar installations attractive despite disincentives.

“Long term it might be detrimental. But now it might push people into going solar before that [tariffs and loss of net metering] goes into effect,” says Meier.

 

 

Trump undermines solar power, but that hasn’t saved coal

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Trump undermines solar power at the peril of us all.

By Lynn Hamilton

United States President Donald Trump has devastated the solar industry in America without bringing back coal jobs.

You may remember that Trump allied himself with coal during his run up to the presidency. And coal families gave him their unthinking votes.

This is personal for me because I live in Kentucky, and I taught for two years in eastern Kentucky. During that time, I received numerous papers from students about job loss in their families due to the failure of coal. The tone of these papers was always a mixture of victim mentality, nostalgia, and blame.

Trouble was: they didn’t always know who to blame. Former President Barack Obama figured as a convenient scapegoat because of his modest federal incentives for renewable energy. And his insistence that the coal industry moderate its damage to the environment. He gave sustainability a fighting chance, in other words.

Trump undermines solar power while coal miners die of black lung

black lung

But the real reason the coal industry is dying is the same reason whale oil went down as an industry: We’re running out of coal, just as we ran out of whales. Secondarily, both industries are far too dangerous to the front line workers, and

healthy lung

coal cannot be harvested without the same measure of cruelty as was exercised in the mass murder of whales. Just ask anyone whose community was devastated by mountain top removal. Ultimately, coal is an unsustainable

resource for energy.

We need to unmuddle some thinking here: Bashing solar has not brought back coal jobs and will not bring back coal jobs. Coal jobs have steadily declined since 2005. Trump undermines solar power at the peril of us all, because we are running out of coal without a plan B for keeping the lights on.

The national media has not come right out and said that the loss of ten thousand jobs in solar last year is the fault of Donald Trump, but to use a trope from John Oliver:

It is.

It totally is.

Solar companies, large and small, were already nervous when Trump was elected. The threat of tariffs shook the confidence of the industry until the reality of tariffs replaced it. The loss of federal incentives for energy improvements also played its part.

Let’s recap why this matters to animals, particularly wildlife. Coal burning causes carbon dioxide emissions which cause climate change. Climate change is the main reason for mass extinctions of wildlife. Climate change is the main reason that monarch butterflies are declining in numbers. Climate change, among other things, messes with migration. Birds and monarch butterflies can’t figure out when to migrate because weather patterns are so disrupted. Cool autumns whisper “Time to fly” to the hummingbird. When the fall comes with eighty degree temperatures in the Midwest, the birds get confused.

Solar energy disrupts climate change. It does not emit carbon dioxide, therefore it does not make climate change worse. When solar replaces coal, it has the potential to reverse the damaging effects of climate change which include wildlife loss.

Even if you don’t care about wildlife, you should care about solar energy and the solar industry. At least if you care about having your television and laptop turned on. We’re running out of coal without having smoothed the way for a replacement source of energy. This is what happens when you mythologize a fuel like coal instead of viewing it as something that was useful in its day.

 

 

Trump tariffs will further endanger endangered animals

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Trump tariffs will further endanger species on the climate change hit list

Americans need to just accept the fact that the Chinese have gotten ahead of us on solar panel manufacture. China saw an opportunity and ran with it. Americans sat around with their thumbs up their butts, claiming that solar power would never work.

Fast forward about twenty years. Now U.S. solar manufacturers want to be protected from competition from China, where manufacturers have figured out how to deliver efficient products for cheap. China’s motives may have been entirely rooted in profit, but somehow they have become the world’s savior in the fight against climate change.

Instead of crying into our diapers, the U.S. needs to find the next cool, earth-saving technology.

That’s the message U.S. President Donald Trump should have sent to American manufacturers. Instead, he has announced that he is going to impose tariffs on Chinese panels. Tariffs have never worked, and tariffs on China are going to backfire in some huge way that we just didn’t have the imagination to anticipate.

Around this time, you might be wondering what Trump’s tariffs have to do with animals. This is how it works: Trump imposes these tariffs. Fewer people can afford solar panels. Climate change continues apace, destroying many species who simply can’t adapt fast enough to weather extremes and, in particular, changes that affect food supply.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has compiled a list of the top species that are declining rapidly because of climate change. On this list are coral reefs that are the seas’ nurseries. When the coral reefs go, the collapse of the fish industry will only be the beginning. Also on the list are Beluga whales, leatherback sea turtles, koalas, and arctic foxes.

Please sign this petition asking Trump to rescind tariffs on solar energy: https://www.thepetitionsite.com/258/650/626/stop-trumps-war-on-clean-energy-reject-solar-tariffs/

Energy audits are cool

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Some people have a hard time connecting their home’s energy efficiency with animal rights.

But, it might be the case that the best thing you can do for animals is: Improve your home’s energy efficiency. Traditional energy usage causes climate change which leads to the extinction of animals. Animals currently at risk from climate change are polar bears, migratory birds, monarch butterflies, and most frogs, snakes, and other reptiles.

Energy audits typically involve a door blower test that tells you where the cold air is coming into your house. Our energy auditor, Keith Crumes, was the bomb. And we got our energy audit for only $25 through LG&E’s energy rebates program.

Unfortunately, Louisville, Kentucky’s local energy company, LG&E, is phasing out its energy efficiency incentives. Would you please sign my petition to ask LG&E to continue this extremely worthwhile program? Thank you for your support.

Badass Nuns Assume the Lead on Climate Action

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By Lynn Hamilton

In the sleepy town of Nazareth, Kentucky, a revolution is brewing. And it’s led by a band of women in their eighties.

Nazareth is the headquarters of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. Their mission has spread from Kentucky to Belize, Nepal, Botswana, and India where the SCN have established missions, schools, and hospitals.

It will come as no surprise, especially to Catholics, that these sisters have dedicated themselves to the betterment of the poor. What came as a surprise to me was that they now consider the earth to be one of the poor.

You heard right. The Sisters realize the earth is about as desperate as a homeless drug addict. Cataclysmic floods, loss of crops, and loss of endangered species are all predicted outcomes of climate change.  Though their average age in the United States is 82, these sisters know climate change is real, and they are taking action.

That’s why they have declared their intent to make all their residences, schools, hospitals, and other services, worldwide, carbon neutral in the years to come. Their goals for sustainability put most multi-national corporations to shame.

“They’re pretty badass,” says Carolyn Comer, the woman hired by the Sisters to be their Director of Ecological Sustainability.

At a recent meeting of the Louisville Sustainability Forum, Comer explained how the Sisters became radicalized.

It started in 1995 when they got together to create a mission statement. Part of that statement was “care for the earth.”

In time, that commitment manifested as solar panels on the Nazareth campus, energy efficient windows on their historic buildings, and on-demand water heaters. Having done their research, they are buying electric zero turn motor lawn mowers, which are the lawnmower equivalents of a Tesla.

They are in the process of converting all their lighting, both inside and out, to LED lighting. In India, they practice water capture and sequester cow manure for conversion to biogas, with which they cook their meals. They also harvest and use rainwater. One of their hospitals in India is seventy percent powered by solar energy, captured in batteries.

In July, the sisters got together again. And this time they decided that caring for the earth meant they needed to get to zero green house gas emissions. They plan to get there by 2037 in the United States and Belize, and 2047 in the other countries. Comer notes that this goal is aligned both with United Nations recommendations on addressing climate change and with the Paris Agreement.

In addition to that ambitious goal, the sisters are also going zero waste. And that required an assessment of their trash. “We opened up trash cans and weighed things,” said Comer.

They have established recycling stations for eight categories of waste. And they’re brainstorming how to establish composting in individual sisters’ apartments.

One of the order’s resources is its many acres of land, located in missions across five countries. They are sowing native plants, which benefit wildlife, birds, and bees. They are restoring vegetative buffers on their lakes and streams. And they are looking into creating conservation easements to protect natural resources on their land for perpetuity.

“They walk the talk in a way that is really humbling,” says Comer.

The SCN’s “green team” is a subgroup of nuns particularly passionate about fulfilling their zero emission goals. They engaged the University of Kentucky to teach them how to conduct their own energy audits. Once these audits are complete, the goal is to look at the order’s energy consumption and ask “How can we . . . winnow that down?” Comer says.

None of this is pie in the sky. The sisters are well aware that transportation, the leading contributor to climate change, poses an obstacle. They drive an average of 6000 miles a year, each.

That’s not a lot of mileage, comparatively, but “there are a lot of them,” Comer observes. They’ve bought one all-electric vehicle and one plug-in hybrid, and they’re learning to drive them.

“Really, this is where everyone needs to be,” says Comer.

The nuns’ revolution, however, depends on a revolution in airplane technology. These are, after all, flying nuns. But not the Sally Field kind. They fly in fossil fuel-consuming jets. They can’t realize their goals for mitigating climate change until there is a radical new technology for travel.

I guess this is where the faith comes in. I’m not the only one praying for new technology that will let us travel from coast to coast without sacrificing our morality. I know Ed Begley, Jr. prays for that. So, I assume, do the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

Science will need to step up to the plate, too. Come on now, y’all. Don’t let eighty year old nuns do all the work of saving the world.