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When I dropped my son off for his first day of school this morning, I wish I could have bottled the excitement and energy generated by twenty eight-year olds and their parents–enough to power the entire campus, I’m certain.  Before you get too deep into school-year inertia, harness the back-to-school buzz by finding parents who are interested in taking steps to help your school go green.

Your first stop is the Green Schools Initiative where you’ll find a Green School pledge and resources to help your school become more energy-efficient, phase out the use of toxic cleansers and insecticides and serve healthier lunches.

Schools are huge consumers of energy, food and other products, many of which can be very damaging to young bodies (and old planets).  There are plenty of eco-friendly alternatives on the market (which you can browse on the Green Schools website)–its a matter of educating parents and school officials on the importance of making the switch, which sometimes costs a little more. Don’t forget to check out the solar schools resource page.

And speaking of solar schools, we’re inspired to learn that the Anaheim Public Utilities (APU) has helped four Anaheim schools go solar and is accepting applications from other schools.  APU pays for 80% of the cost of the system, and the school covers the balance.

Talk to other parents to find out what their top concerns are–indoor air quality, nutrition, energy efficiency, paper conservation–whatever issues resonate, focus on shifting your school’s purchasing policies there first.  Change doesn’t come quickly to most schools, so choose your battles wisely and prepare to be persistent.

If you’re in California, you may want to go to the Green Schools Summit in Pasadena on December 8-10 or the Youth Energy Summit in Sebastopol on September 21.  Denver folks check out the U.S. Green Building Council’s Green Schools Conference on October 4.

–Erica Etelson

If you’re a driver, hopefully you know not to pass on the right, sail through red lights or talk/text on your cell phone.  But when it comes to driving for maximum fuel efficiency, it’s back to driving school for most of us.

At cleanmpg.com, you can pick up tips from a community of driving geek extraordinaires who have honed the art of “hypermiling”–techniques for squeezing the most out of every drop of fuel in any make of vehicle.  The savings are far from trivial–these guys (yeah, they’re all guys) have been able to double their gas mileage.

Beyond the obvious strategy of slowing the heck down, hypermiling involves new and improved methods of braking (including the controversial “no-brakes” method) and, for barrels of fun for the whole family, the “rabbit timing” approach to traffic lights.  There’s a good overview of many hypermiling techniques here.

So hang up that cell phone and start hypermiling your way toward fuel efficiency nirvana.  With the money you save on gas, you can get yourself a solar water heater or some LED lights.  And with the money you save from those items, maybe there’s a Tesla Roadster in your future after all.

–Erica Etelson

If you’re like most people who live anywhere other than Alaska or San Francisco, you spend 20% of your utility bill on air conditioning.  You can shave quite a bit off that bill by installing a whole house fan.

According to Consumer Reports, installing a whole house fan is particularly effective in dry climates that are hot during the day and cool off at night.  Whole house fans are pretty simple–they draw in cool air and force out hot air. If used in conjunction with air conditioning, the A/C won’t have to work nearly as hard to keep the house cool.

Larger fans run more quietly especially if installed with rubber or felt gaskets.  And be sure to also install an airtight cover over the opening so that you don’t have heat loss in the winter.

Many utilities offer rebates for whole house fans so check into that before buying.  For more ways to cope with summer heat without destroying the planet, check out the EPA’s list of low-cost and no-cost tips.

–Erica Etelson

Local event to raise awareness about home solar systems and the environment

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 22 /PRNewswire/ — The Sierra Club today announced “The Truth About Solar,” a green home technology workshop designed to teach local homeowners about residential rooftop solar energy. This is the second in a series of Green Home Workshops the Sierra Club is offering free to the public. Danny Kennedy, Sungevity founder and 12-year veteran of Greenpeace, will lead the discussion.

The workshop is designed to teach homeowners about solar and the environment and help them decide whether solar is right for their homes. Topics such as calculating installation costs, energy savings and carbon footprint reduction will be covered. Solar system financing programs like the no money down solar lease will be covered along with programs that are available from the government in the form of rebates and incentives.

“Solar energy is a critical part of America’s drive toward energy independence,” said Larry Reed, chapter director of the Sierra Club’s Loma Prieta chapter. “It is a renewable resource that reduces home energy bills while being good for the environment.”

Danny started his work with Greenpeace in the 1990s where he worked to protect a fragile ecosystem in Africa from an oil project. He has worked as an activist for his entire career to protect the environment and encourage renewable sources of energy. Danny’s interest in solar began in the late 90s, when he worked on campaigns and helped to pass legislation supporting solar initiatives in California and in 2007, Danny founded Sungevity with the idea in mind to make solar powered homes a reality in the US.

“We have helped over 500 homeowners in California, Arizona and Colorado install solar systems and we understand the complexities they face when deciding how they can create energy efficient homes,” said Danny Kennedy, founder of Sungevity. “The great thing about residential solar today is that the technology has come a long way and power can be generated for less than $.20 per Kilowatt Hour and with finance programs that offer no money down leases, homeowners that decide to go solar can start saving money on energy bills immediately.”

Event Details

When: Tuesday, July 27th at 7:00 p.m.

Where: Belmont Library – 1110 Alameda de las Pulgas

Cost: Free- all are welcome

More info: http://greenhometechnology.wordpress.com/

About The Sierra Club, Loma Prieta Chapter

The Sierra Club, Loma Prieta Chapter is a multifaceted outdoor recreation and advocacy organization. The chapter advocates for policies that protect the natural environment, supports environmental candidates for public office and provides opportunities for people who want to develop leadership skills to give back to their communities. It serves San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Benito counties. The chapter’s Black Mountain Group is spearheading the Green Home Technology Workshops.

About Sungevity
Sungevity has designed a unique online sales process to make it easy and affordable for homeowners to go solar. Sungevity’s Solar Lease offer gives most customers savings from the start. For many the electricity bill savings start immediately and increase over time. Sungevity has an easy online “iQuote” process, which enables Sungevity to use satellite images and aerial photography to assess customers’ roofs remotely and accurately determine the homes’ solar potential. This allows the company to furnish thousands of customers with a firm proposal to use solar power with no capital cost within 24 hours.

The City of Berkeley has launched a “Money for Energy Efficiency” Program. The program will allow 120 homes to receive up to $8,500 in rebates for energy efficiency improvements.

The rebates can be applied to:

o   Comprehensive Energy Audit

o   Attic, Wall & Floor Insulation

o   Draft and Duct Sealing

o   Energy Efficient Lighting Improvements

o   Door, Window, Furnace & Water Heater Replacements

The funding comes from federal stimulus money awarded to Berkeley by the U.S. Department of Energy under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and will be awarded to homeowners though a lottery.

To sign up for the program go to the program website and submit your application before the July 20 deadline.

Remember, energy independence starts at home.

-Nat Smith

Earlier this week, I blogged about how to move toward an energy independent home.  Energy independence begins at home, but it doesn’t end there.  Today, let’s paint a picture of an energy independent community. (First, get inspired by this vision-in-motion created by Ecocity Builders).

When we shift our focus to the community level, it’s all about interdependence.  Unless we’re living in a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel, we are reliant on our neighbors, our nearby farms and our municipal services to meet our everyday needs.  An interdependent community, then, is one in which residents, small businesses and government agencies work together to ensure a decent, sustainable quality of life for everyone.

As in Step 4 of the home energy independence program, an interdependent community must define its needs and develop a long term strategy for how to sustainably meet them. For example, most everyone would agree that we need food, water, shelter, electricity, medicine, clothing, transportation, waste management, parks and education.  And some might recognize that while we might want plastic toys from the dollar store, the latest i-thing, 6-packs from Safeway, and suburban dream homes, we don’t actually need these things and cannot expect to have access to them forever.

In an interdependent community then, the emphasis is on small and local.  Power is distributed on rooftops or through a small wind or solar generating station.  Food comes from the regional foodshed.  Businesses are small and carry locally-made goods.  People get around on mass transit and bikes.  A few electric vehicles are available for deliveries and for people with mobility limitations.  People know their neighbors and share tools, appliances and skills.  Maybe there’s a community center with a communal washing machine, tool lending library, medical clinic, daycare and senior center.  Next door is a farmer’s market and bike repair shop.

It may sound like ecotopia, but some communities are in fact already moving in this direction. Residents of University Park, Maryland formed an LLC that is installing a distributed solar power system on the roof of a local church.  The super-green, zero-waste, solar-powered Sonoma Mountain Village in California was designed from the outset around the concept of the “five-minute lifestyle”, meaning everything residents need is a five-minute walk away.  And the redevelopment plan for Treasure Island (a former naval base in the San Francisco Bay) aims to be the most environmentally sustainable community in the world.  The new-and-improved Treasure Island will (if all goes according to plan) be home to a 22-acre farm and a network of bike lanes, buses and open spaces that will help the majority of residents ditch their cars. Wind, sun and biogas will completely power the island’s homes, all of which will be built for maximum energy efficiency.  Both Sonoma Mountain and Treasure Island guarantee that a significant percentage of the housing stock will be affordable for low-income residents.

Towns can be redesigned or built sustainably from scratch.  As with most things, the constraints are political, not technological or financial.  What interdependent qualities does your town enjoy, and what steps toward sustainability is it contemplating?  Get the conversation going like this community in Alexandria, Virginia is doing.  And if anyone tries to tell you that ecocities are an idealistic fantasy, you might reply that they’re nowhere near as unrealistic as the notion that the fossil fuel joyride will go on forever.

–Erica Etelson

“At first glance, going solar can seem like a no-brainer, especially if you live in a solar-friendly state like California or Arizona. Residential solar panels not only drastically reduce your carbon footprint, they can also trim your electricity bill to a fraction of its pre-solar total. Who wouldn’t consider making the leap? Well, for starters, people who don’t have an extra $30,000 lying around to make the initial investment–the average cost of a residential solar system. But solar leasing, a new way to finance those Earth-friendly panels, is making going green a whole lot more affordable.”

Read the rest of today’s Idea at the Atlantic.com

Planning to travel this summer? Whether driving down the coast or flying to Italy, many eco-conscious travelers buy “carbon offsets” that (in theory) cancel out the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions their trips generate. Here’s how it works: Let’s say you fly round-trip from Los Angeles to New York. You visit the website of a carbon offset company which calculates your GHGs for this little jaunt (two tons). The company then offers you the opportunity to buy carbon credits to offset your flight.  If that sounds like a sin tax on fossil fuel consumption, it is just that.

Different offset companies do different things with the money you pay them-some are scam artists that do nothing, some plant trees, some build wind farms or turn cow poop into electricity. It’s important to choose an offset company that makes the most of the cabbage you fork over. When choosing a company, look at how much carbon per dollar they offset-in other words, if you pay $50, will they be able to offset two tons of GHGs or five or ten? And examine whether the offset measurably displaces carbon emissions. For example, I like Native Energy because it uses the money I give them to build wind farms which directly reduce the amount of coal being fed into the electric grid. Offset companies that sequester carbon are dicier, because it’s hard to measure the amount of carbon being sequestered, and it’s hard to know whether the company is actually doing something that wouldn’t have happened anyway. On the other hand, some sequestration activities like tree planting and soil restoration have other important ecological benefits in addition to carbon capture.

Here are a few carbon offset companies that have a proven track record of converting offset dollars into renewable energy projects: Native Energy Solar Electric Light Fund TerraPass Climate Friendly

I can’t end this blog without raising the issue of whether the whole concept of carbon offsets even makes sense.  Sungevity customer Annie Leonard of Story of Stuff fame has created a new short video called The Story of Cap and Trade.  It debunks the notion that we Americans can keep on partying and count on a cap and trade scheme (or scam) to keep atmospheric carbon at safe levels.  As author Dan Welch put it, carbon offsets “are an imaginary commodity created by deducting what you hope happens from what you guess would have happened”. The only sure way to keep carbon out of the atmosphere is to keep it in the ground.  That means traveling to Yosemite instead of Patagonia and powering your home with renewables instead of with coal. So if you’re now feeling skeptical about the whole carbon offset concept, here’s another idea: Go to one of the sites above to calculate your sin tax, then donate that amount to an organization that is working to stop climate change. 

Sungevity “offsets” its emissions by donating money to Vote Solar, the Alliance for Climate Protection and 350.org.  My personal favorite is 350.org because it is one of the few groups that is willing to tell it like it is:  We must get to 350 ppm of atmospheric carbon, not 700, not 450, 350, end of discussion.

–Erica Etelson

“Yesterday, the California Secretary of State announced that the Texas Oil Companies’ “Dirty Energy Proposition” has qualified for the November 2010 statewide ballot.

In response, leading California business, public health, senior, and environmental groups promised to fight this deceptive ballot measure that would kill California’s landmark clean energy and air pollution reduction law (read the press release here).”
Read the rest of Danny’s CityBrights post here.

Finally, it’s officially Summer! Today is the Summer Solstice and marks the official start to the sunny season. The word solstice comes from a combination of the Latin words “sun” and “to stand still.” The summer solstice is the day that the sun shines the longest in the Northern Hemisphere (including an awesome 24 hours of sunshine at the North Pole!).

For the new generation of solar energy producers, the Solstice marks much more than the start of summer but rather is a day that we can celebrate our greatest energy production.

Like the cultures that have always celebrated the Summer Solstice, let’s celebrate too. Let’s celebrate our march away from our dependence on fossil fuels, let’s celebrate a cheap way to produce energy, and yeah, let’s celebrate summer!

Happy Summer Solstice!

-Nat Smith