Back in 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy recognized Milwaukee as a budding leader in the movement to promote solar power at the local level. Nearly a decade later, the city’s success in promoting solar remains handcuffed by an investor-owned utility fighting progress in favor of the status quo.
A pair of rooftop solar arrays in Maryland spotlight how pioneering communities can pool their resources to expand local access to renewable energy. These “community solar” projects are an increasingly popular approach as electricity customers renounce utilities’ reliance on fossil fuel and look for ways to cut their energy costs.
Late last year, San Diego set a landmark goal that made it the largest U.S. city to target a 100% renewable electricity mix over the next two decades. But as the pact’s first anniversary approaches, big questions loom over how exactly San Diego will hit the ambitious benchmark.
Walmart seems to be the store we all love to hate. We blame it for a variety of ills, including predatory pricing that undercuts locally-owned stores, being strongly anti-union, and paying its employees just enough to keep working but not enough to do so without public assistance. Walmart has also … [continued]
Originally published on Cost of Solar. When it comes to residential solar, we live in exciting times, as the price of solar panels keeps dropping, while other energy costs keep rising, and advances in solar technology are increasing panel efficiencies all the time. Given that we don’t often see a … [continued]
The heirs and still majority owners of the Walmart fortune, the Walton family, have been spending millions of dollars in recent years funding a huge number of anti-solar energy groups, according to a recent study from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). If you’re asking yourself, well, what exactly is … [continued]
In this week’s TalkSolar/CleanTechnica podcast, Beth Bond chatted with John Farrell, Director of Democratic Energy at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Regular readers are very familiar with John’s work, as he has been contributing on CleanTechnica since 2011. Nonetheless, it was great listening to John talk about distributed renewable energy benefits, net metering, … [continued]
Roger Willhite recently started up the Disruption! solar energy podcast on Second Silicon. He has been interviewing quite a selection of solar rock stars, such as: Billy Parish of Mosaic Danny Kennedy of Sungevity and SfunCube Bob Tregilus of This Week in Energy and Plug In America Felix Krause of Milk The Sun … [continued]
There’s a certain issue regarding solar policy that often gets to me. I’ve tackled it in several ways, but the policy idea below is one of the more intriguing of options, in my opinion. It stems from research done by academics from the University of Albany, George Washington University, and … [continued]
A few years ago, a heated debate started within the U.S. solar industry about which was more cost-effective: Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) or Feed-in Tariffs (FITs). Now that we’ve had more experience with both policies, the question is again being asked. Researchers at the Institute for Local Self Reliance … [continued]
