Clean Power Planet: Fighting Climate Change

Harvard professor and former Washington policymaker Meghan O’Sullivan was named the 2017 “Energy Writer of the Year” by the American Energy Society for her book Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power and for her New York Times commentary “How Trump Can Harness the U.S. Energy Boom.” That’s just the most recent line on her incredibly impressive resume. A couple of the highpoints include, her current role at Harvard University as Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project. Before heading to academia she served several roles in government. Between 2004 and 2007, she was special assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan. Windfall reveals how the transition from energy scarcity to energy abundance has transformed global politics and boosted American power. In this episode of Clean Power Planet we discuss the geopolitics of energy, which are still largely driven by fossil fuels, but we also dive in on the future of renewables, the pros and cons of natural gas as a bridge fuel, climate change and the need for carbon capture.

Steve Ricketts is a partner in Solar Energy Solutions, the largest and oldest company in Kentucky’s fledgling solar installation industry. Steve and his partner Matt Partymiller and many other solar installers have been forced to drop everything and fight utility-sponsored anti-net metering bills during the 2017 and 2018 legislative sessions. Kentucky is ranked 48th for solar friendly policies by SolarPowerRocks.com. In fact the only policy that keeps Kentucky out of last place is a relatively weak net metering policy. The system size is limited to 30 KW and the total amount of solar that can be installed on any utility’s system is capped at 1% of peak load. Existing systems are a long way from hitting that cap. So, why did the utilities feel the need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists and PR agencies to try to demolish this policy? Steve provides some insight into the utilities’ tactics and offers advice for future net metering battles in Kentucky and other states.

“It’s a lot of memorization and quite honestly was one of the hardest tests I’ve ever taken. I took this test for the first time back in 2007 and you know, me being a 4.0 student back in high school, always getting good grades, when I saw my first practice test came back with like 25% correct, I knew that this was one that I was going to have to put a little more effort into.” ~Pat Flynn on the LEED exam. Pat Flynn, creator of Green Exam Academy I had a chance to go to San Diego recently for Social Media Marketing World. It’s a fantastic event with an unbelievable list of speakers. And it’s the only conference that I know of with a reception on an aircraft carrier. I learned a lot and got back home with a thousand ideas to try out. But the highlight of the trip was getting a chance to interview Pat Flynn who was speaking at the event. Pat’s an author, podcaster, blogger and creator of GreenExamAcademy.com a website that’s helped thousands of people pass the LEED exam. In 2007 Pat was working in an architecture firm and studying for the LEED exam. He started putting all of his notes online and eventually organized it all into a website. Now it’s a huge site with study guides, practice exams and classes. Thousands of people have used it to help prepare for the test. DB: I’m here with Pat Flynn, founder of GreenExamAcademy.com, which is a website that helps you prepare for the LEED exam. So Pat, I’m sure a lot of people have heard the phrase LEED certified and they probably know almost nothing about what that means they know it has something to do with sustainability. Can you give us the background on that. What is the LEED exam? PF: Right, well LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and it’s an accreditation that the United States Green Building Council can give to certain buildings that meet a certain requirement for, like you said,  sustainability and there are a lot of different categories related to things all the way from how the building is designed, to the energy use, to the water usage, all that sort of stuff. But you can kind of see it in two different ways. One, a building can be LEED certified, a building can have the efficiencies or meet the certain requirements to earn LEED certification and a lot of people use that who own a building or who access to buildings in terms of marketing. And it just shows that the environment was considered when the building was going up. But my approach is more for the people who want to become LEED Accredited Professionals, and these are people who study for and then take an exam and pass it to be able to earn the right to work on a building. And a building, in order to to become LEED certified has to have someone who is a LEED AP, somebody who has passed this test, work on this, facilitate that discussion and become the liaison in between the United States Green Building Council and everybody who is working on it. There’s a lot involved with putting a building up and making it LEED certified. But with the test specifically, which is what I work on most with people, through offering practice exams and study guides. It’s a lot of memorization and quite honestly was one of the hardest tests I’ve ever taken. I took this test for the first time back in 2007 and you know, me being a 4.0 student back in high school, always getting good grades, when I saw my first practice test came back with like 25% correct, I knew that this was one that I was going to have to put a little more effort into. So I built a website called Green Exam Academy to really focus on studying for this exam and exactly what we needed to memorize to pass, and 10s of thousands of people have ended up using my site, the free content on the site and some of the items that one can purchase, classes, practice exams to help them pass the test.

“I think one of the most striking memories I had was of helping uncover an entire tanker truck full of chlorinated solvents that was buried in one piece.” ~ Ron Gehl, president EOS Research, Ltd. I’ve got a great show for you today. My guest is Ron Gehl, founder and President of EOS  Research. Ron has spent thirty years tackling difficult engineering problems in environmental protection and renewable energy. He’s also Chair of the Solar Thermal Division of the American Solar Energy Society. We’re going to talk about solar thermal or solar hot water heating, the sometimes underappreciated workhorse of the renewable energy world. Ron started his career in hazardous waste remediation before discovering his passion for solar thermal applications. Ron Gehl, President of EOS Research RG: My name’s Ron Gehl. I’m president of a company called EOS Research and am chair of the solar thermal technical division of ASES. DB: Alright. And where do you live and work Ron? RG: I live in New Hampshire. Our office is in Rochester and I live in the middle of nowhere. DB: So you don’t go into the office everyday then. RG: I try not to but unfortunately I’ve got to spend a little more time there than I would like. I’d rather be out in the field all the time. DB: So, solar thermal. I think a lot of people just don’t know much about solar thermal really. They think of photovoltaic panels when they think of solar. RG: Constant struggle for those of us that are solar thermal practitioners. I’ll just point out that I’m not one of the guys who goes up on the roof and installs solar thermal systems but we kind of approach it from a control systems standpoint and from that angle have been able to see a lot of different systems being installed and what works well and how to optimize performance and all that. But from the standpoint of ASES’s solar thermal division, our work has to be focused on pointing out how much more efficient a solar thermal application is than a comparably sized photovoltaic application. So we’re always three to four times as much energy that can be generated from a solar thermal installation of the same size as a photovoltaic installation. DB: Can you explain why that is? RG: Well it’s basically the process of converting the sun’s photonic energy into useable energy for humans is more efficient when you can transfer infrared radiation to, typically water is the medium that we use in solar thermal, versus converting it to electrons in photovoltaic panels. DB: So you have a whole different set of challenges with using that energy and storing it and transporting it. So give us a flow chart for what a solar thermal system is. RG: Okay. Well you mentioned storage and that’s one of the components of a solar thermal system that is really advantageous. It’s much easier to store solar thermal energy than it is to store electricity of course. But, generally speaking what you have are a series of panels that are of different designs, they can be evacuated tubes they can be flat plates, but generally speaking they’re dark colored and they absorb infrared radiation and the idea is to transfer as much of that as possible to a fluid medium, typically water or a glycol solution, and then bring it down to the ground or to a storage tank where you can actually hold it aside for when you need it or put it to immediate use. So the applications can be as simple as domestic hot water heating. They are increasingly being used for industrial processes or things as mundane as a car wash, that’s a fantastic example of a solar thermal application that’s really beneficial, to even solar cooling applications. So through the use of absorption and adsorption chillers you can actually convert solar thermal heat to cooling that can be very beneficial particularly for larger buildings. We’re going to have a fair bit of content talking about that here at the conference.

“I think it’s the most democratic (little d) form of energy because you can place it almost anywhere. Wind is great. Being in Texas, wind was super great. But wind is also a large-scale technology that you can’t make accessible to most people so I fell in love with it and it got into my blood. So as I like to say I may have studied liberal arts in college but I got in touch with my inner engineer afterward.” ~ Amanda Bybee, Namasté Solar Energy and Business Democracy My guest today is Amanda Bybee, director of strategic planning and initiatives for Namasté Solar, which is an employee-owned solar installation company. She started there in 2006 as employee / co-owner number 5. Amanda’s going to tell us about the benefits and challenges of running an employee-owned company and also how cool her job is. I’m a little jealous actually. But first I want to share something with you. You’ve Got the Power! I’m trying something new with the podcast this episode. Each show will feature a couple of energy saving tips. I’m hoping to use this as a way to inspire myself to start tackling some of the problems with my leaky old house. Maybe you can join in and work on your leaky old house too. I’m not going to give you a big mind numbing list of ways to save energy. Just a couple of ideas each episode that you can try out before the next show. You’ll feel good knowing that you’re doing something real about climate change, or air pollution or mountaintop removal or whatever it is that bugs you about fossil fuel. And we might actually save some money in the process. This episode features energy saving tips related to dishwashing (click here). Our Featured Guest, Amanda Bybee AB: I’m Amanda Bybee, director of strategic planning and initiatives for Namasté Solar and Namasté Solar is a member of the Amicus Solar Cooperative. DB: Okay, Namasté is not your average installation company right? Tell me how it’s different from other solar companies. AB: That’s true. Namasté Solar is an employee-owned cooperative. So we currently have 43 owners and another 40 folks on track to become owners in the course of the next year. DB: That sounds really exciting to me, since I do not work for an employee-owned company, but I’m sure there are challenges too. Forty three owners! AB: To be sure. Forty three owners means you have forty three opinions on any given topic. But, we adopted that model in 2011 as a way to align our operational practices with our governance practices. And under a cooperative you have a fundamental commitment to the idea, one person, one vote. That was really important to us. We’ve always been an employee-owned company. And we’ve always had this sort of egalitarian ideal about the value of a person’s voice and about the value of a person sharing the risk, responsibility and reward of small business ownership. So for us to make that meaningful we engage people on decision making at a lot of levels. It’s not just when you vote for the board of directors but it’s also down to the little things on your team. We employ democratic decision making in a lot of different ways and fundamentally we also think that the cooperative model is a way to address that big wealth inequality that so often exists in our traditional business models. You don’t have much reward for the sweat equity of your workers. Workers generally get their salaries and that’s good, and if they’re lucky some profit sharing but by being an owner in a company you’re fundamentally building in a mechanism to share the wealth when that company does well. DB: How many founders were there? AB: There were three founders in our company, Blake Jones, Wes Kennedy and Ray Tuomey. DB: So that’s the simple part.

This is an historic episode of Clean Power Planet. It’s historic because our featured guest is John Perlin, author of Let It Shine: The 6,000 Year Story of Solar Energy. It’s also historic because Clean Power Planet is one year old. So, happy 1st birthday to Clean Power Planet. If you’ve listened to the first episode then you may remember that I made some pretty big claims. Something about a fundraiser to install solar on low income homes. I may have even mentioned a community solar movement. Was I really that confident? Actually I was pretty nervous about starting a podcast. What if it was horrible? What if I couldn’t get anybody to interview? What if my daughter got fed up with helping me produce it? What if I couldn’t find the time to keep it going? I was sure that was going to be the hardest part. I thought about starting the podcast for a long time. When I finally decided to do it I gave myself an extra incentive to keep it going by announcing that I was going to do a solar fund raising project in that very first episode. I was daring myself to quit. The history of a renewable energy podcast So now that the show has been around for a year I want to take a look back and give myself a report card. First of all I haven’t done a solar fundraiser. I get an F on that one but we’ll come back to it. I have kept the show going. It’s not weekly yet so I’ve got a ways to go there, C+. I think Keaton has done a great job of editing and producing the show and she hasn’t gotten fed up with me yet. She gets an A+. I’m sure that she would rather I just paid her. I have gotten a lot of interesting people to interview. That went better than I could have hoped. I’ll give myself a B+. A lot of amazing things have happened in the last year. I went to the state capital to join in a lobby day for friendlier solar legislation. I managed to get a press pass for a solar finance conference in San Diego even though I only had two episodes posted. I got to interview some of the most prominent speakers. I also got to talk with Nicole Capretz, head of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan. I ran for a position on the board of the Kentucky Solar Energy Society. I didn’t get elected but they asked me to be an ad hoc member and I got to travel to Penn State to represent the society at the American Solar Energy Society’s annual conference. I got to interview a lot of interesting people including many of the ASES board members and Dave Renne, president of the International Solar Energy Society. In October the Kentucky Solar Energy Society hosted six solar tours all across the state as part of the National Solar Home Tour. I organized the tour for my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. I recorded my conversations along the way and produced a solar tour podcast episode. All in all I’m very happy about how the show is going so far but I’m disappointed that I haven’t done a solar fundraiser yet. So it’s time to get to work and make that happen. I will keep you up to date in the coming weeks. It’s good to take a look back every so often and see where you might need improvement. But it’s not nearly as useful as honest feedback from other people. If you have some ideas about how I could improve the show please take a second and send me an email at david at cleanpowerplanet.com. John Perlin, author of Let it Shine: The 6,000 Year Story of Solar Energy My featured guest today is John Perlin, author and solar historian. It’s kind of fitting that he’s on our one year anniversary show. I’m excited that Clean Power Planet has made it to the one year mark and John is excited about telling the world that solar energy has been around for 6,000 years. He’s written four books on solar energy and forestry. His current book is Let It Shine: The 6,000 Year Story of Solar Energy. Mr. Perlin works at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Physics and Student Affairs.

Today’s guest is Lucas Dixon, project manager with Plug Smart in Columbus, Ohio. He helps schools and other organizations improve their energy efficiency and use the savings to fund even bigger energy efficiency projects. …it allows schools to borrow money without passing a levy, a tax levy, to do these types of projects so they can do all the projects up front and the energy services company, when we’re doing a project that’s Plug Smart, has to guarantee those savings. So therefore the school’s not liable for that risk. The energy services company is. So they can do the entire project. If they don’t save what we tell them they can save, that’s on us. Lucas Dixon A lot of the projects that Lucas manages involve replacing old incandescent or fluorescent lighting with LEDs. During the interview I made a joke about Thomas Edison being upset over the imminent demise of his incandescent light bulb. Actually he would probably be excited about LEDs if he were around to see them. As I was putting the show together I realized I didn’t know who invented the LED. So I decided to do a little digging. This episode includes a story about Nick Holonyak, Jr., inventor of the LED. It’s available in a separate post entitled Who invented the LED? Lucas Dixon, Chief of Strategy, Plug Smart Lucas Dixon is just starting his career but he’s already got a pretty impressive resume. He is Chief of Strategy and a project manager at Plug Smart an innovative energy efficiency company. He’s been a board member of Green Energy Ohio and Chair of the Sustainable Transportation Division of ASES. He was co-founder of the 2009 Ohio State University Solar Decathlon Team and an advisor for the 2011 team. He also advises the OSU chapter of the American Solar Energy Society and helps them get ready to go build solar projects in Haiti. DB: Where are you from Lucas? LD: Columbus, Ohio. DB: Did you go to “The Ohio State” by any chance? LD: I certainly did go to The Ohio State University. DB: Okay, what does PlugSmart do? LD: Plug Smart is an energy efficiency company based in Ohio, focused pretty much in the Ohio region. We save energy for customers all across the spectrum, from K-12, Higher Ed, Industrial and Commercial buildings. DB: Okay, Tell us a little bit, go into a little detail about some of the projects that you would do or maybe your favorite project. LD: Sure, so we have done all sorts of projects but the most common trend in projects is using energy efficiency and the savings they generate to fund other capital improvement projects. So, we do a lot of work for K-12 schools in Ohio, and for example we will do LED replacements going from either T12 or T8 32 watt fluorescents to a LED replacement that generates really good energy savings and then you use that energy savings to buy down the cost of maybe a new rooftop units which are more expensive or have a longer payback to get a project that meets the school’s payback requirements. DB: So would the school…? Like let’s say you put in LED lights and does the school have to wait a certain amount of time to see what the energy savings is going to be before they commit money from their budget to the next step? LD: Well actually in the state of Ohio there’s a program called House Bill 264 and it allows schools to borrow money without passing a levy, a tax levy, to do these types of projects so they can do all the projects up front and the energy services company, when we’re doing a project that’s PlugSmart, has to guarantee those savings. So therefore the school’s not liable for that risk. The energy services company is. So they can do the entire project. If they don’t save what we tell them they can save, that’s on us. DB: So you obviously try to be pretty accurate an...

I’m really excited about today’s show. We’re going to explore modular homes and the importance of energy efficiency in making affordable housing affordable. My guest is Lisa Iulo, an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. The homes were solar powered and self-sufficient and everyone got around, of course, in hovering vehicles and things like that. So I guess childhood visions catch up to you at some point in your reality whether it’s intentional or not I guess. ~Lisa Iulo Lisa Iulo, Associate Professor of Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University My guest today is Lisa Iulo, an Associate Professor of Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. She focuses on building a more sustainable future through residential green building practices, affordable housing, energy efficiency and incorporating renewable energy into buildings and communities. She was also heavily involved in Penn State’s 2007 and 2009 Solar Decathlon projects. LI: Lisa Iulo. I’m an associate professor of architecture and I also have a courtesy appointment in architectural engineering. DB: Okay. You gave a presentation yesterday about developing a system for delivering modular homes. So tell us a little bit about what’s involved in that. That seems, like delivering a home, a constructed home is a pretty big project. LI: Well, yes it is and in fact the way that we look at it is perhaps even a bigger project because what we’re less interested in is the end result of the home or as you put it actually delivering the home and putting it on the site, but the process to get to a responsible design for a home that we know is going to be contextually appropriate in the existing fabric of a community, that’s going to enhance that community. And is also going to enhance the quality of life for the person that’s going to be living there. And so what we’re really interested in is how we can look at bringing down the cost of designing a really well-designed, well-insulated, high-performance if you will home that is ultimately going to bring down the expenses that a homeowner living in that home is going to pay over time to afford their utilities and things like that. So to that end we’re really thinking overall about the design process. How we can make sure, a) that designers are involved, that responsible choices are being made in the way that those homes are designed but facilitating a collaborative process that can allow better decisions to be made. One of the difficulties, especially with all projects, and I think you’ve seen some presentations that talk about this. With all projects but especially with housing, it’s very hard for projects to carry the soft costs that are associated with a very rigorous design process early on. So if we can help to disseminate information about just more responsible design choices, you know guiding people towards proper energy efficient wall systems and things like that. Then designers and project teams have perhaps the tools to be able to make better decisions and to design homes that can be site specific and meet those future needs and so that’s what with the kit of parts specifically what we were looking at was whether modular construction could be used to help to facilitate more energy efficient homes. And I think that there’s some research out there that says that this is possible because modular construction happens in a controlled environment. That there can be more oversight of the product. And making sure that things are sealed appropriately, insulated appropriately, that things that need to be done to make sure that energy efficiency is possible. And then by looking at what components technically are a part of that. They can be integrated into those modules so that the decisions and the oversight and some of the inspections happen in the plant, which is the way that modular construction works currently but now we’re focusing it much m...

My guest today is Bill Young who was a senior research engineer at the Florida Solar Energy Center from 1990 to 2013. Some of the bigger utilities are feeling that it’s cutting into their profits. Some of the bigger utilities feel that they should be doing it all and not anybody else just because that’s their mission in life and for their stockholders. They’re supposed to generate electricity so anybody else is competition for their marketplace. So you see some pushback. ~ Bill Young But first I have something to share with you. Floridians for Solar Choice vs. Consumers for Smart Solar The Positive Polarity Report I have a story about a battle over solar rights in Florida that has been unfolding this year. It’s kind of crazy so bear with me. Florida is one of only four states in the U.S. that prohibit anyone other than a utility from selling electricity. The other three states are Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma. Georgia was in that group too but they recently passed a new law. So what does this mean for solar? In other states a solar company can install a system on your roof with no upfront cost. This is often referred to as third-party ownership because the solar company maintains ownership of the system. They sell you power through a Solar Power Purchase Agreement. Typically you buy power from the solar company at a lower rate than the utility charges AND it does not go up over the term of the agreement. The agreement might be for 20 years or more. That’s a great deal because the cost of power from your fossil fuel-based utility is guaranteed to increase over time. Third-party ownership is a great way for people who can’t afford a system to get renewable energy and save money on their electric bill. It’s contributed a lot to the growth of solar in states where it’s allowed. In 2014, third-party ownership made up 72% of the solar system sales in the U.S. Early this year a group called Floridians for Solar Choice was formed with the goal of making third-party ownership legal in Florida. They are a coalition of conservative, business and energy policy groups working on getting a ballot initiative approved for the November 2016 election. That’s a really difficult and expensive process but basically you get signatures on a petition to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot and then voters decide whether it should pass. Their initiative is called the “Solar Choice Amendment.” The amendment would allow businesses in Florida to generate and sell up to two megawatts of solar power to customers on the same or neighboring properties. So solar companies could install a system on your roof and sell you the power or a landlord could install a system and sell power to his or her tenants, or a big retailer could install a system and sell power to adjacent retailers. Getting an initiative on the ballot isn’t easy though. Here are the steps. * Write your amendment, plus a title and summary for the ballot * Register as a Political Committee * Get your petition form approved by the Division of Elections * Wait to be assigned a Serial Number and put it on your petition form * Start getting signatures of registered Florida voters * Submit signed petitions for verification by the supervisor of elections * Pay for the cost of verification, which could be 10 cents per signature. You might be able to get the fee waived but only if you didn’t pay anyone to collect signatures. * Number 8 is a big hurdle. Review by the Florida Supreme court. Once you have 10% of the total required number of signatures the Secretary of State sends the petition to the Attorney General who asks the Supreme Court to provide an opinion as to whether the text of the proposed amendment, ballot title and summary meet all of the legal requirements. The Secretary of State also sends a copy of the petition to the Financial Impact Estimating Conference ...

It’s an economic decision to go solar. And that federal tax credit that gives you 30% of a tax credit off the cost of your solar installation, that’s money that stays in Texas. That is money that stays in Texas and there were other people that were in the room when he said that and their necks snapped back and they were like “Oh, yeah.” It’s a decision. By 2014 there were 7,000 people involved in the solar industry in Texas and that’s a lot of people. ~ Lucy Stolzenburg Lucy Stolzenburg, executive director of the Texas Solar Energy Society I had a great conversation with Lucy Stolzenburg. She has been involved with the Texas Solar Energy Society since 2007 and has served as executive director since 2012. Her position allows her to work with solar energy proponents across the state of Texas. And, she’s not afraid of a little personal sacrifice in the name of energy efficiency. LS: My name is Lucy Stolzenburg and I’m the executive director of the Texas Solar Energy society. DB: Is that several different chapters across the state or? LS: I do have chapters. The Texas Solar Energy Society is a chapter of the American Solar Energy Society, a state chapter and I in turn have four chapters around the state. We have a chapter in Houston. We have one in San Antonio, one in Austin and then one in north Texas, the North Texas Renewable Energy Group. DB: Now are there actually any active efforts for Texas to become its own country? Will we see the Texas Solar Energy Society any time soon? LS: Well I don’t think the Texas Solar Energy Society will go off on its own and secede from ASES. I really appreciate being a part of ASES. It is a very nationalistic place and it stands up to be different from everybody else and my understanding is that our governor is out there again trying to steal from other states. I honestly don’t know how the last governor and this one can go to governor’s conferences and not walk in without a bag on their head. DB: So what is he trying to steal from other states? LS: Industry, industry of all sorts. Industry, corporations, workers. You know, he wants to appeal to high tech. DB: They’re not trying to take actual territory though right? LS: No they’re not surprisingly enough, they’re not trying to take territory but sometimes I think that’s on the back burner. DB: So tell me a little bit about the chapters in Texas and how do you spread the word about solar? LS: The chapters are volunteer. I have a paid position. But the chapters are volunteer. The north Texas chapter is probably my most active chapter as far as the diversity of what they do. They meet monthly, they are at every event in earth month to support solar. They have solar trailers. They’re involved with the high school solar car challenge that brings high school students from across the country with their solar cars. They do the largest solar tour in the state. Last year they have 50 solar locations on the tour. Solar Austin is more involved with policy. They meet monthly, they keep their eye on Austin Energy and keep them honest about solar and try and increase the goals for renewable energy. Solar San Antonio has just merged back with Build San Antonio Green on that idea that you want your residence and your business, the built environment to be as energy efficient as possible before you add solar. Houston is involved in many different things which I can never quite keep track of. But they’re really active and they have made some very interesting points lately. Houston is such an international community that they have the ability to communicate overseas with the family members of these people that are in Houston about solar. So it’s a really interesting approach. They certainly do other things. They are in an oil town. Houston is a tough place to be involved in solar energy. But I have always loved that approach that this is an international town,

My guest is Karl Rábago, Executive Director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center at Pace Law School in New York. By the time the year 2000 came around I was more comfortable in my career and in that year 2000 my granddaughter was born. My first so far and only, but I actually remember realizing that with a little bit of luck and decent health care she would see the year 2100 and I knew I never would. And it gave me pause to think that everything I do will impact what her life is like a hundred years from now. ~Karl Rábago Karl has had a pretty interesting career so far. He’s served as the Texas Public Utility Commissioner and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Utility Technologies at DOE. He’s also worked at the Environmental Defense Fund and the Rocky Mountain Institute. And he was a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger. KR: I’m Karl Rábago, executive director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center. It’s a project of PACE Law School in White Plains, New York. I’m also the co-director of the Northeast Solar Market Coalition or the solar coalition as we call it, an association of solar businesses seeking to harmonize market policy in the northeast United States. DB: Can you give me a little detail on how you work with those solar businesses and what you can offer to them? KR: Well I guess the first thing I should do is talk about the basic construct because this is unusual and I have nothing but great things to say about the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sunshot Initiative because they’re giving us support for this and they bought into our idea. At least enough to execute this cooperative agreement with us. Our premise, our proposition was that the nine northeast states collectively are as big a potential solar market as the state of California. We’ve all heard about how much solar is going on in California. But those nine northeast states, each is an independent unique market with a separate set of rules, conditions, permitting requirements and everything, policies, everything else. And our business associations in that region sat down together and said you know we have a common interest in a common policy. We shouldn’t have to stop driving our truck just because we get to a state line. We should be able to do business in these small states from one state to another. In fact you can be in five states in five hours in that region. So, they went to the Department of Energy and said we want your help in getting the business associations together in a coalition to identify the best possible policies for advancing the solar market and then we’ll reach out to all the other stakeholders. So instead of pre-diluting our position with traditional “one from column A, one from column B” stakeholder collaboratives, the business associations are going to bridge the gap. First identify the best policies and move forward from there. And then we’ll go forth and say this is what we think the best thing for the region would be. We’re finding out there’s a lot of regional cooperative efforts going on in our region and several other regions in the country. And I personally believe that that kind of regional cooperation is really going to push solar markets to their next level. DB: So what are some of the policies that are at the top of your list so far? KR: Okay. We actually have a list of eight but I won’t take you through all of them. They include things like, we ought to have common permitting platforms, the same issues are raised and the same processes are adopted, wherever we can. Full Value of Solar Energy for Customers Who Install It We should have similar policies relating to the qualifications required for solar firms and solar installers. You shouldn’t have to get a different license in every place you go or at least you should be able to work cooperatively under other people’s license for example. In terms of customer installed solar,

This isn’t your typical episode of Clean Power Planet. This is our solar tour episode. October is the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour month and they help local chapters and groups all over the country host solar tours so people can see solar systems on homes and other buildings where they live. If you couldn’t make it on a tour it’s okay. You can join me on the Lexington, Kentucky Solar Tour through the magic of radio (umm… podcasts). If you check out the audio clip you will hear conversations at each stop on the tour, or the ones I made it to anyway. The tour was self-guided so you could pick the homes that were closest. We started out at Bluegrass Community and Technical College where Kevin Jensen and Paul Turner gave us a tour of their Alternative Energy Lab and explained some of the things that their students learn in their Energy Technology program. It allows students that are training to be electricians to get a certificate in solar energy or wind energy. The lab has large boards that look like rolling blackboards except they have solar system components mounted all over them. The back of each board has solar panels and bright lights to simulate sunlight. The front of the board has inverters, charge controllers, batteries and lights to represent a load. Students can hook up all of the components and learn how a system works before they get out onto a job site. Kevin and Paul did a fantastic job of taking us through the highlights of grid-tied solar systems and also showed us how they installed a 5 kilowatt PV system on campus. They also gave us a practical demonstration of wind energy with a small turbine in the lab. Matt Partymiller and Bill Slater from Solar Energy Solutions gave us a preview of some of the systems on the tour, most of which they had installed. Matt has been very active over the years in reaching out to state legislators to try to make Kentucky more solar-friendly. He described some of the challenges in the state and also talked about some of the large systems that will soon be coming online in Kentucky. After the Q&A session, a few donuts and some grumbling about Kentucky’s solar energy regulations we headed outside to look at the PV system. This is probably the only podcast with an advisory panel. The members of the panel include an attorney, a paralegal and three college professors. It’s made up of my neighbors and my wife. The panel’s primary responsibility is to give me feedback and listen to me talk about the podcast. The panel members are appointed and they cannot resign. Most of the advisory panel attended the first stop on the tour and I got a chance to talk to them as we looked at the school’s solar array. Next was the self-guided home tour. Five homeowners across Lexington put their homes on the tour this year. Some of them hung out in their front yard talking to people on the tour so they could explain their solar systems and answer questions. Matt and Bill went to several of the homes to answer questions as well. Jamie Clark, who recently launched Synergy Home, a solar energy and energy efficiency company, was on hand at his house to show people the system that he installed and talk about how he reduced his energy needs during a complete remodel. I went to three out of the five homes on the tour, including Jamie’s. Here is an excerpt from our conversation. JC: I can take somebody and for about $3,000 worth of insulation probably knock five panels off the load and make it a lot more efficient.

“Where I first kind of noticed that was In tenth grade biology and we did a yeast culture. I remember distinctly. A little petri dish and you put these little yeast cells in there and then you looked at ‘em through a microscope and you counted them in a little grid system and I learned how to do that and then you let them sit for a while and we just charted the growth of the population and it was pretty cool…. It started going up and then it really started going up and then it kind of flattened off and then it dropped off and that’s when I started thinking about, well if you consume all the food and you pollute the environment that you live in it’s unsustainable.” ~ David Panich, chairman, American Solar Energy Society. Passive Solar and the Wisdom of Yeast My guest today is David Panich, chairman of the board of the American Solar Energy Society. David is an architect who has worked with passive solar building design and energy efficiency since the 1970s. Now he’s the chairman of the board of the American Solar Energy Society. Here is a transcript of our interview. DP: My name is David Panich. I’m an architect. I worked for a variety of architectural firms around the country, upstate New York, Oregon, Ohio, and then in 1981 I formed my own firm that I ran until 2009. And then I moved away from Ohio and kind of semi-retired and I became way more involved in ASES when I left my practice and somehow ended up being the chairman of the board of ASES this last year and a half and for the remainder of this year. DB: So you’ve had a lot of different jobs over the years with ASES. Can you talk about a couple of those? DP: Yeah, I’ve been chair of the sustainability division. ASES has 9 divisions and I’ve been chair of two of them. One is sustainability. The other is solar buildings. And after a year or two of solar buildings I was nominated for a board position representing the division and in ASES we have representatives of chapters and divisions and then the general membership on the board and after a couple of years on the board as a representative of the buildings divisions I became the chair. So that’s kind of the genesis of how I got here. DB: A lot of people when they think of solar they think of blue photovoltaic panels on a roof. ASES has a long history of reaching across all different types of solar and even other forms of renewable energy I think. DP: That’s true and the forms are all represented in our technical divisions. We’ve got nine divisions and it ranges from clean water energy to solar resource assessment to sustainability which is kind of a catchall division. We have a solar electric, we have solar thermal, we have concentrating solar power. So most of the technologies that one would consider to be a solar technology. Wind actually is a division also because it’s uneven heating of the earth that causes the wind. And pretty much all of those things are a solar technology and in fact you know when you think about it coal is kind of one too since those were plants that decompose but that’s kind of a much longer story. But yeah we have the divisions and those are the areas. And one tough one is how do we fit efficiency in here because really energy efficiency is as important as generating energy. The watt you don’t use is just as valuable as those you create. So we also have an emphasis, I believe in our mission statement, actually about efficiency also. DB: What is the mission of the technical divisions or how do they benefit the move toward clean energy? DP: ASES is a fairly all-encompassing organization. The divisions give people who have a specialty interest a place to land I think, some identity, and hopefully the ability to communicate with their peers. The other function of the divisions really is this conference. We have a call for papers that goes out. And in that call for papers people respond and we generally try to steer the ...

Bill Spratley, Executive Director of Green Energy Ohio I had a chance to speak with Bill Spratley, Executive Director of Green Energy Ohio since 2001. Bill worked as a consumer advocate and consultant in the utility industry for many years and served on U.S. DOE advisory boards under Carter, Bush and Clinton. He spent 16 years as Ohio’s first consumer’s counsel and founded the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. I would say Green Energy Ohio is pretty lucky to have an executive director that brings that much industry experience to the organization. I talked with Bill at the American Solar Energy Society’s Solar 2015 conference and we covered a lot of topics. BS: My name is Bill Spratley. I’m the Executive Director of Green Energy Ohio, a statewide non-profit that promotes renewable energy. We’re the Ohio chapter of the American Solar Energy Society or ASES. DB: About how many members do you guys have? BS: We have about 400 members across the state. About 80 of those are businesses in the clean energy business, solar, wind, energy efficiency. DB: Ohio has had some ups and downs recently in renewable energy. You guys were kind of on a roll. BS: We’re here at the ASES conference. At the 36th conference which was eight years ago in Cleveland we have 5,000 people and the theme was making America sustainable and the idea was to talk about green jobs. We actually released a study, one of the first green jobs studies that was ever released. And what we showed at that conference was how solar can put people to work and we’re one of the leading states that makes solar panels. We have a big First Solar plant and we’re also the number one state that makes parts for wind turbines because we make things in Ohio. So the connection to jobs is very important in the state of Ohio and it even got bigger as we went through the recession. But the year after the 2007 event we passed in Ohio a renewable portfolio standard. We were the 25th state to finally join the rest that had done that and in the several years after that Ohio had one of the most aggressive renewable portfolio standards. And we put into the ground two big wind farms. We now have almost 1,600 solar arrays across the state. We have other forms of renewable energy. A year ago the state legislature unfortunately froze our renewable standard and changed the setbacks for wind farms. So, we have been put on hold, but the interesting thing is and edict of the legislature doesn’t stop technology. So we still have, in particular, municipal utilities and big corporations putting up very large solar arrays in Ohio. And we’re hoping that our state policy makers will see the light. What they did in Ohio really hasn’t caught fire. Texas recently rejected an attempt to roll back the RPS for example. It’s a big state like Ohio. And so we’re confident that the technology will win out in the long run. So I think what it shows is that when solar gets a foothold it becomes a threat to some utilities and interest groups that are protecting the fossil interests in particular. Now personally I think we need natural gas. It has half the emissions of coal. We’ve seen Ohio’s reliance on coal subside as it’s replaced by natural gas. We need baseload units like that but we also need solar and wind and the price keeps coming down and ultimately General Motors has two factories that have big solar arrays. They’re not doing it because they want to say they’re green so much. They’re doing it because it’s saving them money and I think that the economics are going to continue to go in our favor and I think we’re going to see a lot more solar and wind in Ohio and across the United States and the world. DB: This is well beyond the treehugger level now right? It’s about the other kind of green which is money.

Dr. Jeffrey Brownson of the Pennsylvania State University My guest this week is Dr. Jeffrey Brownson from the Pennsylvania State University. His focus is solar energy research and education. I spoke to him at the American Solar Energy Society conference, which was hosted by Penn State. Dr. Brownson is also on the board of the society, where he represents the interests of students and faculty. He also directed Penn State’s 2009 Solar Decathlon project. If you’ve never heard of the solar decathlon I think you will be amazed at what goes into it. JB: My name is Jeffrey Brownson. I am associate professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State University. I work primarily on solar energy research and education. I am also the faculty lead for the solar option in the online master of professional studies program for renewable energy and sustainability systems. DB: That’s a lot. Quite a few hats there. Is your background in electrical engineering or? JB: I’m actually a scientist by training. I am both a materials scientist and a field systems scientist. I have experience in geosciences, environmental chemistry, materials science and I have grown into the solar field over the last two decades essentially to become a solar researcher in materials and systems. That was actually kind of enacted by the solar decathlon of 2009, where I became the faculty director as I arrived at Penn State and became really caught up in solar as a whole systems approach. DB: That’s a really exciting project. Can you tell us a little bit about how the decathlon works? JB: The solar decathlon is targeted at students, faculty and peer partners through institutions and companies, gathering together and forming an enterprise to design, build and operate a small but completely solar powered home. And that home is then demonstrated and is part of a competition of ten different evaluations over the period of a week. In our time it was in Washington D.C. on the national mall and has since become a project in China and Europe and now will be rolling out in California. DB: So they hold it every year? JB: It happens every two years, which is actually advantageous because it’s a huge enterprise so even in two years you’re cutting it really tight. But what it does is it builds human capacity in understanding solar power, in understanding energy efficient building design and really in enabling a younger generation of emerging professionals to come forward and become leaders for the next generation of renewable energy, sustainability and energy efficient buildings. DB: So there are so many different technologies that go into a house like that. I can’t imagine all of the systems you have to put together. JB: Right and I think that was an exciting part of the solar decathlon. It really transforms what students and faculty might have originally thought of as a project into a whole collection of projects and really what I like to think of as an entire enterprise, so you’re bringing together people from many different disciplines. You have to make sure that you have architecture faculty and students as well as engineering faculty and students, communications people, we had people who were in industrial engineering just helping us to understand how our teams coordinated together so we got the highest efficiency for project development out of the event. And those were just naturally occurring features of this. And I think it really came about because we knew we were in a competition, we knew we were trying to succeed but we also didn’t know what we were doing. So, we kind of put anything together all at once and hoped for the best and that leaves a lot of room for creativity and new innovation. DB: Well I didn’t realize that that competition moved every two years. JB: It’s now moving. There was a period where it was on the national mall for at least four or five competitions and then it started go...