As the Down:2:Earth exploration of sustainable living continues this weekend over at the Hynes, I thought I’d highlight a couple of stories from the solar energy industry that caught my attention this week.

The Herald picked up a brief story on Thursday about a New York energy company, Allco Renewable Energy, signing a letter of intent to build an 8 Megawatt solar power plant on a 100 acre former pig farm in Coventry. The site in question had been designated a superfund site in the 1980s. The proposal would be the biggest solar generation site east of the Mississippi, with 8 Megawatts, enough to power about 5,200 homes.

Sounds like a win win, right. But things are not so simple.

The Providence Journal reports that National Grid is opposing the project because of related legislation that would require the utility to buy the energy generated by the solar farm at a set rate over a fixed period of years.

That rate is about 4 times higher than the current wholesale cost of energy and National Grid says it will increase costs to rate payers. Allco told the Journal that if the legislation doesn’t pass, the project won’t go anywhere and both side of the issue are arguing about the numbers.

This one bears watching because it will provide an example of the willingness of elected officials to push policy in favor renewable energy, or back off and favor the status quo instead.

Elected officials can successfully push policy in favor of renewable energy as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has shown. In August, 2006, Schwarzenegger signed an Executive Order he dubbed the Million Solar Roofs Plan. The initiative paid dividends this week with a major proposal to develop 250 megawatts of solar generating capacity on existing commercial rooftops in Southern California - 250 Megawatts would provide power to about 162,000 homes.

The greatest level of detail on the proposal is provided by the Green Wombat blog.

This is a great plan for a lot of reasons. First, it creates the generating capacity on existing development. It takes advantage of already developed turf. Second, it’s a de-centralized plan that takes advantage of existing electrical infrastructure. As Green Wombat points out, the idea for solar farms in the desert is great, but add in the cost of new high voltage transmission lines, and costs increase substantially.

Finally, the utilities are on board.

Joining Schwarzenegger on a rooftop in Fontana were officials from Southern California Edison which will be the lead developer of the $875 million project. The plan would develop solar capacity on approximately 65 million square feet of rooftops.

Just because Schwarrzenegger’s initiative is paying off now does not mean it was a layup in the arena of public policy. Another component of the Million Rooftops initiative was to require all housing developers of proposals over 50 units to offer a solar energy option on new homes. Imagine if that proposal came up on Beacon Hill.

Another increases the ability of residents to sell excess energy generated on their rooftops back to utility companies. Again, what would Massachusetts legislators do. What will Rhode Island legislators do in Coventry. It bears watching.

Speaking of the State House, there is a meeting about Peak Oil and the impact of rising energy costs in Massachusetts at 1 p.m. Monday, March 31 in Room 222.

The meeting will be hosted by Massachusetts legislators Sen. Pam Resor and Rep. Frank Smizik with a panel including: Senator Bob Duff and Representative Terry Backer from the Connecticut General Assembly; John Kaufman of the Portland Oregon Energy Task Force; Roger Bezdek, President of Management Information Services, Inc. (Washington D.C.) and co-author of “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management” and Richard Lawrence, ASPO-USA.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Energy, general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.