Tag Archives: Original

Utility Tries To Scuttle Knoxville, Iowa, Solar Plan At The Last Second, FAILS

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Knoxville, Iowa, has been working on developing a solar plan for the city that would save it nearly $400,000 over the lifespan of a 30-year power-purchase agreement (PPA). But when it came to the final vote, MidAmerican Energy – the city’s utility – came in and tried to lobby against it.

The last-ditch attempt to keep solar from the citizens of Knoxville failed on a 3-1 vote, according to reports in the Knoxville Journal-Express.

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Megan Suhr, a Knoxville council member, told the paper:

Renewable energy is something I care deeply about, so I know how some of these things work. [The utility] didn’t present us with any data that said this wasn’t a good choice for the city. This shows people in our community that we are progressive. We’re excited about renewable energy. We’re taking a leadership role in providing some solar capacity for our city facilities.

Even with Knoxville council’s blessing, the deal with Red Lion Renewables isn’t a 100% done deal. As the newspaper reports, the developer:

…needs to raise $150,000 for the most visible array, to be built as a parking shelter on a city lot just north of the firehouse at 308 S. 3rd St. It would power City Hall, Knoxville Fire & Rescue and the Knoxville Public Library, but nothing will happen if the money doesn’t emerge soon….

If MidAmerican read SolarWakeup, they would know they’re going to struggle to convince Iowans that renewable energy is not the way to go (although part of their argument was that they weren’t against renewables; they were just against non-MidAmerican owned renewables). As we’ve been reporting recently, one of MidAmerican’s competitors, Alliant Energy, has already agreed to pay to shut down a nuclear plant and eliminate coal from its portfolio by 2050.

Plus, the last-minute nature of their appeal is suspicious. Council meetings are public record, and you can be sure this issue didn’t just crop up on the most recent council agenda. So why were they rushing in at the last minute to attempt to scuttle the deal? Only MidAmerican can answer that question – but Knoxville’s city council didn’t bite at their argument – and if the money comes through, it looks like Knoxville, Iowa, will become the next city to add solar to its electricity-generation portfolio outside of the utility’s grasp.

More:

City solar plan survives power struggle with utility>

SolarWakeup Podcast: Jon Carson, Obama’s 2008 National Field Director, Brings Solar To Illinois

By Yann Brandt, Managing Editor

In this episode of the Energy Wakeup podcast, we sat down with Jon Carson, founder of Trajectory Energy Partners, to discuss early solar project development in Illinois—and the politics of solar. Carson has spent nearly a lifetime in Illinois politics, first running Tammy Duckworth’s successful Congressional campaign and then was the field director and then national field director for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. So he knows a little about politics and how solar fits into our current political atmosphere.

Carson discusses the importance of grassroots campaigning in early stage solar development—meeting with citizens in the area where you want to do development but going far beyond politicians. He describes the hours he’s spent crisscrossing the Land of Lincoln in his car, doing his best to talk solar to the people that will be affected by the installation of a solar farm: abutting neighbors, influencers and other townspeople.

And, Carson says, when he puts in the time to make these connections, it turns out solar is a pretty easy sell in most areas of the state.

Listen to the whole fascinating discussion to hear Carson talk about where solar is in the national political discussion and how we can do an even better job of bringing our issues to the forefront—and how he is effectively entering the burgeoning Illinois market, one project at a time.

Maryland Launches Six-Project Community Solar Pilot Program

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Maryland today launched a six-project community solar program that is looking for subscribers, according to an article in today’s Baltimore Sun.

Community solar programs are now all the rage, as solar continues to spread and solar companies are realizing that it can go beyond individual homeowners and businesses putting solar arrays on their roof. It’s the perfect hybrid of utility-scale solar providing electricity for residential and consumer customers.

The program has been in place since 2015, when the Maryland legislature authorized it. But writer Scott Dance asserts that it hasn’t taken off because of NIMBY-ism combined with arguments over where the appropriate placement for the arrays are.

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As Dru Schmidt-Perkins, the former president of the land conservation group 1,000 Friends of Maryland, told the Sun:

People are very much in favor of going for a lot more renewables, for whatever reason. That support comes to a screeching halt when land that is perceived to be valuable for other things, whether a historic viewshed or farming, suddenly becomes a target of a location for this new project.

Now, the conflict between farming and solar is a real concern in Maryland although, as we wrote about yesterday, perhaps it should be less of a concern than it is. But such concerns have halted development in many Maryland counties, as the Sun reports:

Such concerns have at least temporarily stalled the momentum for solar across the state. Anne Arundel County had at least five small community solar projects in the pipeline in December when officials decided to pause development for eight months. Baltimore County officials imposed a four-month moratorium on solar development before passing an ordinance last year to limit the size and number of solar farms.

It remains to be seen if such concerns outweigh the hunger for community solar in a state that has been among the leading states in the Mid-Atlantic region for solar development. The six new projects the government has launched should give everyone a better picture of how much work still needs to be done in those rural areas to bring these farms to fruition.

(To hear an excellent recap of how similar concerns are being overcome in Illinois, listen to the latest edition of the SolarWakeup podcast, where Jon Carson of Trajectory Energy Partners outlines his strategy for bringing more community solar to rural areas.)

More:

Maryland launches community solar program, creating new green energy opportunities — but also potential conflicts

Saving The Bees: The Vital Role Solar Might Play In Keeping Them Alive

By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent

Over the past decade or so, bumble bee populations in the United States have diminished considerably thanks to a phenomenon called “colony collapse” (the author was the editorial director of Pest Management Professional during the height of the controversy).

Most environmental activists have blamed neonicotinoid pesticides (neonicotinoids act like nerve gas on insects and yes, as the name implies they are based on tobacco-like substances), though scientists could never definitively back that up.

Well, the Department of Energy (DOE) is on it.

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According to the DOE e-news service, “DOE Argonne National Laboratory researchers hope that [the United States] can rehabilitate bee and butterfly populations by allowing them to live at solar energy facilities.” To wit:

A team of Argonne researchers has been examining the potential benefits of establishing pollinator habitat at utility-scale solar energy (USSE) facilities to conserve pollinators and restore the ecosystem they provide. Looking at over 2,800 existing and planned USSE facilities in the contiguous United States, researchers in Argonne’s Environmental Science (EVS) division have found that the area around solar panels could provide an ideal location for the plants that attract pollinators.

The researchers point out that the land around utility-scale solar developments often goes unused and could provide the perfect scenario to grow bee-friendly native foliage and plants that would allow bees to thrive without affecting solar plant efficiency.

(There’s a really cool interactive map in the article itself that shows how much utility-scale solar is planned in each state as it relates to how much pollinator-dependent agriculture there is.)

And this statistic made my jaw drop:

[Two researchers] looked at three example crop types to measure the agricultural benefits of increased pollinator habitat. These crops – soybeans, almonds and cranberries – depend on insect pollinators for their annual crop yields. If all existing and planned solar facilities near these crop types included pollinator habitat and increased yield by just one percent, crop values could rise $1.75 million, $4 million and $233,000 for soybeans, almonds and cranberries, respectively.

With that kind of environmental impact, it should give pause to those who argue solar is eating up agricultural land that could otherwise be cultivated. Instead, it could be argued that having a solar array near farms could actually improve crop yields and the overall value of the farm itself.

It should be noted that companies like Connexus Energy and Cypress Creek Renewables are already putting in these types of pollinator-friendly solar arrays – here’s hoping other utility-scale developers will follow their lead.

More:

Can solar energy save the bees?