In 2010, around one-third of the food produced in the United States was not consumed, and ended up being wasted. That is a troubling statistic, and represents a food waste crisis that if left ignored will continue to burn holes in the pockets of families, and contribute to waste and the myriad problems it causes our planet.
One of the first things you can do to cut food waste in your home is to stop treating the “best-before,” “use-by,” and “sell-by” labels as gospel that determine when food must instantly been thrown out. These labels are used for shelving and inventory purposes in stores, and you should always trust your eyes and nose before you trust a number on a package. Consider using food rather than throwing it out, unless your senses tell you otherwise!
Make your meal plans and take stock of what you have in your fridge and pantry before you go shopping, and shop accordingly. Consider joining a CSA to take advantage of freshness, and buy your groceries a few times a week and when needed, rather than all at once.
Follow our complete guide to preventing food waste to learn how your fridge and freezer habits can help change your wasteful ways, and learn which foods are more likely to contribute to waste in your fridge. By following a few simple suggestions and changing your shopping and eating behavior in minor ways, you could make a major difference.
Republished with permission from: Fix.com
Texas faces an unusual scenario when it seeks to advance property-assessed clean energy (PACE). The state has a tradition of seeking private-sector solutions and streamlining government activities. This means PACE methods adopted in other states – such as Connecticut – would not work in Texas.
Also, Texas’s private sector is massive. The state’s businesses – and their environmental footprint – are growing rapidly. In a Nov. 18 webinar called “PACE in Texas 101,” Charlene Heydinger, executive director of Keeping PACE in Texas, said Texas uses 19 percent of the industrial energy consumed in the United States.
“Texas leads the nation in energy consumption, accounting for 12 percent of the nation’s energy use,” Heydinger said. “Water is even more of a challenge.”
“All of this is being exacerbated by tremendous growth in Texas,” Heydinger said. “More than 1,000 people move to Texas every day.”
“PACE can help,” Heydinger said.
PACE, as Texas defines it, includes loans for energy efficiency, renewable energy, distributed generation, and water conservation. It covers commercial, industrial and multifamily properties.
Loans for all of these projects are created via voluntary county or municipal property assessments. These loans are considered high-priority compared to other debts, are passed on to new property owners, and survive defaults and foreclosures.
These terms are very favorable for lenders, since they make repayment quite reliable.
As Texas faces water shortages and grid reliability issues, its need for both clean energy and water efficiency are growing rapidly. Heydinger presented a graph showing the large scope of the current drought. This drought impacts industrial enterprises and other businesses and affects many communities.
The convergence of all of these factors has created momentum in Texas’s private sector and government to develop PACE programs that cover both water and energy. More than 100 stakeholders have built a toolkit in a unique response to this challenge. It is aptly titled “PACE-in-a-Box.”
“What is really wonderful about PACE-in-a-Box is that it’s the first program in the United States that has been designed by the stakeholders who are going to use it,” Heydinger said. “We were highly motivated with several goals that reflect the Texas economy and Texas mindset.”
Many potential PACE projects have already been proposed in Austin, Amarillo, and other cities – even though the programs do not exist yet.
When Gov. Rick Perry signed PACE legislation in 2013, the proposal was relatively flexible. It left a great deal of room for local municipalities and counties to interpret how to implement PACE.
But stakeholders recognized that such a high degree of flexibility would doom PACE to failure in smaller and more rural communities. While larger cities such as Austin and Houston might have the resources to customize PACE, smaller communities do not.
The toolkit specifies that small communities can partner with one another regionally to work together to implement PACE. This may result in clusters of communities creating PACE programs collaboratively.
Keeping PACE in Texas partnered with a large network of groups to develop a simplified, standardized solution that communities and regions throughout the state can use.
PACE-in-a-Box contains standard documents for all of the major transactions involved in local PACE programs – from public hearings to lender negotiations.
According to Rachel Stone, Policy Coordinator at South-central Partnership for Energy Efficiency as a Resource (SPEER), PACE-in-a-Box provides many resources for program developers. These include model contracts for providers and lenders, open market financing instructions, a model lender notice, a technical manual for ensuring the viability of energy improvements, a model application, and a series of tests of financial ability.
“We’ve tried to do as much as we can to make this easy for local governments to use,” Heydinger said.
PACE-in-a-Box encourages property owners to select their own contractors, lenders, and equipment manufacturers.
Stone said she believes this market demand will stimulate economic growth. “PACE helps in places where the economy has been depressed and people want to make capital improvements.”
The toolkit encourages third-party financing of loans, but municipal bond financing is also an option.
Loans may be serviced by the local PACE program itself, via a county tax assessor or collector, by the lenders, or by third-party servicers.
Stone said PACE-in-a-Box recommends a savings-to-investment ratio of greater than one for each project. It also recommends total investment of less than 20 percent of each property’s assessed value.
“We are only doing deals that make sense in the business community,” Heydinger said.
This article was originally published by Clean Energy Finance Forum, a news website sponsored by Yale University. To subscribe to our newsletter, please visit our website.
In the mountains of rural Peru, solar power organizations are finding footholds. Their experiences may illuminate the challenges of electrifying remote areas. The Clean Energy Solutions Center hosted a webinar on Nov. 18 in which solar organizations in rural Peru described their practices.
Peru has just announced a national contract to leverage solar power for universal access to electricity. The experiences of these solar organizations may provide valuable insights for businesses in Peru and in other countries.
“In the jungle and the very high Andes, in areas that are very far away from different cities… there is a great amount of people without energy.” said Rafael Escobar, energy program manager at the nonprofit Practical Action.
50 million people in Latin America lack electricity, Escobar said. The population of rural Peru is around 7 million. In the area where Practical Action operates, 93.4 percent of the population lacks electricity.
“The government of Peru just in the last week has announced plans to award a large contract to Ergon Power SAC to bring renewable power to those who do not have access,” said Richenda van Leeuwen, executive director of the United Nations Foundation’s Energy Access Initiative.
“We are working in more than 100 little villages in an area with a lot of difficulties in transportation and communication,” said Carmen Becerril Martinez, president of ACCIONA Microenergia Peru.
Peru has a very dispersed population, van Leeuwen said. Solar companies there cannot take a regular commercial approach because there are very low profit margins. Affordability can also present a challenge.
Several of the presenters said the new contract should be implemented in a way that is community-oriented and appropriate for local homeowners.
In Peru, unlike some other nations, decisions about solar power appear to be made on a community basis. ACCIONA Microenergia held community discussions about distributed solar.
“Some people were a little bit skeptical,” Martinez said.
The communities that were interested in solar power created three-person photovoltaic electrification committees.
“One of the members of the committee has to be a woman,” Martinez said. “This is a way to enhance the role of women in these areas.”
Communities in rural Peru face substantial difficulties when they consider introducing renewable energy, so partnerships with businesses and other organizations are necessary.
“There is a lack of capacity for local governments to promote energy development,” Escobar said. “These governments are not able to foster these energy projects. There is a lack of support for technical issues and maintenance.”
“Operation and maintenance are key elements of this project,” Martinez said. She said ACCIONA Microenergia has committed to operate in Peru for at least 20 years to make sure the solar systems remain in good shape.
ACCIONA Microenergia’s program, Luz en Casa, broke even at the end of 2013. Default rates for this program have been lower than 1 percent, Martinez said.
“The Luz en Casa Program has proved that rural electrification with solar home systems can be economically sustainable and affordable to the very poor people,” Martinez said.
Luz en Casa focuses exclusively on home lighting and does not provide any other electrical amenities.
“The standard system we are installing includes three lamps and one socket,” Martinez said.
ACCIONA Microenergia is structured as a social microcompany, not as a foundation. The solar lighting is partly funded by a social tariff. Profit margins have been tight. “We need around 2,500 clients to ensure that the economics works,” Martinez said.
“This has to be economically feasible to ensure the project can become bigger and can cover all the needs we can identify,” Martinez said.
Martinez said the company works with AMP, a public provider of electricity, to supply basic electricity service to almost 4,000 households in poverty and extreme poverty via solar home systems with a fee-for-service model.
The households pay around $3.50 USD monthly, Martinez said. Previously, they spent 50 percent more to buy candles, kerosene, and mobile charging.
“The important thing is that these people are now having an income after managing their own energy systems,” Escobar said.
Practical Action has a training center that is working with technicians and politicians to plan renewable energy projects.
The organization is developing financing plans for a long list of renewable energy projects including wind, solar and hydropower. It is in the process of securing financing and collaborating with local communities.
This article was originally published by Clean Energy Finance Forum, a news website sponsored by Yale University. To subscribe to our newsletter, please visit our website.
Retail investment in clean energy is starting to flourish. Historically, investments in clean energy were only available to institutional investors. Recently, access has become available to retail investors through new investment vehicles such as solar bonds.
On Nov. 18, Clean Edge presented a webinar exploring this topic. The event, “Clean Energy Retail Investing: The Rise of Bonds, REITs, Yield Cos, and other Investment Vehicles,” was co-hosted by SolarCity.
The webinar featured panelists with expertise in this changing market environment. They explained the details of these newly-available investment options, described the impetus behind these changes in the market, and examined the future for retail investors in this burgeoning space.
“Whenever you have a disruptive technology, you have massive investment opportunities,” said Tim Newell, vice president of financial products at SolarCity. “There hadn’t been much opportunity for retail investors to invest in solar. We wanted to attract individuals by giving anyone the opportunity to invest.”
To attract investment into clean energy, SolarCity began offering an innovative option for individual investors through solar bonds. These are corporate bonds issued by SolarCity with interest rates of up to 4 percent. Typically, they have a one-year duration.
“The investors attracted to this option range from individuals who are putting some small savings into solar bonds to people putting in hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Newell said. “They also attract people who don’t necessarily have access to solar energy in their homes. So now, with solar bonds as an option, even though they may not be able to save money on solar, they can earn money on solar.”
When speaking about the risk profile of these bonds, Newell said that the one-year duration of the SolarCity bonds provides more liquidity than a longer duration might offer. However, the bonds are unrated since they are corporate bonds issued through SolarCity, which is unrated at this time. SolarCity wanted to give individuals access to solar quickly, so the company started with unrated bonds. This may change if SolarCity becomes rated.
Investment in clean energy has seen growth from both institutional investors and retail investors. Newell said this is the result of the cost of solar coming down dramatically in the past five years. It has now become the economical option for consumers. Newell believes technological innovation as well as financial innovation will continue to drive growth.
Nancy Pfund, founder and managing partner of DBL Investors, said there is an innovation cycle in clean energy which will continue to drive impact investing now and in the future. “It’s where value meets value – the ability to invest in opportunities that make returns but also create solutions that achieve your personal values, such as improving the environment and helping with climate change.”
“To avoid global warming issues and achieve our emissions goals, we need to get significant investment,” said Amy Davidsen, executive director of North America for The Climate Group. “About one trillion dollars of new investments are needed, which is about triple what is done today, so we really need to scale the solutions even faster. New investment vehicles have the ability to bring in money from retail investors as well as more investment from institutional investors.”
Pfund said it is realistic to be able to scale up investments in clean energy to the point where we can significantly impact carbon reduction. “Now that solar is showing that it can be the more economical option for consumers, there is significant opportunity in the space and the ability for solar to surpass fossil fuels.”
Disclaimer: Nancy Pfund is a member of the advisory board of Clean Energy Finance Forum.
This article was originally published by Clean Energy Finance Forum, a news website sponsored by Yale University. To subscribe to our newsletter, please visit our website.
The author, Randall Brown, is an MBA candidate at Yale University. He writes regularly for the Clean Energy Finance Forum, a news website which is sponsored by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment.
Smart home technology has emerged as homeowners want to improve the comfort of their homes, and at the same time, minimize daily responsibilities and expense. A home is considered ‘smart’ if some of it’s mundane functions are integrated into the Internet of Things to enable remote management and monitoring.
Smart homes today include the automation of some or all of the following:
Most of the automation takes place via the internet, either wireless or wired, connected to a remote server, which collects data from appliances and security systems, and then processes it.
The remote computing servers then decide how the devices should respond to varying conditions. Commands are sent back to the appliances to function properly. However, this exchange of data over the network through the internet raises security risks that homeowners often tend to neglect.
Most smart home systems are connected to the internet, which raises cyber security risk. A researcher found out that he could haunt a house hundreds of miles away by hacking into the website for the homeowner’s smart lightning system. In another shocking case, a baby monitor company was penalized in the United States for developing a security system that a hacker was able to get into and insult a baby through a camera, from thousands of miles away.
As the Internet of Things (IoT) grows from home to home, such incidents may rise in intensity and frequency. By not paying attention to internet-based threats, smart home owners risk exposing their home and family to the whims of cyber criminals.
What needs to be done?
Unfortunately, it may take some time before smart home manufacturers start advising homeowners about the potential security risks of their implementations. So how can you stay safe in the meanwhile? Here are a few measures to take when using Internet of Things devices:
Lock down cameras: Remote Access Tools and other similar malware enable criminals to see through the webcams of compromised smart home systems, so it is critical to ensure that your home monitoring cameras are secure. If you’re not using a camera, switch it off. If the camera is built into a device, cover the lens with a duct tape while it’s not in use. Also, think about where the cameras are pointing inside your home. The security cameras are there to give you peace of mind, so make sure they’re pointed at the entrances, rather than towards people or goods in your house.
Manage passwords: Nearly all smart home devices come with a password. Change these default passwords using the website for these devices on your smartphone or laptop manually, or by utilizing the option of a password manager that can easily see and alter weak passwords. Some password managers can also manage security by locking passwords when you step away from the computer, and by protecting the passwords you type from cyber criminals via keystroke encryption.
Update device software: Smart TVs, automated refrigerators, and other similar technologies are new in the market, so many manufacturers are still figuring out security kinks after they offer the product to consumers. To secure smart home devices, make sure their software/firmware is updated to the latest version available. You should also check for these firmware updates on your device on a monthly basis.
About the Author
Amanda Green is a freelance blogger interested in writing about intersection of cleantech and the internet of things.
by Nick Blitterswyk, CEO of UGE
The U.S. Department of Commerce just announced that it will add high tariffs for solar modules imported from China. The Canadian government is also investigating the adoption of similar measures, following recent complaints filed by Ontario-based solar manufacturers. With the solar industry in hypergrowth, it’s not a surprise that these governments are interested in boosting new jobs, protecting their economies, and fostering the solar sector. The problem is that tariffs are a short-sighted approach that actually attack the future of North American solar on its home soil, and likely destroy more jobs than they create.
Our competitive advantage is in value-added services, not manufacturing
Manufacturing is a low-margin business compared to the higher margin solar sectors like installation, engineering, and operation. These value-added services comprise one of the fastest growing job markets in the U.S. Although tariffs are typically meant to protect domestic workers, that’s exactly who they will be hurting.
Currently, solar developers and installers — like Vivint, SolarCity, Sungevity, and UGE — are leading the world in renewable energy business model innovation. These companies have rapidly expanded in North America and have also exported these new business models to regions all around the world. This is a clear area where the U.S. has a competitive advantage. Each of these fast-growing businesses employs hundreds to thousands of workers, and these are service jobs that cannot be outsourced. (Meanwhile, SolarWorld, the German solar panel manufacturer who has led the charge in the U.S. against imported panels, just announced a massive expansion of manufacturing this will only add at most 200 jobs).
By comparison, U.S. solar manufacturing (and Canadian, for that matter) is a small industry. China has developed unparalleled expertise in this area, with Yingli and Trina solar modules the top two suppliers in the world, each holding more than 5% of total market share. Though that may be a threat to U.S. manufacturers, it can actually be a big benefit to the global economy in terms of providing the most cost effective solar panels, and by extension more affordable energy. The U.S. Commerce Department needs to take a look at the industry holistically, rather than focusing on such a thin slice of the solar economy. Tariffs are actually shrinking existing competitive advantages in solar, and harming the potential for local solar adoption, under the auspices of trying to protect this very small manufacturing sector.
More expensive U.S. electricity will force businesses to go elsewhere
Cheaper technology has spurred the dramatic rise in solar adoption that we’ve seen over the last few years. Deutsche Bank just issued a report anticipating that solar will reach grid parity in all 50 states by 2016, and these trends have been expected to continue. But this depends on technology costs staying competitive.
High tariffs significantly raise the material costs for U.S. solar developers and installers, driving project costs 5-25% higher than in a country without the tariffs. That same 5-25% cost addition means developers like UGE can offer electricity rates to companies outside the country that are 5-25% less than what is offered within the U.S. In our global economy, that means businesses will move their operations elsewhere. New facilities will open in locations where energy is cheaper, and with them, the US will lose out on new construction jobs, manufacturing jobs, and other economic benefits like tax revenue.
U.S. consumers — and our climate — lose out
Beyond the benefits to the U.S. solar industry, low module costs have impacted all energy consumers. For the first time, it has been possible to transition to renewable energy not only for the environmental benefits, but because it’s more cost effective. This has huge implications for mitigating climate change, improving our energy security, and stabilizing the cost of energy resources.
The U.S. and China just made a landmark agreement to reduce carbon emissions, and we are already seeing progress worldwide. Tariffs have the potential to derail this significantly. They hurt consumers who will either have to pay more to switch to solar energy or won’t make the transition at all, and the additional costs, in the form of those tariffs, go straight into government coffers. That will ultimately be the biggest cost of this policy if it stays in effect– it will stall the tremendous progress that the solar industry has been making to transform how the U.S. and the world gets energy.
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Nick Blitterswyk is the CEO and founder of UGE International, a leading developer of distributed renewable energy solutions for business and government, with projects in over 90 countries, including several for Fortune 1,000 companies.
If you are interested in climate change, you’ve probably heard of biochar. It’s basically charcoal, which is produced not through burning, but through heating biomass in the absence of oxygen. It has the amazing fertilizer qualities and when used in this way is actually carbon negative by sequestering carbon in the earth.
The video, produced by Raw Science, shows Dr. Frank Shu, a celebrated astrophysicist and Shaw Prize winner now dedicated to making an impact on climate change. He has developed a process that converts biomass to carbon neutral (or negative) coal that can be enhanced by a molten salt nuclear reaction. Check it out.
According to the latest “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Office of Energy Projects, wind energy and solar power combined provided over 70 percent (71.82%) of the 873 megawatts (MW) of new U.S. electrical generating capacity placed into service in November 2014.
Specifically, three wind farms came on line last month, accounting for 333-MW of new generation in service. These included Stella Wind Farm’s 182-MW Panhandle Wind Farm Phase II expansion in Texas and the 150-MW Origin Wind Energy project in Oklahoma. New wind generating capacity this year thus far has more than doubled that for the same period in 2013 (2,525-MW vs. 1,112-MW).
In addition, 14 new “units” of solar came on line for a total of 294-MW of capacity, led by MidAmerican Renewables LLC’s 250-MW Topaz Solar Farms expansion in California.
Just a single new unit of natural gas came on-line last month (Wisconsin Electric Power Co’s 140-MW Valley Power Plant Unit 1 Repowering Project) as well as the first and only coal plant to come into service so far in 2014 (Great River Energy’s 106-MW lignite-fueled Spiritwood Station project in North Dakota).
So, for the ninth time in the past eleven months, renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) accounted for the majority of new U.S. electrical generation brought into service. Natural gas took the lead in the other two months (April and August).
Of the 10,926-MW of new generating capacity from all sources installed since January 1, 2014, 39 units of wind accounted for 2,525-MW (23.11%), followed by 235 units of solar – 2,203-MW (20.16%), 49 units of biomass – 282-MW (2.58%), 7 units of hydropower – 141-MW (1.29%), and 5 units of geothermal – 32-MW (0.29%). In total, renewables have provided 47.43% of new U.S. electrical generating capacity thus far in 2014.
The balance came from 46 units of natural gas – 5,513-MW (50.46%), 1 unit of coal – 106-MW(0.97%), 1 unit of nuclear – 71-MW (0.65%), 15 units of oil – 47-MW (0.43%), and 6 units of “other” – 7-MW (0.06%). Thus, new capacity from renewable energy sources in 2014 is 49 times that from coal, 73 times that from nuclear, and 110 times that from oil.
Renewable energy sources now account for 16.44% of total installed operating generating capacity in the U.S.: water – 8.43%, wind – 5.42%, biomass – 1.38%, solar – 0.88%, and geothermal steam – 0.33%. Renewable energy capacity is now greater than that of nuclear (9.22%) and oil (3.97%) combined. *
“With only one month left in 2014, it has become a horse race between natural gas and renewable energy as to which will dominate new electrical generation for the year,” noted Ken Bossong, Executive Director of the SUN DAY Campaign. “Regardless of the winner, it is apparent that coal, oil, and nuclear will be left behind in the dust.”
For more information contact Ken Bossong at +1-301-270-6477 x.11