What an absolute joy to join you for lunch on Wednesday. You are the epitome of passion and intelligence and I’m proud of the work we’re doing, together!
There is a comment below about the miles generated by solar panels. I can provide another example. I commuted by electric bike to my environmental faculty position at JMU. The round trip is 16 miles and I have passed 18,000 miles on the bike. All the electricity consumed by the bike over that time period takes less than 4 square feet of solar panel to generate, and these are found on my roof. If you take 18,000 miles and divide by 44 mpg (Prius) that is 409 gallons of gas saved. Plus, there is no parking fees, no insurance, no state vehicle taxes, and I have more fun. Solar is great, commuting on an electric bike is fun, I got to work in a good mood, and it is not a drain on the environment. Have a look at this video if you want to see what the commute looks like:
Re: "but because that small patch of land can provide huge amounts of the energy we all use, without doing anything to raise the temperature. It’s farming the sun and producing a vast stream of electrons."
Having grown up on a farm (near New Rockford!) and now a retired engineer with solar panels providing all of the electricity to my residence and my EV, I really appreciated this discussion of the relative efficiency of farming the sun. That hadn't occurred to me before.
We are beholden to you for your leadership in addressing the climate crisis in so many ways.
Thank you, Bill, this was such a great thing to read this morning. I grew up in Rockford, not far at all from where you were and it’s awesome to see people working together to make this kind of change.
Colorado NPR had a story in the past year about farmers growing crops under solar panels (which are raised higher off the ground). Even corn could be grown. The two things are not mutually exclusive
Writing concisely is important. Start off with vote democratic president . That must be the starting point and you know why. Article way to long. Doing an outline might help you.
Thank you Bill! I love the quote about the three “buckets” for solar: (1) small-scale, residential, rooftop; (2) utility-scale (with lots of solar, wind and batteries in interconnection queues, literally 1.5x the total installed capacity in the U.S.; and (3) community solar - which must be community-owned, or at least owned by an entity other than the incumbent utility. This third size — halfway between utility-scale and residential/rooftop, is sadly underutilized - see this https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-q2-2024 report by national SEIA, scroll down to the graphic “US PV…by segment (i.e. market segment) and you can see that utility-scale solar accounts for ~70% of the solar market. With all the attacks on rooftop solar, I’m surprised that segment is growing as fast as it is! It’s the “solar coaster.” We need to put solar on that “middle” segment, i.e. Big Box stories, grocery store parking lots, warehouses etc. I’m so glad you highlighted IL’s fantastic solar bill called CEJA (Climate and Equitable Jobs Act), which has an interesting story bc the reason it passed is that ComEd and the IL Speaker of the House (Mike Madigan, he was in politics for 47 years, his daughter was state Atty General) had to step down as he was implicated in one of the biggest scandals that ever happened in the world of electricity: First Energy in OH illegally spent $60 million to get favorable legislation for cost recovery for uneconomic coal and nuclear plants. The *new* IL speaker, who was pro-clean-energy, allowed the bill to go forward. Because ComEd was implicated, ComEd was not allowed at the negotiating table when CEJA was passed. It’s a wild story.
I get frustrated when Vermonters are against solar, but it's like with the corn: they argue that the benefit from it is going out of state. I can appreciate that and think it should be addressed. Is it because Vermont has a surplus or is it part of the Ponzi scheme (IMHO) that is "energy credits"? It seems many good and beneficial things are exploited by corporations to make them not so good anymore.
Also, the math on energy production is great and I’m curious on the land use direct financial impact to the landowner. How does growing corn for ethanol compare to what they may receive as part of a community solar operation?
I needed this so much. Thank you. Back-to-back with your moving post on the climate funeral at the Chase headquarters, this grabbed back my sense of hope just as it was leaving town. Here's a poem in thanks:
Climate Warning
July 12, 2024
We’re battened up
tight here -- stormy
couple of weeks.
An essay in a book I edited
told how women fell silent,
left blank pages in their journals,
during Sherman’s march to the sea.
Well, we’ve become silent here.
No march to the sea
in this new nascent civil war
but just the scalding awareness
that our party has sold us out,
left us reliant on a slack-jawed,
timorous, white-haired
mannikin, a dress-
maker’s dummy.
It’s not only speaking
that’s hard. Listening, too,
holds risks. Halfway through
Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger
the section on how words
have lost all meaning
pushed the ear bud
from my left ear, leaving me
soundless.
My allergy shots make my arm swell
to the size of a golf ball.
I sit in our airconditioned home
on the top of a hill
and think about options.
Bill McKibben went to the climate funeral
outside the Chase Bank headquarters.
A bagpiper led the procession: clergy, organizers,
Bill, the numbers you quote on energy production from an acre of corn (for ethanol) or an acre of solar panels just don’t sound right to me. Certainly, for the corn ethanol option they can’t account for diesel to produce that corn (the net energy production is much much lower—if it’s even positive). But the EV miles seem wildly optimistic too. I haven’t cranked numbers, but on a squint test they seem off by a few orders of magnitude.
Bill,
What an absolute joy to join you for lunch on Wednesday. You are the epitome of passion and intelligence and I’m proud of the work we’re doing, together!
Keri
Thanks Bill, for some good news!
Back here in Vermont, there's been a bit of rain.
Hi Bill,
I did a post today that off topic of your Substack but relevant to some of the challenges we face. https://longcovidjourney2wellness.substack.com/p/our-times-learning-to-feel-safe
Love to get feedback from you.
Kind regards,
Mardi
There is a comment below about the miles generated by solar panels. I can provide another example. I commuted by electric bike to my environmental faculty position at JMU. The round trip is 16 miles and I have passed 18,000 miles on the bike. All the electricity consumed by the bike over that time period takes less than 4 square feet of solar panel to generate, and these are found on my roof. If you take 18,000 miles and divide by 44 mpg (Prius) that is 409 gallons of gas saved. Plus, there is no parking fees, no insurance, no state vehicle taxes, and I have more fun. Solar is great, commuting on an electric bike is fun, I got to work in a good mood, and it is not a drain on the environment. Have a look at this video if you want to see what the commute looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H5Ew-3SjJc&t=49s (It won an EPA prize for E-bike commuting.)
Re: "but because that small patch of land can provide huge amounts of the energy we all use, without doing anything to raise the temperature. It’s farming the sun and producing a vast stream of electrons."
Having grown up on a farm (near New Rockford!) and now a retired engineer with solar panels providing all of the electricity to my residence and my EV, I really appreciated this discussion of the relative efficiency of farming the sun. That hadn't occurred to me before.
We are beholden to you for your leadership in addressing the climate crisis in so many ways.
Thank you, Bill, this was such a great thing to read this morning. I grew up in Rockford, not far at all from where you were and it’s awesome to see people working together to make this kind of change.
Wonderful. positive read to start my morning.
Colorado NPR had a story in the past year about farmers growing crops under solar panels (which are raised higher off the ground). Even corn could be grown. The two things are not mutually exclusive
And it gives hope that all kinds of great work is being done all over the country. Thank you for sharing all this great information.
AgriVoltaics can support both crop production and solar production. Maybe not growing corn but definitely growing vegetables.
https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-research-analysis/agrivoltaics.html
Writing concisely is important. Start off with vote democratic president . That must be the starting point and you know why. Article way to long. Doing an outline might help you.
Um, whatever you say!
Thank you Bill! I love the quote about the three “buckets” for solar: (1) small-scale, residential, rooftop; (2) utility-scale (with lots of solar, wind and batteries in interconnection queues, literally 1.5x the total installed capacity in the U.S.; and (3) community solar - which must be community-owned, or at least owned by an entity other than the incumbent utility. This third size — halfway between utility-scale and residential/rooftop, is sadly underutilized - see this https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-market-insight-report-q2-2024 report by national SEIA, scroll down to the graphic “US PV…by segment (i.e. market segment) and you can see that utility-scale solar accounts for ~70% of the solar market. With all the attacks on rooftop solar, I’m surprised that segment is growing as fast as it is! It’s the “solar coaster.” We need to put solar on that “middle” segment, i.e. Big Box stories, grocery store parking lots, warehouses etc. I’m so glad you highlighted IL’s fantastic solar bill called CEJA (Climate and Equitable Jobs Act), which has an interesting story bc the reason it passed is that ComEd and the IL Speaker of the House (Mike Madigan, he was in politics for 47 years, his daughter was state Atty General) had to step down as he was implicated in one of the biggest scandals that ever happened in the world of electricity: First Energy in OH illegally spent $60 million to get favorable legislation for cost recovery for uneconomic coal and nuclear plants. The *new* IL speaker, who was pro-clean-energy, allowed the bill to go forward. Because ComEd was implicated, ComEd was not allowed at the negotiating table when CEJA was passed. It’s a wild story.
I get frustrated when Vermonters are against solar, but it's like with the corn: they argue that the benefit from it is going out of state. I can appreciate that and think it should be addressed. Is it because Vermont has a surplus or is it part of the Ponzi scheme (IMHO) that is "energy credits"? It seems many good and beneficial things are exploited by corporations to make them not so good anymore.
Also, the math on energy production is great and I’m curious on the land use direct financial impact to the landowner. How does growing corn for ethanol compare to what they may receive as part of a community solar operation?
Very encouraging report, Bill. Good news on the solar farms. It might be well worth looking into for using on abandoned waste dumps.
I needed this so much. Thank you. Back-to-back with your moving post on the climate funeral at the Chase headquarters, this grabbed back my sense of hope just as it was leaving town. Here's a poem in thanks:
Climate Warning
July 12, 2024
We’re battened up
tight here -- stormy
couple of weeks.
An essay in a book I edited
told how women fell silent,
left blank pages in their journals,
during Sherman’s march to the sea.
Well, we’ve become silent here.
No march to the sea
in this new nascent civil war
but just the scalding awareness
that our party has sold us out,
left us reliant on a slack-jawed,
timorous, white-haired
mannikin, a dress-
maker’s dummy.
It’s not only speaking
that’s hard. Listening, too,
holds risks. Halfway through
Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger
the section on how words
have lost all meaning
pushed the ear bud
from my left ear, leaving me
soundless.
My allergy shots make my arm swell
to the size of a golf ball.
I sit in our airconditioned home
on the top of a hill
and think about options.
Bill McKibben went to the climate funeral
outside the Chase Bank headquarters.
A bagpiper led the procession: clergy, organizers,
an environmental leader.
Elderly people in a line holding tombstones.
Silent, but the engravings spoke.
Nebraska farmer felled
by heatstroke in cornfield. Heat death.
Judi Stewart of Franklin NM
on dream vacation to Rome. Heat death.
Man passes away mowing his lawn
in Pearl River County. Heat Death.
British doctor Michael M.
went for a walk on a Greek Island
around 3 pm. Heat death.
66-year-old man
dies on trip
to spread his father’s ashes. Heat death.
Man found in car on hot day
window rolled down. Flat tire.
heat death.
Nurse Ashlyn M. age 36
died during rare Oregon
heatwave. Heat death.
A line of masked, capped women
in sackcloth dresses with speaking sashes.
Biodiversity dies.
Hurricanes.
Expanding deserts.
Ocean Acidification.
MegaFires.
Bleached coral.
Heat waves.
Old and young now lying on the ground
dying in the heat
while someone reads a eulogy
for everyone taken down
by global warming.
The police arresting only
those lying on the ground
where it was “pretty searing
even in the humid haze.”
Reading that blog struck
a chord in me,
a happy one.
Maybe it’s the same chord
that I heard after the debate,
when Biden’s long-time supporters,
one-by-one,
told the truth about him,
and about where we are as a party.
A chord of hope, even now.
Bill, the numbers you quote on energy production from an acre of corn (for ethanol) or an acre of solar panels just don’t sound right to me. Certainly, for the corn ethanol option they can’t account for diesel to produce that corn (the net energy production is much much lower—if it’s even positive). But the EV miles seem wildly optimistic too. I haven’t cranked numbers, but on a squint test they seem off by a few orders of magnitude.
hey friend! https://thefern.org/2024/01/ethanol-is-just-comically-inefficient-solar-energy/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%202023%20Iowa,the%20course%20of%20a%20year.
https://www.cleanwisconsin.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Corn-Ethanol-Vs.-Solar-Analysis-V3-9-compressed.pdf