By Steve Boyce, Madison County KFTC Member

Customers of Berea Municipal Utilities who want to invest in solar photovoltaic panels will soon have an opportunity to do so by choosing to participate in a program called Berea Solar Partners. 

"If this seems to go well in Berea, there may be other small towns around Kentucky attracted to establishing similar community-based efforts to move gradually toward greater reliance on clean, renewable sources of electrical energy. " 

The City is establishing the Berea Solar Farm, arrays of PV panels to generate electricity.  Customers will be invited to become Berea Solar Partners by leasing up to two 235-watt solar panels from an initial array of 60 panels.  The one-time lease fee of approximately $700 will cover a 25-year period.  In return, customers will receive credit every billing period for the electricity generated by their panels.

The Solar Farm is one of three projects supported by a $125,000 Energy Efficiency & Conservation Block Grant to the City of Berea.  The purpose of the grant is to enable Berea to take small but critical first steps in a decades-long movement toward a better energy future. 

One of the other two projects funded by the grant will model improved energy practice in City operations by upgrading lighting in five municipal buildings.  The third project involves starting several energy efficiency programs at Berea Municipal Utilities (BMU) in hopes of making clear how such programs can return important value to the community.  With no history of energy efficiency programs in Berea, getting started in a way that demonstrates their potential value – to the City and its people - is as challenging as it is important. 

Getting back to the Berea Solar Farm, one of the major advantages of the program is that the utility will site, install and maintain the solar panels.  Participating customers will gain access to solar generation at less than $3 per watt, less than the typical installed cost of a home PV system after state and federal tax credits.   It is estimated that at current rates, one 235 watt panel will produce a little over $17 worth of electricity per year.  Assuming that Berea’s electricity rates increase 5% per year on average, the panels have estimated payback in the neighborhood of 23 years.

Steve Wilkins, a Berea KFTC member who plans to lease panels, says “The opportunity appeals to me in part because I’d like to reduce our carbon footprint through some solar PV generation, but we have a lot of shade all around our house.  So installing panels at home is not a possibility.  I also expect the price of coal-fired electricity to continue to sky-rocket, so I’m attracted to locking in 25-years worth of PV-generated electricity at today’s cost.  And I just like the idea of supporting Berea’s effort to make this kind of option available to its utility customers.”     

The program is ideal for customers who want local opportunities to invest in clean energy but have homes, apartments or businesses – owned or rented – not well suited for solar installations due to directional orientation or shade.  It also provides an opportunity for those who would like to invest in solar energy but can’t afford the relatively large cost of installing an entire system on their property. 

One of the exciting features of this Berea Solar Farm approach is the extent to which it is scalable, both for the City and for individual customers.  For the City, adding additional arrays to the 60-panel beginning can be done in small steps over time in response to customer interest.    The “pay as you go” model means that any future growth will be funded by customer participation.  Customers who choose not to participate will not be asked to subsidize those who do.

Some benefits of the Berea Solar Partners Solar Farm
•    Allows more people at all income levels to participate in solar energy options, regardless of site issues such as shade or directional orientation.
•    The program is self-sustaining and supported financially by only those customers who choose to become Berea Solar Partners.
•    Participants get peace of mind for supporting renewable energy and receive credit  for the energy their panels generate
•    The cost of participating is less than $3 per installed watt, less than the typical cost of installing home solar systems after state and federal incentives
•    For BMU to generate some of its own electricity means less money leaving Berea to pay wholesale electric bills to our multinational corporate wholesale supplier

For some customers, the scalability could take the form of budgeting over time to offset some percentage – possibly all - of their electricity use by periodically adding one or more solar panels.  To enable broad participation, customers are limited to leasing no more than two panels among the first sixty.  But beyond that, if additional arrays are added, customers will be free to lease as many as they wish. 

Another major benefit of this panel-by-panel leasing approach is the ease of transferring credit for the electricity generated by leased panels.  Since the panels are maintained in a central location, the electricity they generate need not be tied to a specific address.  In the event a participating homeowner or renter moves within BMU’s service territory, the electricity credits can simply be transferred to the new location.  If the move is to a location outside the BMU service territory, the leaser would need to sell or donate the energy generated by the panels to a BMU customer.  If such a move involves selling a house, the house value could be enhanced to the extent that the panels serve increasingly to lower utility bills as coal generated rates increase over time.  Some may find it attractive to support a local non-profit – a school or church, for example – by leasing one or more panels and assigning the billing credit to that organization.

Another aspect of this approach to solar generation that seems exciting is the extent to which it lends itself to local effort.  We are hoping, for example, that many people in Berea will share Steve Wilkins' interest in community members coming together to take greater responsibility for their own energy future. 

If this seems to go well in Berea, there may be other small towns around Kentucky attracted to establishing similar community-based efforts to move gradually toward greater reliance on clean, renewable sources of electrical energy.   

We all want a healthy future for Kentucky. But HR 2584 threatens to strip the EPA of it’s ability to protect Americans--and Kentuckians--from polluters and their pollutants. Your voice is needed today.

Kentucky Congressman Hal Rogers has represented southeastern Kentucky in Washington for three decades. As Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, he is one of the most powerful members of Congress. Sadly Rep. Rogers is using his position – and the budget process – to push through dangerous new rules that eliminate important protections for public health, clean water, and clean air

As Kentuckians, we want the same things as people everywhere: We want a safe environment where we can drink the water and breathe the air without worry, and a government we can trust and be proud of.

Yet major decisions are being made in Washington right now that threaten our chances of creating a better and healthier future here at home.

Kentuckians already suffer cancer, heart attacks, asthma and other severe health conditions that result from repeated exposure to unacceptably high levels of toxic pollution, a situation made worse by weak enforcement of health and environmental laws. [1] [2]

With an EPA that has shown an increased commitment to protecting our health, we have an opportunity to turn this around.

But now Congressman Hal Rogers and others in the US House of Representatives are on the verge of passing a bill that has been called “the worst anti-environmental bill in history”--and slashing our environmental protections means we pay with our health and our kids' health.

HR 2584, approved on Monday by a committee chaired by Congressman Rogers, will be voted on this week in the US House of Representatives. It is the first of 12 budget bills that will move through this committee in coming weeks.

This bill orders steep budget cuts for the US EPA and other agencies, and is loaded with dangerous provisions that would block federal agencies from enforcing environmental safeguards that protect our health. Click here for the full text of the bill.  Or see the summary below.

Can you call your Representative in Congress today?

Bill summary:

Here are some of the devastating things his bill would do:

• Slash the EPA’s budget to the point that the agency will be unable to implement its core mission of protecting human health and the environment.
• Block the 2009 agreement reached between the EPA, the Office of Surface Mining and the Army Corps of Engineers to carefully review and enforce permits for mountaintop removal mining.
• Block the EPA from regulating coal combustion waste as hazardous. This ignores the science, endangers public health, and makes it nearly impossible for communities to get a fair hearing if utilities seek to build or expand coal ash dumps.
• Block the EPA from implementing new rules to control toxic air emissions, soot, and other power plant emissions known to cause premature death and illness.
• Block the EPA’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and oil refineries.
• Cut funds to states for air quality monitoring and water quality permitting programs.

“H.R. 2584 would overturn 40 years of bipartisan progress protecting the clean air and water on which all Americans depend, and the lands and wildlife that Americans treasure. The American people reject the false choice between a prosperous economy and a sustainable environment, which we’ve proven can go hand in hand.” [3]

- The Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition in the US House of Representatives

Sources:

[1] Birth Defects Study: http://www.kftc.org/blog/archive/2011/06/21/birth-defects-higher-in-areas-with-mountaintop-mining

[2] Toxic air pollution study: http://docs.nrdc.org/air/files/air_11072001a.pdf

[3] Statement by the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition in the US House of Representatives: http://seecblog.inslee.house.gov/2011/07/updated-seec-instead-of-addressing-default-crisis-or-jobs-gop-pushing-unprecedented-back-door-attack.shtml

Copyright New York Times

We are Kentuckians! We believe we have the chance today – right now – to create a better future for our children and our communities.

We don’t want much – just the same things everyone else wants. We want good jobs, good schools for our kids, affordable health care, food, and energy, a safe environment where we can drink the water and breathe the air without worry, and a government we can trust and be proud of. Not much – but a lot more than we have today.

Major decisions are being made in Washington right now that will determine whether we have a decent shot at the better future we deserve, from funding Pell Grants next year, to our very ability to protect Medicare and Social Security. We recognize the important role that the Kentucky delegation has in those decisions.

We also recognize that while Congress needs to address our long-term deficit trends, the current “debt crisis” has been manufactured. The biggest cause of our deficit trends has been the Bush-era tax cuts. In 2000, we had a budget surplus and the Congressional Budget Office projected that our federal government would be debt free by 2009. Instead, the Bush tax cuts cost about two and a half trillion dollars between 2001 and 2010. Limiting what we can do through our federal government will not reverse those deficit trends. Neither will cutting Medicare and Social Security--built, protected, and valued by generations of Americans.

Congress needs to fix its mess. It needs to raise the debt ceiling to prevent economic upheaval, and it needs to fix the budget to protect what Kentuckians value and count on--including Pell Grants, safeguards for clean water, Medicare and Social Security. Then, it has the opportunity to reverse our deficit trends through rolling back those Bush tax cuts.

Now is when the Kentucky delegation needs to hear from you. Can you call your congresspeople today and urge them to stand with Kentucky? Here's a sample message:

"I'm a constituent. Generations of Americans and Kentuckians have worked to build and protect Medicare and Social Security. I want you to stand with Kentucky by raising the debt ceiling and creating a budget that protects Social Security and Medicare and moves Kentucky forward."

Don't know who your Representative is? Go here to find out.

The mountain of coal ash at LG&E's Cane Run Power Plant in Louisville. Photo by Beth Bissmeyer

WFPL-FM, a public radio station in Louisville, aired a three-part series on coal ash this week. Reporter Erica Peterson helped document the health problems that coal ash, escaping from Louisville Gas & Electric's coal-burning power plant and coal ash landfill located in residential neighborhoods, are causing for area residents.

The series can be accessed in whole or individual parts:

Part 1      Part 2      Part 3

The series is available to other public radio stations in Kentucky through the Kentucky Public Radio network. If your local public radio station has not broadcast the coal ash series, please ask them to do so.

A solar panel array, solar hot water collectors and a wind turbine were recently installed on the roof of the education center located on the grounds of the Kentucky state capitol in Frankfort. The building is highly energy efficient as well. The renewable energy systems are visible from the governor’s office. The solar panels are expected to produce more than 8,000 kilowatt-hours of sustainable electricity each year. Solar Energy Solutions (www.solar-energy-solutions.com), a KFTC ally through the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance, completed the solar installations.

Kentucky has the fourth-most toxic air among states, a newly released report found.

Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States found that 77% of the toxins overall and 89% of mercury emissions in Kentucky air come from coal-burning power plants. The analysis was jointly released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) and based on self-reported data from the polluters.

Exposure to toxic pollution from power plants, including hydrochloric acid, fine particulates, mercury and other metals, is known or believed to contribute to or exacerbate a wide variety of health conditions, the report reminds us, including one or more of the following:

• Asthma and other respiratory ailments,
• Developmental disorders,
• Neurological damage,
• Birth defects,
• Cancer, and
• Premature mortality.

The NRDC / PSR report is consistent with a number of other studies, including one released in March by the American Lung Association that concluded, “Particle pollution from power plants is estimated to kill approximately 13,000 people a year.”

Source: Toxic Power: How Power Plants Contaminate Our Air and States, NRDC, 2011

The STAY Project (Stay Together Appalachian Youth) is a diverse regional network of young people throughout Central Appalachia who are working together to advocate for and actively participate in their home mountain communities.

This project began in 2007 at an Appalachian Studies conference, when youth participants expressed that they didn’t know how to participate in movements for social change, that there were few access points for them as young people, and few opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge that would allow them to contribute to social change efforts. These young participants created the STAY Project.  

Now, almost five years later, its network of members and regional gatherings create avenues for young people to educate themselves, find voice, and nurture political power, in their own communities of West Virginia, southwest Virginia, eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and western North Carolina.  The STAY Project is currently a consortium supported by Appalshop’s Appalachian Media Institute in Whitesburg, KY, High Rocks in Hillsboro, WV, and the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, TN.

This August 9-12, the STAY Project will host the STAY Summer Institute at the Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County.  

Committed to having all voices and identities supported within Appalachia, and understanding that youth are often left out of spaces of decision-making, the STAY Summer Institute will bring together youth from throughout the region for a four-day workshop.  The gathering will serve to empower young people through a sense of place, promote leadership development, uphold Appalachian identity through cultural arts and storytelling, and build personal relationships to sustain each other through our efforts.  The leadership trainings will focus on organizing, popular education, grant writing, small-business skills, financial/budget management, anti oppression workshops, etc. The cost for this workshop is between $50-$150 (sliding scale) and includes room and board.

In an attempt to share more of the stories from former felons across the Commonwealth, we’re presenting a series of short interviews every few weeks on this blog. 

"I haven't always been a minister, you know.  At one point, I was a gang member and a drug dealer.  I ended up getting arrested in 2003 and again in 2004 when I was sentenced to 12 years for drug trafficking." 

"It was a little after that that I realized that the lord was calling on me to preach.  I really changed my life around.  I did a lot of preaching in the penitentiary and it really felt like the right thing to be doing." 

"A little after I got out in 2006, I got married, started a family, and accepted the call to ministry.  I was ordained and rededicated my life to serving other people."   

"I've now been accepted into seminary school, pursuing a master's degree." 

Damon Horton is also active in a program called Steppin to a New Beat, started by another KFTC leader and former felon named Tayna Fogle.   

"I'm a mentor, heading up a youth program with them - to help young people who are on the wrong path to get them on the right path."  

But even after doing so much to turn his life around and to help others do the same, Rev. Horton is struggling.    

"Even though the lord has forgiven me, it's still hard for society to accept me.  It's hard to find a job.  

“I can pay taxes again, but I can't vote or have a real voice in the government.”  

“To be able to have a voice, vote, and make a difference - that's a big deal to me.  I read what's going on in my community, but I don't have a say in it.  I don't understand that. It's not like that in other states.  Ours is one of just a few.  It doesn't seem right.”    

“People make mistakes.  A lot of folks are just one or two mistakes from being in the same place I am.”  

“If faith tells me anything, it's that people deserve a second chance.”

By Steve Boyce

KFTC Chairperson

How many times have you heard “experts”—folks from the coal and energy industries, and even our own legislators—say that people supporting renewable energy may mean well but are misguided since renewables can’t provide “baseload power,” whatever that means. After all, the sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t blow all the time.

David Brown Kinloch has written what strikes me as an excellent and very important op-ed aimed at debunking “The Myth of the Baseload.” It’s well worth the read. Find it here.

Part of the reason I think it’s so good is that it explains in understandable terms some of the main challenges of generating and distributing electricity and why the traditional approach to addressing them—reliance on large centralized coal and nuclear generation plants for baseload—is not necessary. Along the way he makes clear the meaning of such terms as baseload, dispatcher and grid, and how current arrangements will have to change for distributed renewable generation to become a substantial part of the generation mix. Rarely if ever have I learned as much from reading an op-ed.

It’s the clarity of his myth busting that makes this piece seem so important. As Brown Kinloch concludes:

Clearly customer load can be met, hour by hour, primarily with renewables, without today’s baseload plants. … The problem here is not the nature of renewable resources or any technical hurdle, but rather it is getting utility planners and dispatchers to think outside the “baseload” mindset that they have been stuck in for so many years. … The need for large, centralized baseload capacity is not some requirement of the electrical power system, but rather a desire to continue to do things as utilities have done in the past, the way they know.

The transition to decentralized, clean power sources is crucial and feasible! And it’s coming! As I said, this op-ed is well worth reading.

KFTC members are encouraged to attend the next meeting of the the clean energy Collaborative, of which KFTC is a member along with several of our allies, the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC), and their 16 distribution co-ops.

Officially named the Demand Side Management and Renewable Energy Collaborative, the group will meet Tuesday, July 19, starting at 1 p.m. at the Marriott Griffin Gate Hotel on Newtown Pike in
Lexington. The meeting is open to the public.

The Collaborative was established upon the cancellation of the proposed burning Smith plant, and is an important step in our work to bring more energy efficiency measures and renewable energy to the co-ops through KFTC Renew East Kentucky campaign. Click here to learn more about the the Smith plant cancellation and the establishment of the Collaborative.
 
This will be the group’s second meeting. In March, the Collaborative established working groups to focus on renewables and demand side management. Those groups are expected to report on their activities since March.  In addition, a representative of the Kentucky Public Service Commission will make a presentation to the Collaborative.  
 
“Collaborative members expressed a need to better understand statutes and precedents related to demand side management and renewable energy proposals,” said Tona Barkley, vice chair of the group. “We are very appreciative that the PSC has agreed to further the group’s understanding through their presentation.”
 
Members of the public will have an opportunity to make comments at the end of the meeting.
 
The Collaborative is a joint project of East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC), its 16 member cooperatives, the Sierra Club, the Kentucky Environmental Foundation (KEF) and Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC).  
 
The group is meeting quarterly for the next two years to evaluate and recommend actions for EKPC to expand deployment of renewable energy and demand side management, and to promote collaboration among the Collaborative members in the implementation of those ideas. Demand side management (DSM) refers to programs designed to encourage consumers to improve energy efficiency and modify their pattern of electricity usage.