A Georgia Senate committee needs to take it up
a bill that would greatly ease financing
solar power for your housetop or business roof.
Sen. Jack Murphy is the chair, and you can contact him today.
GA SB 51, The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act, was read to the Senate 16 January 2013 and referred to the Committee on Regulated Industries and Utilities. Here’s contact information for the Chair of that Committee:
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Georgia Senator Buddy Carter has introduced a Senate bill for the current
session of the legislature,
SB 51,
“The Georgia Cogeneration and Distributed Generation Act of 2001”.
It attempts to fix
Georgia’s special solar financing problem,
the antique 1973 Territorial Electric Service Act.
Why 2001? Apparently Buddy Carter has been introducing it every year since then. Last year Georgia Power’s disinformation campaign nuked it when it was SB 401. Has the legislature gotten tired of Georgia Power and its parent the Southern Company being way late and overbudget on those new nukes? Does the legislature want Georgia citizens to get the savings and job benefits of the fastest growing energy source in the country? Will GaSU help with SB 51, or only with GaSU’s attempt to become a solar monopoly utility? You can contact your legislators and tell them what you think. Every one of them who voted for Georgia Power’s stealth-tax rate hike for that nuke boondoggle should vote for SB 51 to start getting Georgia on a clean path to jobs and energy independence.
This bill is not perfect: it counts “generator fueled by biomass” as Continue reading
Matthew McDermott wrote for Treehugger 6 January 2011, Over Half of Germany’s Renewable Energy Owned By Citizens & Farmers, Not Utility Companies
Germany’s promotion of renewable energy rightly gets singled out forNot only is that more distributed, but it also may be a faster way to get solar deployed:its effectiveness, most often by me as an example of how to do things well versus the fits and starts method of promotion common in the US. Over at Wind-Works, Paul Gipe points out another interesting facet of the German renewable energy saga: 51% of all renewable energy in Germany is owned by individual citizens or farms, totaling $100 billion worth of private investment in clean energy.
Breaking that down into solar power and wind power, 50% of Germany’s solar PV is owned by individuals and farms, while 54% of its wind power is held by the same groups.
In total there’s roughly 17 GW of solar PV installed in Germany—versus roughly 3.6 GW in the US (based on SEIA’s figures for new installations though the third quarter of 2011 plus the 2.6 GW installed going into the year).Nothing prevents Georgia Power or Colquitt Electric or any of the other power companies operating in Georgia from leading the solar pack. For example, power companies concerned that solar doesn’t produce at night could still deploy solar peak load generation, thus dispensing with natural gas peak load generation.Remember, Germany now produces slightly over 20% of all its electricity from renewable sources.
While the power companies are not leading, private organizations such as Tabby Solar, founded by a pair of doctors, are forging ahead anyway.
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“When did our Marines become Birkenstock-wearing tree huggers?”This was after some Marines asked for solar power so they wouldn’t have to haul fuel in long convoys, which were among the most dangerous missions. Most of that fuel was going into very inefficient generators to run very inefficient air conditioners in tents in the desert. Dealing with that got the military thinking about energy security: assured access to mission-critical energy.
Looking up, he asked:
He identified America’s strategic center of gravity as its economy. It’s very resilient but has vulnerabilities open to attack. So how do we secure those vulnerabilities?“What is it we as a nation need to understand about our own energy security?”
The main vulnerabilities are: Continue reading