Articles by John Farrell
John Farrell is the author of Energy Self-Reliant States and a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, where he focuses on renewable energy policy.
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Do we have to choose between big or small clean energy projects?
The choice comes from the reality that financial resources are limited, the system of regulations and incentives are skewed toward big, centralized solutions, and choosing one strategy (long-distance transmission of centralized generation) necessarily reduces the money available and future prospects for expanded distributed generation.
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German rooftop solar price *averages* less than $4 per watt
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Earlier this spring I shared a graphic illustrating the dramatic fall in distributed solar PV prices in Germany, down to $4.11 per Watt installed, for rooftop systems under 100 kilowatts. As it turns out, the graphic was […]
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Land use is not a barrier for distributed renewable energy
A column in The New York Times last Tuesday suggested that land use is the greatest environmental problem facing new renewable energy.
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Oregon town gets a lot of solar for a little money
The upfront cost has always been the biggest barrier to solar photovoltaic adoption, and one Oregon town has found an innovative way to help its citizens buy down that cost.
