community
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Local clean energy a high priority for Canadian provinces
Ontario’s “buy local” energy policy has the promise of 43,000 local jobs from 5,000 MW of new renewable energy. Now Nova Scotia is showing a strong interest in boosting the economic returns of its clean energy program. The maritime province is completing rulemaking for a provincial goal of 40% renewable power by 2020 that […]
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Local ownership means local love for wind power
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. A new article in the journal Energy Policy supports the notion that local ownership is key to overcoming local resistance to renewable energy. The article summarizes a survey conducted of two towns in Germany, both with local […]
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Cooperative South Dakota wind farm nets 600 local owners
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. With the right renewable energy policy, hundreds of individuals can have a stake in a renewable energy future. That’s what happened with a cooperatively-owned wind project in South Dakota, where 7 turbines from a larger wind project […]
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Greening a city … and pushing other colors out
A development plan in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood exposes the challenges of making communities sustainable without destroying their social fabric.
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On Independence Day, towns take back their streets from cars
For one day each year, humanity descends on an otherwise inhumane landscape, pedestrians boldly take back the public realm, and my hometown feels like a community again.
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Cash incentives for renewables are twice as effective as tax credits
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Using the tax code rather than cash incentives to support wind and solar power costs ratepayers significantly more. I wrote about this problem last year because project developers were selling their federal tax credits to third […]
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How community ownership can save wind power
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Community ownership may provide the solution for increasing resistance to wind power in the United States. Wind power has expanded rapidly in recent years, but the new wind farms have a common characteristic: absentee ownership. These […]
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Want local communities to support wind? Put them in charge
Let’s turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs.Photo: Eddie CodelThis post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Last month, Grist’s Jess Zimmerman noted sarcastically that “Money is a miracle cure for ‘wind turbine syndrome.'” It is. And environmental advocates frustrated by the (spurious?) health and aesthetic complaints raised […]
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Community uses ‘choice aggregation’ to fight its utility
Utilities need to cooperate with their communities.Photo: Powerhouse MuseumThis post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. Taking over the local utility has traditionally been the only route for communities wishing to chart their own energy future. California, Ohio, and two other states have opened […]
