Energy Action Team meeting

December 12, 2012

Attendance: David Dickson, Cassandra Robertson, Brian Dougherty, Mark Luterra, Adam Steel, Tom Ekstedt, Carly Lettero, James Reismiller, Brandon Trelstad

Guest presenters: Sarah Mazze and Scott Dybvad

Carlyand Cassandra provided a brief update on the Energize Corvallis programs (Communities Take Charge, Energizers, Green Shares, and Neighborhood Stewards). The primary effort right now is organizing for “campuses take charge” to start early in the coming year with OSU students.

Scott Dybvad, and a discussion on a community greenhouse gas inventory he’s beginning for the City.

  • The method will generally follow ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) guidelines, using a “consumption based” model addressing energy invested in products made elsewhere (in contrast to a strict production based model addressing simply consumption).
  • Scott is early in the project and still working on:
  • Defining system boundaries;
  • Reliable, consistent, and repeatable sources of data; and
  • Background work on what other communities have done or are doing to learn what works, what doesn’t, and how our inventory might be comparable to others.
  • EAT cannot take leadership on this project (we tried previously and learned it was too complicated and time consuming for our volunteer base), BUT with Scott’s leadership, we do have the ability to assist in small ways if Scott has pieces of this project that can benefit from some of the expertise in the group. Scott expressed an interest in leveraging our help, but will need some time to develop the project better so he can assess where and how we might contribute.

Quick up date on the tour we are hosting as part of the Harvesting Clean Energy Conference here in Corvallis in January.

  • Tour is on Sunday, January 27th, 10:00am – 12:00pm.
  • We expect about 20 people, their transportation will be provided.
  • Tour will proceed as follows:
  • Start at James and Cassandra’s house to view a sustainable home;
  • Move to CSC weatherization lab (James will call Dennis to confirm); and
  • Conclude at South Co-Op (Cassandra will contact Mark, Co-op manager) to see their efficiency upgrades and provide tour participants a lunch option.
  • Carly will remain point person for coordinating with Conference organizers.

Sarah Mazze of the Resource Innovation Group facilitated a great and very informative conversation on community solar.

  • Sarah introduced the model of community solar as a vehicle for high income investors looking for socially responsible investments that provide a tax write-off.
  • There were two options available: “Solarize” or “Community Shared Solar”
  • “Solarize Eugene” was a hugely successful program and was simple in implementation. Here are a few details:
  • Local contractors coordinated and collaborated on a single, winning proposal which divided the work among all participants (5 of them);
  • Solar worked great, solar hot water was a bust.
  • They contracted for usage of the Solar Oregon database, which was very helpful;
  • Incentives contributed to the success. They were initially at $1.50/Watt, but are going down (some debate on the new incentive point, somewhere between $1.10 and $0.80/Watt);
  • EWEB had limited funds to support the program, some projects have been pushed off into 2013 but look like they will be completed either way. This funding was allocated by lottery;
  • The real value of the program came through marketing and outreach (something that EAT could actually help with!). By coordinating the outreach and doing the bulk of the work, this reduced the marketing burden on the contractors involved, which reduced their overhead and their project price as a result. Having a 3rd party with some semblance of objectivity helped the consumers buy into the project, they were getting their information from this 3rd party and not the contractor, which helped program credibility.
  • Community Solar is far more complicated…
  • When addressing the question, “How can people who are interested in buying solar but have no suitable location on their own property invent in solar?” community solar seems like the appropriate solution, but it is very complicated to implement;
  • By having people invest off property, investors cannot claim the residential tax credit (but maybe businesses can?);
  • Virtual net metering (looks like solar on your property even though in reality it’s actually someplace else) would help, but also complicated to implement and with some resistance from utilities;
  • Having an investment-based solar system might trigger complex legal and financial filings with the SEC and state agencies (selling securities), although forming a LLC might avoid some of this (unclear whether this is true or not);
  • Other members of the group brought up additional funding schemes, including crowd funding (e.g., Solar Mosaic) or based on charity or philanthropy.
  • Where to Renewable Energy Credits and a Feed-in-Tariff fit in to support these efforts?
  • To summarize, Sarah introduced us to a number of available options, some with a track record of success but limited ability to do what we want, and others with more latitude in deployment that comes with added legal and financial complexity. We will need to additional information and deliberation to decide how to move ahead.

Next meeting:

Wednesday, January 23, 2013. 5:30pm, Oak Creek Building.