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It’s just about here. For years, renewable energy advocates promised that solar would one day be affordable to all American consumers -- who have, by and large, relied on federal tax rebates to lower the out-of-pocket costs for new installations. The U.S. rooftop solar industry lived up to that prediction in the past year, thanks to breakthrough innovations that helped to change the landscape of North America’s most popular renewable energy.

Still, if there is any takeaway to be gained from the last half of 2016, it’s that solar is truly a global industry, fueled by global change. Plummeting production costs and two unexpectedly low construction bids in Abu Dhabi and China helped underscore solar’s potential for inexpensive, sustainable energy worldwide.  The increasing use of solar to power remote, off-the-grid impoverished communities in Africa, India and Latin America helped to drive home the diverse appeal and benefits of a global renewable energy market.

Here in the United States, access to solar power is still largely limited to mid- and upper-income families. The George Washington Solar Institute found that a whopping 40 percent of households that qualify for solar under U.S. federal tax incentives have annual incomes below $40,000. Yet only 5 percent of those households actually have installed solar. The reasons aren’t surprising: Credit “worthiness,” adequate disposable income, tax credit ineligibility (which is impacted by income) and lack of property ownership if they are renting often govern whether the country’s lowest-income earners can actually benefit from the country’s most popular renewable energy incentives.

Of course, solar isn’t the only ingredient that defines a sustainable home. Smart appliances, well-designed infrastructure like a gray water catchment system, composting, and architecture that addresses potential climate change risks are just as much a part of what defines a sustainable home these days as the way power is sourced.

Solar decathlon

One arena that helps showcase the potential for sustainable housing is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon. Launched in 2002 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the competition was designed to inspire American universities and colleges to explore the many ways that solar and other sustainable concepts could address conventional housing needs.

And the Decathlon's success says a lot about what we really feel sustainable housing should be. Rather than providing a sort of “cookie-cutter” example of how smart architecture and innovative development can lower our carbon footprint, the entries reinforced the fact that our concept of sustainability is often driven by social factors: the local demands of our environment and society.

On the shores of New Jersey, that emblematic solar house might include an open, inviting design that can be buttressed quickly against an unpredictable storm surge and takes advantage of state-of-the-art smart technology. In the semi-rural farmlands near the University of California, Davis, smart living might mean smaller and more affordable living spaces that can accommodate the needs of migrant workers and lower-income families during triple-digit summers.

Then again, it might mean incorporating sustainable food production into the way residents live and interact within their “smart” home, as the State University of New York at Buffalo recently suggested in its 2015 entry.  It might mean less focus on pre-programmed amenities and more design features to let residents interact with their environment in the way that best suits their needs and their interests.

Martha Bohm, who oversaw the planning and construction of the University at Buffalo's GRoW Home, said when determining what would make a sustainable structure, the team looked beyond the appliances and low-footprint power sources they wanted to use.

Bohm is an assistant professor in the Department of Architecture for the State University of New York. Incorporating sustainability into the architecture, she said, meant considering not just what "smart" functions the house might be able to do, but the ways the house could help shape interaction between the users and the world outside.

The household's low-energy usage, which was generated both by photovoltaic and thermal sources, helped define its sustainability, but so did its potential for lowering another, more nebulous but equally critical footprint: the cost of sustenance.

The team, which won second place in the 2015 Decathlon, took a page from Buffalo's historic neighborhoods, where gardening is often considered much more than an urban past time. For some residents, that small plot of veggies, fruits and herbs by the door serves to reduce the daily cost of purchasing and transporting food from stores. Bohm said the team came to realize that any enduring architecture would have to be one that could help enhance the residents' ability to reduce that 'energy overhead' as well.

"This is one that doesn't show up on the energy meter and your energy bill each month. But we consider the food that is brought into the house each month to sustain the residents is part of the energy footprint of the house," Bohm said. "So we tried to incorporate food production at a very local and sustainable level within the house in the greenhouse that is attached to it."

That self-sufficiency element helped tie in another quality that the team felt was essential to a sustainable lifestyle: a house that could support and encourage an active, engaged life.

"Rather than following a very exciting and interesting trend in architecture, which is going toward more computer controlling and smarter technology, we were endeavoring to create a smarter user of the house by having them do more activities," Bohm explained.

Interactive features gave users more control when it came to ventilation, natural lighting and food production. Walls could be adapted to increase functionality of a room. Furniture was built with multipurpose uses in mind. The enclosed solarium served both as a recreational and gardening area during daylight hours and as a protective envelope of warmth during the night.

Solar affordability

The GRoW Home was meant to serve as a prototype for a competition with rather unusual transportation requirements (the house was built in Buffalo, but would be showcased at the Decathlon in California in 2015). It wasn't, for example, designed to prove the cost effectiveness of renewable energy on a mass scale or how the house could be most effectively reproduced in alternative settings. Still, affordability was a key issue, much as it often is in any renewable energy home these days.

But when it came down to overhead, Bohm said, it wasn't the solar system that was driving decisions about cost. It was things that are often faced in any conventional housing construction, particularly with climate change issues in the mix: the most affordable and effective heat pump to use, what kinds of windows to use in a cold-climate home, and what auxiliary venting systems might be needed to help reduce heat build up during the summer.

The project, which was able to cut costs through donated labor and fundraising, confirmed a critical issue when it came to solar homes: It isn't the cost of hardware that is driving the cost of solar these days, but labor.

"The costs are definitely coming down in terms of the equipment," Bohm said. But when it comes to getting those panels up on the roof, well, that presents another challenge. "The cost of labor has not come down as quickly.  So even though the stuff is [less expensive now], getting it on to houses is not as cheap as you would want it to be."

Bohm said this dilemma forced some solar companies to start looking at alternative manufacturing techniques that would streamline the installation requirements  in most PV installations. Standardization of racking systems, uniform installation plans and equipment are now making it easier to ensure labor costs can be reduced to a minimum.

"[Having] a set of details that work with different roofing types and roof pitches, and having all of that pre-figured out" has become one way of expediting solar orders, she said. So have new contract options that take the cost of solar installation off the table for the consumer.

Power purchase agreements, in which the solar provider strikes a deal to use the consumer's rooftop to generate solar power, are gaining popularity in places like Southern California. Bohm said she expects the country will see more of these types of dynamic partnerships in the coming years.

New innovations and old, but usable stock

From an energy perspective, Bohm cited other things that can be done to improve our environmental footprint which have just as much of an impact on cost and effectiveness as the type of energy we generate.

"We have a lot of old building stock that was built at a time when our energy codes were not as stringent as they are now. What we need in a lot of our houses is really unsexy stuff like new windows, better insulation, reducing the amount of leaks that are in the building that create drafts and lose energy that way."

Fixing water supply systems, such as in Flint, Michigan, and upgrading low-cost rental housing stock in tourist-destination New Orleans, she said, goes hand-in-hand with building a resilient renewable energy infrastructure.

The coming years will be exciting for the renewable energy market, said Bohm, who predicts small but significant leaps in a broad spectrum of industries: improved windows that allow for better heat retention through specially coated formulas, new heating systems and a continually improving array of building materials will continue to nuance the conversation when it comes to the definition of the affordable solar home.

Finding ways to tailor the home to address those "hidden" environmental impacts, like food production and the everyday demands of building a resilient urban lifestyle may become the next challenges to defining the perfect eco-home.

Images: University at Buffalo 2015 Solar Decathlon entry exterior and interior views - Thomas Kelsey, U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Unreasonable.is. Republished with permission. 

By Brittany Lane

In 2007, Carlos and Aline Pereira welcomed their daughter, Clara, into the world in Recife, Brazil, but their world would never be the same.

“The day my daughter was born, a medical mistake induced her with cerebral palsy,” Carlos says. “She wouldn’t walk or speak. From the moment I found out, I started to look for solutions to help her.”

He discovered stem cell treatment, which at that time was impossible to access in Brazil. The procedure would cost $40,000. At the time, he only had about $3 to spend. So Carlos opened a bank account, built a website, and launched a crowdfunding campaign – the first one in Brazil. Before he knew it, he had raised the full amount needed for the procedure, earning a ton of media coverage in the process.

In 2009, when Clara was almost 2 years old, she became the first person in Brazil to receive stem cell treatment, according to Carlos.

For most of the 1 billion people around the world living with some form of disability, treatment remains out of reach and financially prohibitive. According to the United Nations, this group forms the world’s largest minority. Collectively, people with disabilities tend to experience greater degrees of workplace discrimination and economic hardship, especially when they can’t communicate orally.

After her treatment, Clara gradually showed signs of improvement. However, she still struggled to communicate. Carlos says around 15 million people in Brazil alone can’t speak due to their disabilities. Not wanting his daughter to live a life unheard or uneducated, he decided to build a software solution.

“I’m an electronics engineer with no background in development,” Carlos explains. “But I saw my daughter needed it, so I had to learn. I went to a computer class, started learning, made a prototype, and tested it with Clara.”

After several rounds of this experimentation, Livox emerged.

Livox is an app with an intelligent algorithm that adjusts the “incorrect touch” of someone with motor or cognitive challenges as they interact with it on a tablet. The app is populated with educational content, and it uses natural language processing and machine learning to teach differently-abled people to read, write, and understand complex math concepts in a customized way. A speech synthesizer, similar to what Stephen Hawking uses, even enables the user to vocalize answers where applicable.

“Communication is one of the most basic human needs,” Carlos says. “We’re trying to provide ways for people [with disabilities] to communicate. It’s a big challenge for a teacher to have a child with a disability in the classroom. How can the teacher possibly know if this student is learning or not, especially if the student can’t say they don’t understand?”

Word spread fast about Livox, and parents with children who have autism and ALS approached Carlos to ask if the app would work for their kids. Each time this happened, Carlos would develop a new algorithm to address their specific needs.

“There is no limit to how many disabilities Livox can handle,” Carlos insists. “We never stop creating new things. When someone comes to us with a new need, we think about every single thing Livox can do to solve it.”

Livox is available for families to download on Google Play. Carlos also licenses his app on pre-loaded Intel tablets to governments, which then distribute them to schools. To date, Livox has over 20,000 users in 19 of Brazil’s 26 states.

Additionally, Carlos recently closed a deal with a large network of hospitals in Florida, where the Livox app is up to 4,000 percent cheaper than current medical solutions available. Soon, the company will expand into Saudi Arabia, as the government recently purchased 100,000 licenses.

Despite its growth, Livox still only reaches a fraction of those around the world who could benefit from the technology. To increase affordability and accessibility and maximize impact, Carlos launched a nonprofit arm called Inclusion Without Borders (IWB).

“It bothers me a lot, because I know that technology can change lives. But some families don’t have enough money to even buy a meal, and they have a child with a disability,” Carlos explains. “Through IWB, we want to provide this technology cheaper -- or even for free -- for these people.”

Google.org learned about the Pereiras' story in 2015 and awarded them $550,000 as part of the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities. The money is going toward improving the speed of augmentative and alternative communication software. This will reduce the time that people have to wait for someone like Clara to write a response – something Stephen Hawking himself admits causes him loneliness.

Most recently, Carlos won the Social Entrepreneur Award 2016 from a partnership between Folha and the Schwab Foundation – the largest award of its kind in Latin America.

“Technology changes at an amazing pace, and what’s possible now wasn’t possible 10 years ago,” he says. “It’s hard to figure out what twenty years from now will be like, but I know what I want to do. I want to keep innovating to create technologies for people with disabilities.”

Images courtesy of Livox

Brittany Lane is the editor of UNREASONABLE.is for Unreasonable Group. She believes lasting social and environmental change happens at the intersection of entrepreneurship and empathy.

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post. Republished with permission. 

By Elliott Negin

Nominating Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency gives lie to Donald Trump’s claim that he is serious about protecting the public from pollution. While the president-elect has waffled on climate change, he remained unequivocal about toxics.

“Clean air is vitally important,” Trump declared during a Nov. 22 interview with the New York Times. “Clean water,” he added, “crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important.” And when he announced Pruitt’s nomination in early December, Trump vowed that the attorney general would “restore the EPA’s essential mission of keeping our air and water clean and safe.”

Putting aside the fact that the EPA has not forsaken that mission, Pruitt’s track record indicates he would do the exact opposite. Under Pruitt, the acronym EPA would stand for Every Polluter’s Ally.

Since he took office as Oklahoma’s attorney general in 2010, Pruitt has repeatedly sued the EPA to block key safeguards limiting power plant pollution, most notably the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which limits sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, and the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which curb mercury, arsenic, cyanide and other emissions.

Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are primary ingredients of soot and smog pollution, which cause a number of respiratory problems, including bronchitis and aggravated asthma, as well as cardiovascular disease and premature death. Mercury and other toxic pollutants covered by MATS have been linked to heart disease, neurological damage, birth defects, asthma attacks and premature death. Some 25 million Americans suffer from asthma, alone. That’s 1 out of every 12 people.

The potential benefits of the Cross-State Rule and MATS are considerable. Taken together, they are projected to prevent 18,000 to 46,000 premature deaths across the country and save $150 billion to $380 billion in healthcare costs annually. In Pruitt’s home state, the two regulations would avert as many as 720 premature deaths and save as much as $5.9 billion per year.

Pruitt also has sued the EPA to prevent the agency from implementing a rule that would reduce the amount of ground-level ozone, or smog, which the American Lung Association says is the most widespread pollutant nationwide and one of the most dangerous. Produced when sunlight heats nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide from power plants, industrial facilities and automobiles, ozone pollution has been linked to respiratory problems, cardiovascular disease and premature death. It is particularly harmful for the most vulnerable, including children, the elderly, and people already suffering from asthma or another respiratory disease.

No matter. In October 2015, Pruitt joined with four other states to challenge the new ozone rule in court, despite the fact that earlier that month, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality said the state could meet the new EPA limits.

Pruitt also has targeted clean water safeguards. In July 2015, he sued the EPA over the Clean Water Rule, which the agency and the Army Corps of Engineers issued to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act.

The rule came in response to two Supreme Court decisions — in 2001 and in 2006 — that called into question whether the federal government had the authority to protect smaller streams, wetlands and other water bodies that flow into drinking water supplies. From a scientific perspective, it’s a no-brainer. As EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy explained in a statement: “For the lakes and rivers we love to be clean, the streams and wetlands that feed them have to be clean, too.”

Pruitt doesn’t see it that way. In a March 2015 column he co-wrote with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul for The Hill, Pruitt called the Clean Water Rule “the greatest blow to private property rights the modern era has seen.” Pruitt and Rand maintain that states should be responsible for protecting the environment within their respective borders, not the federal government. Never mind that air and water pollution do not honor political boundaries and state legislatures are all too often dominated by corporate interests.

Besides Pruitt’s disdain for air and water safeguards, he is no fan of federal efforts to address climate change, which he falsely insists is an open scientific question. Pruitt, who has received generous contributions from fossil fuel interests, is not only party to a pending lawsuit against the EPA over its Clean Power Plan to curb electricity sector carbon emissions, he also attempted unsuccessfully to overturn the agency’s science-based “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, a cornerstone of the EPA’s climate work.

Public health advocates are rightly horrified at the prospect of Pruitt running the EPA. The response from Ken Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, was typical.

“The EPA plays an absolutely vital role in enforcing long-standing policies that protect the health and safety of Americans, based on the best available science,” Kimmell said in a press statement. “Pruitt has a clear record of hostility to the EPA’s mission, and he is a completely inappropriate choice to lead it. ... It’s this simple: If senators take seriously their job of protecting the public, they must vote no on Pruitt.”

Image credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Follow him on Twitter.

Last month, the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and the Carbon War Room convened what amounted to a state of union for the battle to slow climate change. The two entities quietly merged in December 2014.

Always inspiring, both RMI’s founder Amory Lovins and CEO Jules Kortenhorst did not disappoint.

They began by summarizing a recent accomplishment which Lovins characterized as having “reframed the energy problem" and "catalyzed the transformation of the mobility, buildings and electricity sectors."

As he described it, his organization is now working at the national level with the U.S., China and Germany to demonstrate the economic viability of renewables and energy efficiency.  "We can barely imagine what progress we’re going to make in the coming years,” Lovins said.

The technology needed is already available, he insisted. The question is how to deploy it rapidly. But this is not a new problem. Consider car ownership in the early 20th century: The percentage of Americans who owned a car ballooned from 8 percent to 80 percent in only 10 years, Lovins explained -- saying such rapid adoption is now possible with renewables.

The car loan, a major financial innovation at its time, helped make quick auto adoption possible. And it didn't hurt that the price of the Model T dropped 62 percent over 10 years. Similarly, solar photovoltaics prices fell 75 percent in five years and instruments to make the technology affordable for homeowners proliferate.

Known for its groundbreaking scenarios published in books such as "Winning the Oil Endgame" and "Reinventing Fire," RMI is about to release four new scenarios to cap global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the more ambitious target established at COP21 in Paris. It won’t be easy, he said. It is feasible, “but only if all the levers are pulled.”

RMI has been working in China, pulling a number of levers there, based on its Reinventing Fire approach. According to Lovins, the Institute helped the Chinese to improve carbon productivity by a factor of 12, while increasing energy production seven-fold -- all while saving $3.5 trillion.

Using this approach globally, he said, will get us to the 2-degree Celsius level, when saving $18 trillion.

Then, “if you reinvest some of that into natural systems carbon removal – biological removal through more informed ways to do forestry, farming, grazing, and so on along with ecological restoration of rainforests and so on. That could probably get you to a 1.5-degree level at a cost still trillions of dollars less than business as usual."

But, of course, attendees were curious how the 2016 U.S. election could affect renewable energy development and the fight against climate change.

"Other countries will see it as an opportunity to move into the space if we vacate it," Lovins said of the U.S. "It’s happening anyway. For example, as India chooses to go [all electric vehicle] by 2030, that will allow them to do what Denmark did in wind." In other words, it will enable the Indian motor vehicle industry to play a large role in the global market as Denmark has done with its wind energy company, Vestas.

RMI CEO Jules Kortenhorst suggested that the post-election, anti-climate change rhetoric has reinforced the resolve of the other countries party to the Paris agreement.

Lovins was also dubious about President-elect Donald Trump's plans to reinvigorate America's coal industry: “You can defibrillate a corpse, but it won’t rise and walk. The economics are not there. Even coal executives acknowledge it. These are competitive global markets.”

Going back to the earlier theme, he added: “China is now leading in seven different categories of renewable technology. They have installed more solar in the past year than the U.S. has in the past 59 years. Their strength lies in planned activities as well as a very dynamic and growing private sector.”

As for Trump’s appointments, Lovins seemed less pessimistic than most. He pointed out that Rick Perry presided over the free market policies that made Texas the national leader in wind power. “He understands,” Lovins insisted, “that wind can beat gas."

As for electric utility regulation, “The market will no longer be tops-down; it will be trans-active, like the Internet," Lovins predicted. "Companies and consumers will collaborate. It will be an interplay of different actors.” This is still misunderstood today. “You can get all the energy you need from renewables.” He then quoted Clay Stranger in comparing the grid to a symphony orchestra: “No instrument plays all the time, but there is always music.”

Germany got 49 percent of its energy from wind and sun last year. People worry about reliability, but “the last time they had a power failure there was 35 years ago,” Lovins explained.

He then described four types of innovation, all of which are needed to address this problem: technology, design, policy and business strategy.

In closing, the two gave a long-term vision.

“We dream of a world in 15 to 20 years where electrons are ubiquitous, abundant and cheap, and mobility is a service. It will be a completely different energy world. Demand will be both efficient and smart.

"Half the problem is knowing where to invest. Our Rwanda team developed a strategy to bring electricity to the 78 percent of the population that doesn’t have it yet, starting with a clean sheet. The work in Africa was funded by Carbon War Room founder, Richard Branson, along with Virgin Unite and the Rockefeller Foundation.

"It’s now starting to scale up. We’re looking for non-linear scale up. The main constraint is not how fast can you scale up. It is: How fast can you get the incumbents out of the way? Peak oil demand could hit in the next five years. More than 140 countries need help decarbonizing their economies after committing in Paris. How can this be scaled up quickly across different locales?”

That is the big question.

Image credit: Doc Searls: Flickr Creative Commons

Connecticut has emerged as a leading center for U.S. hydrogen and fuel cell development over the past several years. But the Connecticut hydrogen industry is about to become an unwilling test case for the ability of the national hydrogen sector to survive lean times.

Two key setbacks should serve as a warning sign for fans of the hydrogen economy -- or they could demonstrate its resiliency, depending on perspective.

Goodbye, federal fuel cell tax credit

As reported by the Connecticut Mirror last month, one of the setbacks was national in scope.

That story started in 2015, when Congress passed a law that extended federal tax credits for major league wind and solar energy development.

Unfortunately for hydrogen economy fans, several minor league clean-power sectors were omitted from that legislation, including small-scale distributed wind, geothermal heat pumps, and combined heat and power, as well as fuel cells.

Apparently Republican leadership in Congress pledged to extend those credits at the earliest opportunity. However, a Dec. 31 deadline came and went without action after the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity launched a campaign against extending the credits.

As a result, projects in those sectors lost an investment tax credit of 30 percent as of 12:10 a.m. on Jan. 1.

When renewables eat each other

The other blow was specific to Connecticut. It came down last fall, when the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection decided to skip over fuel cells for 25 state-awarded, clean-energy projects covering almost 800 megawatts in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

By way of explanation, DEEP cited the low cost of competing forms of alternative energy, primarily solar.

Hydrogen and fuel cell advocates warn that the narrow focus on solar costs could come back to bite Connecticut ratepayers.

One factor that could boost costs is the need for additional energy storage, grid connections or backup power plants to supplement solar farms.

Another factor is the possibility that bidders on the contracts may have predicted lower costs that fail to materialize, due to rising demand for solar panels in the U.S. and globally.

Hydrogen economy forges on

Hydrogen stakeholders may yet be proven right about DEEP's decision. But as the Mirror reported, the fallout has already begun:

"Failure to win those contracts led FuelCell Energy to announce layoffs at its corporate offices in Danbury, its manufacturing site in Torrington, and several 'remote locations.' A total of 96 people were laid off, representing 17 percent of the company’s work force," wrote the Mirror's Ana Radelat.

"Chip Bottone, president and CEO of FuelCell Energy said failure to extend the tax breaks contributed to the decision to shrink the workforce."

In the same interview, though, Bottone provided an important clue regarding a key factor that could help sustain the domestic hydrogen and fuel cell industry through lean times.

That would be the need for a robust domestic fuel cell industry in support of national security interests. The Department of Defense is a major consumer of fuel cell technology. NASA is another federal agency that relies heavily on hydrogen fuel and fuel cells.

Bottone pointed out that the U.S. has become a global fuel cell technology leader with an established domestic supply chain and strong demand for its products overseas.

In contrast, the U.S. solar cell manufacturing industry has seen its global market share fall off a cliff. Starting at a 1995 benchmark, the tailspin lasted until 2006 before leveling off far behind the current industry leader, China.

Connecticut has already established itself a one of top three states for the U.S. hydrogen and fuel cell economy (the other two are California and New York state), which could also help local companies lobby for a renewal of federal support.

The state's fuel cell industry is also credited with vaulting Connecticut into the Clean Tech Leadership Index Top Ten in 2014.

What about sustainable hydrogen?

Another factor that may sustain Connecticut's hydrogen economy is the interest of the Energy Department in sustainable hydrogen production.

The Connecticut company Precision Combustion is one example. Last June, the company won a competitive Energy Department small business grant to develop a solar-powered system for capturing carbon from industrial gases and converting it to other carbon-based products.

Renewable hydrogen -- sourced from water using wind or solar in a power-to-gas system -- would bump things up a notch up the sustainability ladder. If all goes well, power-to-gas facilities could begin sprouting in Connecticut.

Last year the Hartford Business Journal reviewed FuelCell Energy's proposal for the world's largest fuel cell "park" and noted the potential boost for wind and solar production in the state:

"... the renewable energy industry will have the ability to make use of off-peak electricity to generate energy and then store it as hydrogen. That energy can be used to fuel zero-emission vehicles, produce thermal energy and electricity with fuel cell technology whenever needed, or be introduced into the natural gas pipeline. This power-to-gas application could potentially develop a new renewable gas credit market."

Unfortunately, the fuel cell park proposal was one of those skipped over by DEEP last fall.

However, FuelCell Energy is still pursuing the fuel cell project through other pathways and it has several additional proposals on DEEP's desk.

A decision on those is expected by the end of the month so stay tuned.

Image (screenshot): via Connecticut Hydrogen-Fuel Cell Coalition, chfcc.org.

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By Anna Johansson

Everywhere you look, the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is taking off. Small businesses and multi-national corporations alike are getting involved, and it’s easy to feel like the business world is finally moving in the right direction. But what’s really happening beneath the surface?

The state of CSR

It’s hip and trendy to have a CSR strategy. By and large, consumers have made it clear that they’re interested in doing business with companies that not only prioritize competitive prices and quality products, but also sustainable practices. This has led thousands of companies, who would have never otherwise considered CSR, to develop seemingly robust strategies.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with pursuing CSR out of marketplace demand, this hollow foundation often creates issues. When you look past mission statements, core values, and well-crafted quotes from company executives, it becomes clear that many (not all) CSR strategies are nothing more than facades for otherwise standard business activities.

Sometimes this is unintentional and other times it’s meant to serve as a distraction. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume that most companies with faulty CSR strategies fall under the “unintentional” umbrella. In these cases, one of the primary culprits is a lack of involvement from executive leadership.

“Although numerous surveys have touted the increased involvement of CEOs in CSR, we have found that CSR programs are often initiated and run in an uncoordinated way by a variety of internal managers, frequently without the active engagement of the CEO,” says V. Kasturi Rangan, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School and cofounder of the HBS Social Enterprise initiative. This leads to confusion and fragmented decision making that tends to wilt under pressure.

Another common reason some CSR strategies end up being hollow is because the majority of the focus is on public relations and marketing. Many companies are so focused on making sure that their CSR strategy reflects well on the brand publicly that they don’t have enough time and resources to actually live up to their claims.

Practice what you preach

“It’s time to move from thought leadership to action leadership,” says Charlotte West, director of Business in the Community. “We can genuinely make the world a better place by practically embedding purpose in our brands. And a good, resilient purpose should have sustainability at its heart.”

In order for businesses to practice what they preach and make CSR about more than PR and marketing, it takes a concerted effort from every decision maker within the organization. To paint a practical picture of what it looks like to put CSR first behind the scenes, let’s look at some examples of things businesses can do.

1. Get employees on board

The first thing businesses need to do is show their employees that they’re serious about CSR – even when nobody is looking. If you really want to make a splash, plan a retreat and sit down with your employees to discuss short-term and long-term goals.

Get out of the office and go somewhere unique. Give some sort of adventurous team-building activity a try – such as zip lining or perhaps rock climbing – and use it as a springboard for brainstorming ideas and getting the all-important employee buy-in. Once employees are on board, the higher ups can proceed with crafting a balanced strategy.

2. Study what others are doing

It can be helpful to study what other brands are doing well. Ikea is one company that totally nails CSR from start to finish. Everything they do is consistent with their message and this alignment allows for positive results. Other companies to keep an eye on include Starbucks, Disney, NuSkin, Microsoft and Toms shoes.

3. It’s not about you

One thing you need to consistently remind yourself is that CSR isn’t about you. It’s not about how many wonderful things you’re doing for the environment or local community. It’s about how the organization is positively impacting others and lessening our negative impact.

When businesses shift their focuses outwards, suddenly, CSR becomes less of a PR agenda and more of a push for making the world a better place. It’s anything but easy, but the right mindset precedes the right action.

Putting it all together

When it comes down to it, CSR is not something that should be taken lightly. While the marketplace is telling businesses that they want to work with brands that take CSR seriously, this shouldn’t lead to the formation of hollow strategies that are inconsistent, fragmented, and independent of executive leadership. In order to make CSR worth the time and effort, it’s imperative that businesses practice what they preach behind the scenes.

Image credit: Pixabay

Anna Johansson is a freelance writer, researcher, and business consultant. A columnist for Entrepreneur.com, HuffingtonPost.com and more, Anna specializes in entrepreneurship, technology, and social media trends. Follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

FedEx gets high marks for its environmental sustainability initiatives. But its relationship with the National Rifle Association is sparking controversy in Florida, where FedEx offers a variety of discounts to NRA members. In that state, homicides have recently spiked despite -- or because of -- the 2005 "stand your ground" self defense law, which was strongly supported by the NRA.

This is not the first time the gun reform movement has tried to put FedEx on the spot over its shipping discounts for NRA members, but so far the effort has not gained much traction. For example, a Change.org petition died on the vine about four years ago after failing to attract more than a few hundred signers.

This time around, though, things could be different.

Groups unite against FedEx and the NRA

Part of the difference this time could be the combined pressure of local legislators and an alliance between advocates for LGBTQ rights and gun reform.

They have rallied around the issue of steep discounts that FedEx provides to NRA members, as part of the NRA Business Alliance.

On Dec. 19, Bloomberg reported that the organization Guns Down is spearheading the renewed protests along with other organizations. The effort includes an online campaign as well as in-person protests in Colorado, Georgia, and Tennessee -- and in Florida on Dec. 21.

Other participating organizations are Color of Change, Newton Action Alliance and Pride Fund to End Gun Violence, Bloomberg reported.

The Florida protest

The FedEx/NRA protests apparently took place as planned, but it appears that only the Florida action gained much traction in the media.

That could be partly due to the choice of Orlando as a location, the scene of last summer's mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in which 49 people were killed.

The support of state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith also may have tipped the scales for media attention in Florida. Few Florida lawmakers are willing to take on gun reform, but Smith won his seat in November with a platform that included a strong position on "common-sense gun safety measures."

As reported by the Orlando Weekly, Smith had some strong words to say about FedEx and the NRA regarding last week's protest:

"Newly elected state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, says it's time to 'starve the beast' and called for a boycott of 'corporate enablers' like FedEx who offer incentives that help the NRA recruit members and hire lobbyists," wrote the Weekly's Monivette Cordeiro.

"'After Pulse, after everything that happened, I can't believe the NRA would advocate we bring even more guns into the equation as a solution to gun violence,' he says. 'I think that's insane.'"

Murder rate spikes in Florida

The Orlando Weekly and Orlando Sentinel seem to be the only major media that covered the Florida protest, but FedEx might still be on the hook for more unwanted attention in the coming year.

That's because the murder rate in Florida has begun to draw national attention. The state's homicide problem sticks out in the context of a significant long-term decline in the average murder rate among other states.

Last summer, the Associated Press reported that Florida's 2015 crime statistics revealed a sharp year-to-year increase in murders and other crimes of violence, partly fueled by an increase in gun-related murders:

"There were 1,040 murders in Florida last year, up from 984 the year before. That includes 767 murders involving guns, an increase of 11.2 percent. That's the most murders in Florida since 2008, when FDLE reported 1,168," the AP reported via the Sentinel last year.

"There were also 7,537 reported rapes in Florida, an increase of 6.1 percent over 2014. Aggravated assaults increased by 3.9 percent, from 58,271 to 60,539, and motor vehicle thefts jumped by 12.4 percent from 36,111 to 40,478."

Florida officials have apparently been trying to paper over the spike by pointing to an overall decline of 1.6 percent in the crime rate. According to the AP, however, that is mostly due to a 10 percent drop in burglaries.

Stand your ground is not working

FedEx's relationship with the NRA could also take a hit as more evidence accumulates about Florida's "stand your ground" self defense law.

The law was promoted as a public safety measure by the NRA and its supporters, but the recent spike in murders calls its efficacy into question.

Researchers are also beginning to track the law's effect over the long term, and the picture is not pretty.

The law took effect in 2005. Florida's monthly murder rate had been trending downward prior to that year, but a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has traced the law to a general 24.4 percent increase in the monthly homicide rate after 2005.

The study was published on Nov. 14 under the title, "Evaluating the Impact of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” Self-defense Law on Homicide and Suicide by Firearm."

The researchers, based at the University of Oxford, found that gun-related homicides showed an even more significant increase, topping out at 31.6 percent.

They concluded that the "removal of restrictions on when and where individuals can use lethal force was associated with a significant increase in homicide and homicide by firearm in Florida."

Ouch!

FedEx and the NRA discount

FedEx targets its NRA discount program as a general perk for new business owners, with this pitch:

"You've always dreamed of owning your own business.

"It might be more challenging than you thought. But you love being in charge and taking responsibility for making your dream a reality. You can't imagine doing anything else that makes you feel as accomplished and proud."

However, when you dig a little deeper, the picture gets murky. The pitch is specifically aimed at participants in the NRA Business Alliance, which bills itself as a way for members to reach "nearly four million NRA members."

Florida has by far the most participating businesses, at 377. The next-closest state is Texas, with significantly fewer participants (263)  but a much larger population. The population of Texas was projected at almost 27 million for 2014, and Florida was projected at less than 20 million.

California comes in third with 254 participants and an even larger projected population of almost 39 million.

So, what's going on in Florida? A quick skim of the list of NRA Business Alliance participants in Florida reveals why FedEx -- or any other shipping company -- would be interested in courting that market. The membership is heavy with retail establishments -- namely,  firearms dealers and pawn shops -- as well as security firms and training facilities.

FedEx and sustainability

FedEx has been diligent about carving out a name for itself in the sustainability field, and that effort could be undercut by the NRA relationship.

The company has set some ambitious goals for reducing its carbon footprint and conserving resources, and it already has a good track record.

One standout example is a striking green roof at its sorting center located at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.

FedEx is also an early adopter of electric vehicles, and it helped to launch the trend of installing on site renewable energy at sports stadium.

But if the Guns Down campaign gains momentum, FedEx could take a hit, green branding or not.

Photo (cropped): by Daniel Oines via flickr.com, creative commons license.

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By Mike O'Boyle

For years, debates about how to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation were framed as trade-offs: What is the cost premium we must pay for generating zero-carbon electricity compared to fossil fuels, and how can we minimize those costs?

Fortunately, the holidays came early this year for renewable energy: In investment company Lazard’s annual report on the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for different electricity-generating technologies, renewables are now the cheapest available sources of electricity. This flips the question of clean-versus-cost on its head. And in 2017, we’ll be asking: How much can we save by accelerating the renewable energy transition?

The story from Lazard’s 10th annual report is clear. Rapid technology cost reductions mean wind and solar are now the cheapest form of generation in many places around the country, without federal subsidies like tax credits.

What does levelized cost of energy mean?

Lazard uses LCOE analysis to identify how much each unit of electricity (measured in megawatt-hours or MWh) costs to generate over the lifetime of any power plant. LCOE represents every cost component – capital expenditure to build, operations and maintenance, and fuel costs to run – spread out over the total megawatt-hours generated during the power plant’s lifetime.

Because different plants have different operating characteristics and cost components, LCOE allows us to fairly compare different technologies. Think of it as finally being able to evenly compare apples to oranges.

How wind and solar are winning the day

According to Lazard, wind costs have fallen 66 percent since 2009, from $140/MWh to $47/MWh.

Large-scale solar’s cost declines are even more dramatic, falling 85 percent since 2009 from more than $350/MWh to $55/MWh.

The case is even clearer when federal subsidies are considered: Tax credits drive renewable energy costs down to $31/MWh for wind and $43/MWh for solar. These low prices are not only cheaper than building new natural gas plants, but they are also cheaper than many fossil fuel power plants on their marginal cost (i.e. costs for operating, maintaining, fueling, etc.) alone.

In other words, it’s now cheaper in many places to build new wind or solar energy plant than it is to simply continue running an existing coal or nuclear plant:

 

What does it all mean?

Even with these new numbers, more natural gas plants are being built every week, expensive coal is not retiring as fast as economics would dictate, and the rapid transition to renewable energy isn’t happening fast enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

At least three stodgy institutional barriers limit renewable energy deployment today:

1. Difficulty accessing high-quality wind and solar resources


2. Misguided alarmism about the reliability of renewables


3. Misconceptions of the cost of running the grid with more renewables

While just wind and solar alone could potentially power the entire U.S. many times over, the windiest and sunniest (and thus cheapest) places to generate wind and solar power are often in remote locations, far from large cities with lots of power demand. Costly, drawn-out processes for siting transmission and power plants make these projects unnecessarily expensive and stifle investment. Policymakers can turn to America’s Power Plan for recommendations on streamlining the siting process and limit local impacts to create policy that reduces siting costs for renewables in the U.S.

Managing America’s grid with variable renewables also requires rethinking how we operate and plan our electricity systems, and many utilities have been slow to adapt. Grid operators sometimes claim we need to back up solar and wind an equal ratio of fossil fuel power plants like coal or gas for “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow," but that’s just not true. Adding wind and solar can reduce the risk of a large outage – what are the odds the wind unexpectedly stops blowing everywhere or the sun is suddenly blotted out by clouds everywhere? In fact, government analysis shows we could quadruple the amount of wind and solar on the grid today without running into reliability issues.

Besides reliability, defenders of the old paradigm of large, fuel-fired power plants argue wind and solar come with integration costs, i.e. backup generation and transmission lines to connect remote locations to the grid. But attributing these costs to any one technology makes little sense across a big grid, where a diverse mix of power generation naturally smooths variability like an index fund versus a single volatile stock, for example.

Gas, coal and nuclear power also require new transmission, fuel supply and storage, and large backup reserves. Like renewable sources, they also have “integration costs,” even without accounting for the health and climate costs of carbon dioxide and other pollution.

A new paradigm

Transitioning our electricity sector away from fossil fuels is no longer just an environmental imperative; it’s an economic one. Free markets now favor solar and wind — look no further than gas-rich Texas for evidence: Texas has over three times more wind capacity than any other state, and solar is expected to grow 400 percent by 2022.

Outdated policies leave us unprepared to take full advantage of the rapid cost declines we’re seeing in the wind and solar industry. The time is now to radically adjust for a paradigm where wind and solar form the backbone of our electricity grid.

Images courtesy of America's Power Plan

Mike O’Boyle is the Power Sector Transformation Expert at Energy Innovation, where he works on policy and technology solutions for a clean, reliable, and affordable U.S. electricity system. Mike is also a leading expert for America’s Power Plan, a platform for innovative thinkers to reform utility regulatory models and identify opportunities for grid transformation and optimization. He has worked with stakeholders states including California, New York, Hawaii, and Minnesota to improve links between public policy goals and electric utility motivations. Mike has authored reports on topics including distributed energy resource ownership and operation, mechanisms for adopting performance-based regulation, and proper valuation metrics for utility compensation. He graduated cum laude from Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, and has a B.A from Vanderbilt University in Philosophy and Asian Studies, with a minor in Economics.