{"id":1890,"date":"2011-06-17T10:43:40","date_gmt":"2011-06-17T14:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/birmingham-uk-municipal-solar-didnt-wait-for-larger-governments.html"},"modified":"2011-06-17T10:43:40","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T14:43:40","slug":"birmingham-uk-municipal-solar-didnt-wait-for-larger-governments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/birmingham-uk-municipal-solar-didnt-wait-for-larger-governments.html","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham U.K. municipal solar didn’t wait for larger governments"},"content":{"rendered":"Banks and power companies can fund municipal solar projects;\ncities and counties don’t have to wait for state or federal governments\nto provide them grants.\nOr at least Birmingham, U.K. has done it for public housing.\nAnd\n\nQuitman, Georgia did it last year, too.<\/a>\n

\nAccording to Larry Elliott in the Guardian, 3 October 2010,\n\n10,000 Birmingham council homes to get solar panels:\nCity agrees \u00a3100m scheme, partly funded by banks and energy suppliers, to meet target for cutting carbon emissions<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\nPlans to fit power generating solar panels to council-owned properties\nin Birmingham will be pushed forward this week after the council agreed a\n“green new deal” scheme covering 10,000 homes.\n

\nIn the biggest proposal for retrofitting houses through an energy\nefficiency upgrade yet seen in the UK, the council agreed a \u00a3100m\nproposal last week designed to create jobs and meet the city’s ambitious\ntargets for reducing carbon emissions.\n

\nThe plan \u2013 Birmingham Energy Savers \u2013 will be jointly funded by\nBirmingham council and investment from energy suppliers and commercial\nbanks, and follows two successful pilot schemes conducted in Europe’s\nbiggest local authority.\n<\/blockquote>\nEnergy efficiency and solar power to create jobs!\n

\nWe have local proof of concept right next door\n\n\n\n<\/a>\n\nin Brooks County,<\/a>\nwhere Kevin Skeath installed solar PV panels and solar hot water panels\non a housing project built by a Lowndes County developer.\n

\nThe chairman of the Georgia PSC,\n\nLauren McDonald,<\/a>\n

\n\n<\/a>\n“wants Georgia Power to come up with options in the next 30 days for expanding the tiny amount of electricity generated from solar power.”<\/blockquote>\nOK, here’s something Georgia Power could do that has been tested\non a large scale in Birmingham, U.K., and on a small scale right\nnext door in Quitman, Georgia.\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe new CEO of Georgia Power’s parent company, the Southern Company,\nsays he’s \n“bullish” on solar.<\/a>\nGeorgia Power\n\njust connected a 300 kiloWatt solar plant in Valdosta.<\/a>\nWhy not leverage that success to turn Valdosta and Lowndes County into\na showplace for solar power in south Georgia,\ngenerating jobs and energy in the process?\n

\n\n<\/a>\nThe Chamber of Commerce wants knowledge-based jobs and\nrenewable and sustainable energy.<\/a>\nThey have banks as members and banks on their board.\nMaybe they could help organize a plan like Birmingham’s.\n

\nThere is a time for cautious gradual investigation over years.\n\n<\/a>\nAnd there is a time for striking while the iron is hot.\nRight now for the fastest growing industry in the world,\nsolar power, could be the latter here in the hot south Georgia sun.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Banks and power companies can fund municipal solar projects; cities and counties don’t have to wait for state or federal governments to provide them grants. Or at least Birmingham, U.K. has done it for public housing. And Quitman, Georgia did it last year, too. According to Larry Elliott in the Guardian, 3 October 2010, 10,000 […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,40,14,264,265,18,2,21,23,24,332],"tags":[4345,4346,512,8704,1031,1624,4347,8701,8708,847,7,4348,4349,432,8714,215,108,2254,2117,4350,4351,6],"class_list":["post-1890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-economy","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-planning","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-vlcoc","tag-banks","tag-birmingham","tag-chamber-of-commerce","tag-economy","tag-efficiency","tag-energy","tag-england","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-jobs","tag-lowndes-county","tag-power-company","tag-refitting","tag-renewable","tag-solar","tag-south-georgia","tag-southern-company","tag-sun","tag-sustainable","tag-u-k","tag-united-kingdom","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-uu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}