Via NPR's Planet Money blog, a savvy reader puts together his own personal stimulus package by becoming part of the microgrid:
Clay from Maryland writes:
I think did everything right. (and I'm pretty lucky) I live
within my means and put 20% down when I bought my home in 1999. I have
a 14-year old truck, a steady job and a 1 mile commute. After this
latest meltdown and the interest rates dropped, I took advantage of the
situation and enacted my very own stimulus program.
Even with the recent drop in home prices, my home is still
worth double what I paid for it. So I got a re-fi (30 yr fixed) and
pulled out some cash. I am now taking advantage of every tax credit and
incentive I can get my hands on -- new Energy Star appliances, new
energy efficient heating and a/c units. And to top it off, I'm even
putting on solar panels.
I've calculated that
the spending I'm doing now will have a pay-off of about 10 years. After
that the utilities savings are free money. And since all my stuff was
about 20 years old it was time to replace anyway.
I feel that the government is finally putting enough
incentives out there that folks like me with money in the (FDIC
insured) bank and a bit of fiscal savvy are going to get the economy
going again.
I'm even thinking about using my 14-year old truck in the
cash-for-clunkers program to get a Hybrid. Taking yet another few
thousand bucks from Uncle Obama.
Bottom line. There are opportunities out there that I don't think will be coming our way again anytime soon.
Small-scale, local power--the microgrid--is a big part of the path to sustainable energy (for more detail, read Why the Microgrid Could Be the Answer to Our Energy Crisis in the July/August issue). With today's rates and rebates, typical systems pay for themselves in just a few years, and in 43 states you can even sell excess power back to the utility when you're not using it. The only barrier now is figuring out how to plug in your house. Here are the steps you need to take to get in on the microgrid action in your own home.
1) Find the Money
First, find what tax incentives your state, locality, or utility offers for renewables and efficiency at the DSIRE database.
Home Power magazine has comprehensive resources for the do-it-yourselfer; they've been covering the microgrid for over 20 years.
2) Cut Your Use
The microgrid dream house starts with cutting energy use through efficiency and conservation with highly-rated insulation, sealed doors and windows, and better-performing appliances like refrigerators, boilers, and air-conditioners. The federal government's Energy Star Web site provides the information you need to do a home energy audit yourself or find a professional to do one for you. More resources are at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.
You might also want to look into a smart meter-like appliance like the Wattson to monitor energy use.
3) Choose Your Fuel
Once you've done what you can to cut energy use, it's time to look into the generation options. Find detailed maps and info on renewable resources in your region at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Solar is still the most common choice for home power. The American Wind Energy Association has a great set of resources on small wind, if a rooftop turbine is your fancy. Southwest Windpower's product is worth checking out as well.
Interested in something a bit more off the beaten path? A geothermal heat pump, which takes advantage of the stable temperature of groundwater, is an option for heating, hot water, and cooling. If you have a stream running on your property, you can try microhydropower. Or what about a biomass heating system, aka a wood burning stove?
4) Find a Partner
There are lots of sites that can help you find an installer and figure out the financing such as Find Solar, GetSolar, and Akeena, located in California, the nation's largest solar power installer.
Sustainable Spaces
in the Bay Area is a newer business model: a comprehensive "home
performance retrofitter" that does it all--renewables, efficiency, and
financing. Similarly, Smith Energy in Massachusetts works mainly with cities and towns, but also landowners, to develop renewable energy resources.
5) Sell Back to the Grid
Net metering--where you sell your excess generated power back to the grid--is legal under certain conditions in over 40 states. Here's a guide to getting started.
Join in a discussion about local power with alternative energy business leaders at Fast Company's Alternative Energy Forum in Seattle on June 24.
A briefing room at the United Nations yesterday morning made a very official setting for an announcement about the international, high-tech, and almost free future of higher education. Shai Reshef, featured in our Most Creative People list, has begun accepting enrollment for his innovative nonprofit online university. "We are opening the gates for students from all over the world, who may not have the means to study elsewhere," he said. "We see ourselves as part of a trend in education of opening information and using what's available."
Indeed, there is a major trend blossoming in the crossover of information technology, the open-source movement, and education. The University of the People will draw on the wealth of free course material that has been made available in recent years under Creative Commons license by the likes of MIT (OpenCourseWare), Rice University (Connexions), and hundreds of other institutions. Students will discuss the material in online forums with other students from all over the world and with volunteer faculty--those who have signed up to teach so far are professors, retirees, graduate students, and professionals in their fields.
Reshef, a small man with a sweet smile whose face turned pink with excitement as he answered questions, has seeded the organization with $1 million of his own money (from his career in for-profit education companies, one of which he sold to the U.S. giant Kaplan) and needs to raise $5 million more. He calculates that the school can become self-sustaining at a scale of 15,000 students, each of whom will pay nominal fees based on whether they hail from rich or poor countries. Currently, the UoP has registered 200 students out of a planned first class of just 300, but they already hail from 52 countries.
The UoP plans to offer accredited bachelor's degrees, starting in
the fields of computer science and business administration, for a price that maxes out at $4000. Can free raw materials be translated into (almost) free education? That's still an open question.
In the May issue I wrote about how the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center is making efficiency sexy as an investment to Silicon Valley VCs and big companies alike. Now The New York Times has caught on, reporting that Sequoia Capital, which made its name seeding Yahoo and Google, has invested in SynapSense, a UC Davis company mentioned in my story that uses sensors to lower the energy use of data centers; Google's venture fund and top green fund Kleiner Perkins, meanwhile, have invested in Silver Spring Networks, a smart meter company. Investors like that in today's harsh economic climate, companies like these have the potential to be efficient not only with energy, but with capital too.
Image: one of SynapSense's readouts shows areas of heat in a data center.
Cisco CEO John Chambers is "healthily paranoid," he told the BBC today. Maybe that's why he's planning to spread sci-fi, panopticon-esque vigilance across entire cities and even ecosystems, in a collaboration with NASA with the portentous name of Planetary Skin.
"In a nutshell, Planetary Skin is a massive global-monitoring system of environmental conditions that will enable effective decision making in the private and public sectors and in communities, with data that is collected from myriad sources including space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks, analyzed, verified and reported over an open standards based Web 2.0 and 3.0 collaborative spaces for decision makers."
Translation: Electric eyes counting traffic on roads. RFID tags tracing apples from field to market. Satellites in space tracking ice sheets and tidal flows. All of it connected through wireless networks, monitored, measured and managed with the same kind of software that a Wal-Mart would use to provide just-in-time delivery of its products from China.
This is heady stuff; fitting that it would be piloted in the city of San Francisco, launching this Earth Day. EcoMap, a localized, urban version of Planetary Skin, will connect sensors over existing wireless networks that measure what areas of the city contribute most to global warming. Citizens can go online and share their plans for reducing individual carbon impacts.
In what must rank as the mother of all unintended consequences, and in a finding certain to have effects on international policy, NASA scientists have found that a decrease in airborne sulfates--dirty smokestack particles caused by burning coal and regulated by the Clean Air Act since the 1970s to prevent acid rain and air pollution--may account for as much as 45% of Arctic warming. Dr. Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies reports:
"Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50%. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates."
Besides being catnip for climate-deniers everywhere, these findings may be cause for a real rethinking of climate-change policies. Dr. Shindell works for Dr. James Hansen, a star of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and the world's leading voice making the demon Carbon Dioxide synonymous with all of society's ills. But Dr. Shindell is recommending that focusing on the effects of aerosols rather than carbon dioxide emissions may be the more effective strategy against climate change and especially the melting of arctic ice.
Aerosols--sources range from dirty coal plants to hairspray--include both the cooling sulfates and the ultra-warming, sunlight-absorbing black soot. They appear and dissolve in the atmosphere much more quickly than greenhouse gases, which hang around for centuries, making them an effective target for short-term "geoengineering" type interventions.
[Images: Nasa Image of thunderstorms over Southern Brazil-- researcher discovered that tiny airborne particles of pollution may modify developing thunderclouds; sulfate particles under an electron microscope.]
The user-submitted restaurant and small business review site Yelp has been the subject of some pretty hot debates over its policies as its influence in local markets from San Francisco to New York has grown. Now it seems they have softened their stance on one issue: letting business owners respond to their reviews in public comments. When I interviewed Steve Kaufer, founder of the larger--and profitable--travel review site TripAdvisor, he explained why it's a good idea to let owners continue the conversation:
"Hoteliers don't like it when the one oddball writes a scathing review--this person was inebriated, they thought we were on the beach, but it clearly states on the website that we're 3 blocks away from the beach. So if someone complains about how terrible the pool was, and the restaurant was closed, the hotelier can respond: the pool was undergoing renovation and the kitchen was closed we had a sign on our website but it's all fixed now or whatever the facts actually are."
This is a smart move for Yelp---not only does it get them some positive publicity, but it will lead to business owners spending more time on the site. Smart businesses realize that complaints are, as Kaufer says, "free customer research," and responding to them openly and honestly is a good way to win more customers.
Fast Company likes to cover businesses that do well by doing good. But sometimes the opposite is equally true. Earlier this year, the nation's leading tax-preparing company paid $4.85 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its "refund anticipation loans"--high interest, high-fee cash advances of consumer's own money that California's attorney general, along with many others, said were deceptively marketed. H&R Block is still selling these loans, only with the effective APR lowered to 36% from the insane heights (500%?!) previously seen. The list of consumer complaints goes on and on--an overpriced IRA product, hidden fees and charges, employee identity theft. And to top it all off, just yesterday, they were ordered to pay $2 million to a software contractor in a fraud and contract fight.
Yet despite all these black eyes, and despite the strong emergence of do-it-yourself online alternatives like TurboTax, H&R Block is going gangbusters in the final sprint of tax season. They're doing twice as well as the Dow Jones over the past year, and their revenues are up this tax season as individuals and businesses cope with a tsunami of tax complications: foreclosures, unemployment claims, and billions of brand-new tax credits and incentives found in Obama's stimulus package. Tax preparers are leasing newly vacant storefronts to cope with the growth.
This is a company that demands you turn over all your financial and personal information for the year. it's hard to think of a business model that depends more on trust. So how long can H&R Block go on brushing off the bad press?
Well, everyone has to do their taxes. And most people would rather not think about them. H&R Block is fast, they have a ubiquitous, easy-to-recognize brand, and best of all, they have the ability to offer money to everyone who comes in the door. Sure, it's the customer's own money, but that doesn't matter. As long as there's a group of Americans--possibly less educated or less digitally savvy--who prefer not to spend time thinking about managing their money, retail tax preparers will probably continue to thrive.
I'll be talking about H&R Block and tax time on WNYC's Financial 411 Podcast today, you can listen here.
Instead of waiting (and paying) for giant solar farms and mega-scale transmission lines to be built, you could start generating your own clean energy tomorrow, for 60% below retail prices! Small-scale privately owned renewable energy solutions are becoming increasingly popular as an approach to fighting global warming and building energy independence. (Efficiency guru Amory Lovins is one fan.) Now household wind could become more of a household name thanks to a $10 million investment by GE with other investors in the world’s largest
manufacturer of small wind turbines, Southwest Windpower.
Southwest's Skystream, shown here, can provide
anywhere from 40% to as much as 90% of a home’s electricity; other models provide up to 3KW for commercial use. This technology is available to homeowners today with a 4 to 5 year average payback (depending on how good your site is for wind and how high your current bills are). Obama's stimulus package just introduced a 30% tax credit to help seal the deal.
GE spokesperson Kevin Skillern sees big potential for small wind: "The market is currently just $100 million in total sales, but has been growing 40 to 50% a year for a handful of years. What we see is really a transition point where the combination of stimulus programs and technology advancements make this a highly economic purchase for nearly half of the U.S. population."
This is a strategic investment for GE--Skillern says a dozen different collaborations are being considered with different parts of the company. For example, the smart grid technologies they are developing help small-scale renewables connect to the grid. And GE, of course, long ago mastered the appliance business--maybe they can help make home power generation as easy as they make it to plug in a washer-dryer.
Carbon cap-and-trade efforts are becoming one long chain of unintended consequences. To whit: Greenpeace released a report arguing that allowing official trade in carbon credits representing forest preservation would crash the price of carbon by up to 75%.
Deforestation is responsible for up to 20% of all carbon emissions, so stopping it would seem to be a pretty effective way to halt global warming, as I chronicled last year. But there are too many forests worldwide, and the oversight and regulation in the tropical, less developed countries where they are located is generally too weak to allow robust verification of reforestation or preservation projects, according to Greenpeace. Polluting countries could meet their targets by buying cheap, dubious forest offsets, instead of investing in clean-energy projects stateside, delaying the hard work required to truly halt global warming.
Now Greenpeace wants to cut forests out of the carbon trade. Instead, they're proposing a dedicated public-private international fund that would invest to protect people and forests without demanding a monetary return. The report will be released at the United Nations climate meetings in Bonn tonight, part of the run-up to the renegotiation of the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen in December; Obama's climate adviser, Todd Stern, is in attendance and has signaled that the U.S. is ready to get real.
A briefing room at the United Nations yesterday morning made a very official setting for an announcement about the international, high-tech, and almost free future of higher education. Shai Reshef, featured in our 
Cisco CEO John Chambers is "healthily paranoid," he told the 
Besides being catnip for climate-deniers everywhere, these findings may be cause for a real rethinking of climate-change policies. Dr. Shindell works for Dr. James Hansen, a star of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and the world's leading voice making the demon Carbon Dioxide synonymous with all of society's ills. But Dr. Shindell is recommending that focusing on the effects of aerosols rather than carbon dioxide emissions may be the more effective strategy against climate change and especially the melting of arctic ice.
Southwest's Skystream, shown here, can provide
anywhere from 40% to as much as 90% of a home’s electricity; other models provide up to 3KW for commercial use. This technology is available to homeowners today with a 4 to 5 year average payback (depending on how good your site is for wind and how high your current bills are). Obama's stimulus package just introduced a 30% tax credit to help seal the deal.
Carbon cap-and-trade efforts are becoming one long chain of unintended consequences. To whit: Greenpeace released a report arguing that allowing official trade in carbon credits representing forest preservation would crash the price of carbon by up to 75%.
