Will the Next President Try to Out-green California?
A solar White House
Having installed solar projects since 1989, Korthof is amazed by how difficult some agencies make it to install what he considers to be an "off the shelf" product. The DWP's rigid procedures, which cause some would-be users of solar to give up and keep sucking juice off the grid, stand in sharp contrast to what Southern California Edison does, Korthof says. Edison relies entirely on normal city permit inspections, making it possible to get a system running in a couple of weeks.
On top of what the utilities require, every city has its own regulations. Some that tout their green attitudes endlessly, like Santa Monica and Long Beach, actually regulate up the kazoo. Santa Monica paints itself as neon green: One of its newest laws, for instance, forbids the use of nonbiodegradable cups and containers — imposing fines on restaurants that might stuff pizza leftovers in a Styrofoam box. The city is also one of the first to ban smoking not just inside restaurants, but also outdoors on patios, as well as near commercial buildings and on beaches.
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"When people smoke, they throw their butts out, and a lot of those butts reach the ocean and hurt the birds and fish," says Mayor Herb Katz. "The people of Santa Monica understand that."
A HAVEN FOR HIGH-MINDED control freaks, Santa Monica has strict codes that turn solar installations into something of a nightmare, as Korthof describes it. On one project, on the roof of a cafe, city planners ordered him not to let any panels be visible — to the easily offended Westside public.
The only spot on the roof that was invisible to passersby was "basically, in a place where they would be in the shade," Korthof says. The result was a small array that supplies only a fraction of the cafe's needs. The city does issue permits for free, and at least does not require a full City Council vote to collect energy from free sunlight, but it remains "one of the more difficult places to get a permit," Korthof says. "It involves multiple trips to the city to submit plans, to have them reviewed, and make sure you conform to all their requirements."
Mayor Katz, an architect, essentially agrees that his town is just one damn difficult place to get anything done. "Some structural engineers will not work in Santa Monica, because it's tough," Katz says. "It's just the bureaucracy it takes to obey the law."
The basic economics — the daunting cost of installing solar systems — has prompted federal and state governments to offer tax credits and rebates, but tax credits were cut in the new White House energy bill, and the paperwork now required to claim California rebates presents something of a conundrum to the sustainable crowd: It requires applicants to fill out close to 200 pages for a single application, Korthof says.
"I think the Legislature kind of screwed up the program," he says.
Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), a.k.a. "Lightbulb Lloyd," a zealous champion of compact fluorescent light bulbs, who also chairs the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee, disagrees that he or his colleagues in Sacramento screwed things up. He insists that the massive red tape is meant to ensure that government help doesn't go "to your next-door neighbor for solar panels that are going to stay in his garage."
Clearly, consumers want the help. The state received as many applications for new solar systems in 2006 as it got in the previous 26 years combined — and 2007 was a banner year, too.
But even when government isn't making things nearly impossible, there are much bigger problems in trying to exploit renewable energy, many of them related to developing alternative-power plants.
Visionaries see gargantuan solar arrays in the desert, geothermal plants at conducive sites at the Salton Sea and elsewhere, and big wind turbines in blustery mountain passes. But so far, neither Washington nor Sacramento has come up with a brilliant plan for wiring that hardware to the existing energy grid.
Another obstacle is the fact that technologies that appear green often have their own environmental drawbacks — some of which are poorly understood or misconstrued by the media. Whoever becomes president will walk into a full-scale war over how those drawbacks affect the auto industry and another group: the powerful corn lobby.
Cars running on ethanol sounded great initially, but critics now point out that America's modest ethanol production consumes a significant share of the corn crop — which, of course, requires prodigious amounts of water. Nitrogen in the fertilizers used to grow corn also worries some scientists, who suspect that damaging amounts could end up in the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Even some erstwhile supporters have been backing off ethanol in support of electric vehicles that store power in batteries.
But the push for battery-powered cars is almost certain to hand Clinton, McCain or Obama another massive dilemma — the environmental cost of mining lithium, nickel, cadmium and other metals for the huge batteries.
At Ady Gil's property in Van Nuys, Gil stands outside, his shirttail untucked, his hair in a ponytail, elaborating on his plans to take solar to the next level — with a solar carport so employees can drive electric cars and plug them in while they work. Gil owns a Ford Ranger electric vehicle and a tiny Zenn electric car — about 10 feet long — signed by Beau Bridges, Flea and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
"I can charge it with the solar panel and drive for free," he boasts.
It's just that, at least for the immediate future, there's nothing free about it.
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