The Cheap, Easy, Quick Renewable Energy We Could Have Today

If Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear is serious about promoting renewable energy in this state (yeah, yeah, I know he's not, but bear with me), there's a quick, easy, no-cost way to vastly increase renewable energy production in Kentucky, goose the economy and vault Kentucky to the top rank of clean energy states at the same time.

It's called a feed-in tariff, and it's making Gainesville Florida green-energy-self-sufficient and everyone in town filthy rich.

This winter, as Congress was scrambling to pass the stimulus package, the bottom fell out of the renewable energy sector—the very industry that lawmakers have held out as our best hope of salvaging the economy. Trade groups like the American Wind Energy Association, which as recently as December was forecasting "another record-shattering year of growth," began predicting that new installations would plunge by 30 to 50 percent. Solar panel manufacturers that had been blazing a trail of growth announced a wave of layoffs. Some have since cut their workforces in half, as stock prices tumble and plans for new green energy projects stall.

But there is one place where capital is still flowing: Gainesville, Florida. Even as solar panels are stacking up in warehouses around the country, this city of 120,000 is gearing up for a solar power boom, fueled by homegrown businesses and scrappy investors who have descended on the community and are hiring local contractors to install photovoltaic panels on rooftops around town.

SNIP

Why is the renewable energy market in Gainesville booming while it’s collapsing elsewhere in the country? The answer boils down to policy. In early February, the city became the first in the nation to adopt a "feed-in tariff"—a clunky and un-descriptive name for a bold incentive to foster renewable energy. Under this system, the local power company is required to buy renewable energy from independent producers, no matter how small, at rates slightly higher than the average cost of production. This means anyone with a cluster of solar cells on their roof can sell the power they produce at a profit. The costs of the program are passed on to ratepayers, who see a small rise in their electric bills (in Gainesville the annual increase is capped at 1 percent). While rate hikes are seldom popular, the community has rallied behind this policy, because unlike big power plant construction—the costs of which are also passed on to the public—everyone has the opportunity to profit, either by investing themselves or by tapping into the groundswell of economic activity the incentive creates.

Read the whole thing.

This is win-win-win-win-win ... which of course means that Kentucky will jump on the feed-in-tariff bandwagon just about the time it becomes obsolete.

(While Kentucky has some of the cloudiest weather in the nation and dozens of fewer sunny days per year than Gainesville, solar panels do produce energy here, if not as much as in sunnier places.)

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....