Ask Ken
Continued from page 74
Check Out
the SOLAR TODAY
Digital Edition!
Some of our ASES student mem-
bers have complained that when
they leave campus, SOLAR TODAY
doesn’t always follow along. We
also know that copies mailed to
electricity is needed). There’s one
other benefit to using a solar fan —
it runs silently.
I’m confident that if you contact some dealers or manufacturers
of solar-powered attic vent fans
and ask for the names of some of
their customers, you’ll get very positive feedback on the performance
and resulting cost savings from
these products. They’re really a
pretty small investment in terms of
money, with a very big payback in
terms of energy savings and
improved indoor comfort.●
members outside the United States
can take weeks to be delivered.
So we’ve launched a digital edition.
You can read it seconds after publi-
CREATIVECOVERAGE.COM FOR NULIGHT SOLUTIONS
A silent-running, solar-powered roof vent fan
can improve the comfort of your living space, and
reduce cooling costs.
cation, anywhere in the world —
not days or weeks later.
Got questions about home energy usage and renewable energy?
Send them to ken@ases.org. Ken
has been working in renewable
energy for 25 years and knows
where to find the answers to your
questions. Not all questions can be
answered personally, but watch for
yours in this column and his syndicated column, “Home Energy
Source,” appearing in hundreds of newspapers nationwide. Or see
solartoday.org for more “Ask Ken” Q&A.
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Please try the SOLAR TODAY digital
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See the digital edition today at
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RE News
Continued from page 14
by 2010. At the close of 2007, they were at 13
percent, and some California lawmakers say
they’d like to achieve 33 percent by 2020.
The rush into the Mojave is creating ironic partnerships among traditional adversaries
in public land disputes. “You have folks who
have been at war for decades who are saying:
Wait a minute,” reports Silva. “You have the
OHVers [off-highway vehicles] and Sierra
Clubbers on kind of the same page.”
Off-highway vehicle enthusiasts fear loss
of access to public lands. Environmentalists
worry about habitat for the desert tortoise,
which is listed as threatened in the Mojave
Desert under the nation’s Endangered
Species Act.
“Until the technology changes, and they
can put the solar collectors into the rocks
and cliffs, it will impact desert tortoise,” said
Greg Miller, renewable energy program manager in the BLM’s California Desert District.
“That will be a huge issue itself, determining
how much impact we can tolerate to these
desert species.”
The Wilderness Society urges development, but with caution. “We need energy,
but we also need healthy lands,” said Alex
Daue, the Denver-based outreach coordinator for the BLM Action Center of The Wilderness Society. He said the furious pace of oil-
and-gas drilling now underway on public
lands in the Rocky Mountains should not be
repeated in the new rush to harness the sun.
Craig Cox, executive director of the Inter-west Energy Alliance, does not see the comparison to the drilling boom as apt. “You are
talking about hundreds and thousands of
drilling pads in Wyoming and Colorado and
elsewhere. We are talking about dozens of
solar projects at most that I expect to see at
the end of this process.”
Cox welcomed the moratorium’s demise,
but also continuation of the PEIS review. “Solar
utilities need certainty. Wind developers, coal,
nuclear — you name it, they all want certainty in their planning and regulatory process,
and at the end of the day I think PEIS process
will provide even greater certainty.”
But some utility-scale solar developers
want more than certainty. They want permits — now. Rhone Resch, president of the
Solar Energy Industries Association, told the
Las Vegas Sun that the BLM had yet to
approve any of the 130 applications for use
of federal land. “The longer they wait the
more the public is going to suffer from escalating fuel costs.” ●
Allen Best reports on land-use issues from
Arvada, Colo.
