Glimmers of a brighter, more solar-powered Georgia

On a curiously warm day in mid-October, Colleen McLoughlin stood beneath the State Capitol’s glowing Gold Dome to tell a small crowd — one clean-energy advocate and a couple reporters — that Georgia isn’t taking advantage of the sun that beat down overhead.
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? If Georgians fully utilized the sun’s energy-producing potential, they could power the state 40 times over, said McLoughlin, an organizer for Environment Georgia, a chapter of preservationist group Environment America.
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? But right now Georgia only pulls a fraction of a percent of its electric energy from solar power. Despite a boom in the industry that installs panels on rooftops of offices and homes — and even in fields in rural Georgia — and a slow trickle of legislation that has made it easier to tap the renewable resource, solar power is not where it could — or should — be in the state. Strong utility interests (some of whom are slowly coming around) and complex qualms over dollars and cents in the past have hindered real progress. But the push for clean energy has finally started to gain traction.
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? The Georgia Solar Energy Association, an advocacy group for sun-powered development, asserts that solar popularity will spawn plenty of local jobs. An estimated 3,000 of the nation’s 174,000 solar industry workers call Georgia home, according to a 2014 GA Solar report. That’s a 20 percent national uptick from 2013-14.
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? Most of those jobs are installation and development jobs. But Dana Redden, a solar energy broker for Solar Concierge, said the industry has plenty of career opportunities.
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? “Right now we’re looking for talent and we hope we don’t have to import that talent,” she said. “In addition to installation jobs there are marketing and sales opportunities, operation and maintenance opportunities.”
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? Since 2013, solar energy capacity per capita in Georgia has increased fivefold, said McLoughlin. Much of that growth can be attributed to, oddly enough, the state’s largest utility which, for decades, seemed interested in nearly nothing but coal.
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? ??? In 2013, Georgia Power begrudgingly rolled out the Advanced Solar Initiative, which is expanding statewide solar capacity by 735 megawatts. Now the state’s on its way to having more than a gigawatt of energy production by 2017, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. And 240 solar development firms currently operate in Georgia, according to The Southface Clean Energy Census.
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? But solar panels aren’t quite crowding for rooftop space in Georgia just yet. Clean-energy advocates such as McLoughlin have placed blame on fossil fuel interests. Outside the Gold Dome that mid-October afternoon, McLoughlin called out Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing political interest group, and Georgia Power for blocking pro-solar legislation in Georgia and touting “erroneous claims” about solar energy costs.
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? When Georgia Power adopted the ASI, McLoughlin said, AFP concocted an opposition campaign dubbed “Keep The Lights On In Georgia” to dampen the program’s goal. The group sent out more than 50,000 emails begging Georgians — via a barrage of what the group considered “humorous” videos — to protest the initiative. It claimed that solar power’s prominence would jack up electricity rates, according to its website. Such claims have since been debunked.
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? But McLoughlin alleged the conservative group, which has historically battled clean and renewable energy initiatives, had ulterior motives. “AFP is funded by the Koch brothers, the biggest oil conglomerate,” she said. “Obviously it does damage to their business if we go forward with clean energy.”
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? Currently more than 90 percent of the state’s solar power generation is harvested at solar panel farms far from Atlanta proper. So while the city brainstorms a gameplan to generate more solar power closer to home, Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols said, more rural areas are getting overlooked by the conservation community. But he’s attune to the elements proven to advance pro-solar efforts; those which put Georgia’s solar portfolio on the map.
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? “Here’s the secret sauce for solar...flat land, cheap land, proximity to big wires like our Georgia Power substation, and tax abatement. Most of it is utility-scale solar,” he said of an approximately 150-acre solar farm in Taylor County, “meaning it’s half a million panels in a field or a million solar panels in a field. Those solar panels are in south Georgia, meaning Atlantans won’t see it.”
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? But he claims the installation of those million-panel fields has been fruitful for the solar farms’ neighbors.
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? “We have tax abatement in Taylor County, Georgia,” he said. “There’s only 12 hotel rooms in the entire county. This county is very poor but...when you put solar on cheap land that hadn’t been used for a long time, it elevates the value of that land and then those property taxes are paid into the county and usually half of them go to the school board. The school system actually gets a boost when solar comes to a poor county.”
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? Sharon Lee, chairwoman of the GA Solar, said solar power is merely on the cusp of a wave of public interest.
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? “From motorcars to mobile phones, cultural and political acceptance of new technology has always lagged its capability, and solar energy is no different,” she said. “The improving technology, falling costs, growing popular support and innovative financial options of solar are far more compelling than the political resistance seeking to slow its deployment.”
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? Echols cited Environment Georgia’s recent Solarize Tybee campaign as evidence of a growing interest in harnessing the sun’s renewable energy. “Six hundred people expressed an interest in the program,” he said. “Only 60 of those people who wanted solar were able to do it because either their house was facing the wrong way, their homeowners association said no, there were too many shade trees, or the finances didn’t work for them.”
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? The Taylor County tax credits can’t be used in Atlanta. And the final issue truly is cost. For many people the price tag of installing panels on their rooftops hasn’t been feasible. But in July Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law the Solar Power Free-Market Financing Act of 2015, which allows for the third-party financing and leasing of solar power hardware for people looking to make the sustainable energy switch.
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? Lee said that legislation could appeal to people who may have been spooked by claims such as AFP’s — the people who won’t mind throwing big blue panels atop their house for some slack on the power bill.
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? “With the adoption of third-party financing legislation this year, Georgia residents now enjoy opportunities for installing solar at pricing that makes it more affordable,” she said. “And Georgia Solar is leading the effort to inform consumers about avoiding high-pressure tactics and misleading claims so they can resist predatory companies whose products and pricing do not meet industry standards.”
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? And on November 23, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed unveiled the city’s first solar power initiative, Solar Atlanta, which aims to install some of those big blue panels atop 28 municipal buildings over the next few months.
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? “Soon some of the recreation centers, fire stations in your neighborhoods will be getting as much as 40 percent of their power needs from a safe, sustainable and renewable source,” he said.
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? This initiative — which aims to add a quick two megawatts to Georgia’s growing solar portfolio — is projected to reduce the city’s carbon footprint, save cash on its electric bill, and conserve water that’s otherwise swallowed by power plants. “It makes great environmental sense,” Reed said that Monday.
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? Director of Environment Georgia Jennette Gayer said people flying to and from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport might have noticed “we have basically a power plant’s worth of roof in our city.” She hopes Atlanta’s efforts will inspire its residents and neighbors to follow suit and utilize the closest star that’s been long taken for granted.