In Florida, Warming Gives Earth Day New Urgency
ORLANDO, Fla. - Tomorrow is Earth Day, and it arrives with the kind of urgency not felt since the holiday was created 37 years ago.The first Earth Day in 1970 triggered a grass-roots uproar against rampant pollution that was endangering air, water and wildlife. A worried nation supported swift passage of powerful environmental laws. 
In the decades that followed came a lull in Earth Day fervor. The holiday meant a chance to plant a tree, view a wildlife exhibit and hear eco-friendly talk from corporations.
But this Earth Day is different. It arrives as the world struggles with what scientists have described as the most daunting threat to life on the planet: global warming.
Earth Day is being taken widely as not just a day of praising all things green. This weekend, thousands of Earth Day events across the nation, from seminars to celebrations, will join in an urgent call for action on global warming.
“We can’t just keep putting our heads in the sand,” said Sampuran Khalsa, a Central Florida businessman who recently invested heavily in solar energy.
“The world is changing, and we can face that and go forward enthusiastically, or we can be dragged kicking and screaming,” he said.
The scientific case for human-induced causes of global warming has gained substantial ground.
In a much-awaited report, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that it was 90 percent certain most global warming is caused by pollution. The primary form is carbon dioxide from autos, power plants and industry.
If unchecked, said the panel, coastal lands will be submerged, countless species will die and vast famines will strike.
Reaction to warming fears has been worldwide, with a wide variety of response in Central Florida.
Earth Day celebrations are bringing more attention to the types of ongoing projects growing more popular for their contributions toward fighting climate change.
Among them, entrepreneurs last year announced plans to build a power plant that burns grass cultivated in nearby fields. Unlike coal and natural gas, such a fuel won’t extract carbon from underground and inject it into the atmosphere. A location is under negotiation, but the plant will be in south Central Florida and large enough to serve 80,000 homes when it opens in 2009.
Last month, the Catholic Diocese of Orlando hosted a hearing at which participants discussed ways of shielding the poor and powerless from the destructive effects of global warming, regardless of the cause.
“We can no longer as the Catholic community or any other church community deny that this is an issue,” said Deborah Stafford Shearer, director of the diocese’s Respect Life Office.
‘Cheap, clean and fast’
Last Monday, students at the University of Central Florida, along with the Florida Electric Auto Association and the Orlando Utilities Commission, assembled a small fleet of electric cars and offered test-drives to the public.
“Cheap, clean and fast,” said Hugh Webber, a member of the Electric Auto Association. “They are super vehicles.”
Those at the event estimated that in a few to 15 years, roads will be dominated by electric vehicles. Gordon Nelson, dean of the College of Science at Florida Institute of Technology, said it will happen when the right pieces come into place.
“People will adopt ideas not just because they think they are green but because it also makes economic and social sense.”
He could have been describing businessman Khalsa, 54, who started Nanak’s Landscaping in 1973. Unable to sleep one night, he was surfing the Internet and stumbled upon details for a Florida grant for solar power at businesses.
From there, Khalsa got $80,000 in grant cash, secured federal tax credits and spent $30,000 of his own. Installed a few months ago, his solar works provide his Altamonte Springs headquarters with about $350 worth of electricity a month.
But covering his roof with solar panels was just a start.
Khalsa also dumped seven sport utility vehicles and replaced them with the gas-electric hybrid Toyota Prius. He got rid of 25 pickups and bought cars that sip a gallon of gas every 30 miles.
“It was a little bit of a shock for some of the people to go from driving a truck to a compact car,” Khalsa said. “But it’s the right direction.”
People such as Peggy Cox, a longtime Audubon activist in Central Florida, are thrilled to be getting new company in responding to global warming.
“A lot of us have believed that we can’t wait until there’s an emergency,” Cox said. “If we do wait, then it’s too late.”
Each of her light sockets has an electricity-saving compact fluorescent bulb. Regular bulbs are banned in her home just as they soon may be in Europe.
Other changes at home are more costly. But there’s help from some electric utilities — an industry long criticized by environmentalists for being too slow to adopt cleaner ways to generate power.
Progress Energy Florida earlier this year began handing out $450 rebates to customers who use less of the utility’s electricity by installing solar panels that heat water and by participating in an energy-management program.
The panels and installation can cost thousands of dollars. According to Progress figures, using the sun to heat household water can save $200 to $300 a year for a family of four. Solar heating also cuts back on carbon dioxide discharged by power plants.
Convention-center idea
In another example, Orlando Utilities Commission wants to contribute to what might become the Southeast’s largest solar-energy project. The Orange County Convention Center is trying to launch a $6.2 million project to install 2 1/2 acres of rooftop solar panels.
OUC will contribute $1 million, while center officials are aiming for a $2.5 million state grant, which they narrowly lost out on this year but are applying for again.
The array could cut the center’s $1 million-a-month electricity costs by about one-quarter. The idea came from California, birthplace of many alternative-energy efforts.
Jerry Daigle, the center’s deputy general manager, said he saw a huge solar-energy system while visiting another convention center, the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
“Why can’t we have one?” Daigle recalled asking himself. “We’re the Sunshine State, and we’re very behind on solar.”
Kevin Spear can be reached at 407-420-5062 or kspear@orlandosentinel.com.
Copyright © 2007, Orlando Sentinel
Here’s a challenge for the Utility companies:
Create a program which would install solar panels on the roofs of private homes and purchase the energy from the homeowner.
Since many homes are empty during prime daylight hours and use little electricity, the surplus could be Sold to the businesses these homeowners are working in during the day.
In the evening, when people are at home, they would buy back most of that energy for their own use.
What this plan would do is reduce power plant load in daylight hours, reducing emissions, wear & tear, the need to build New power plants, etc.
And, of course, the homeowner’s electric bills would drop to almost nothing as daytime sales balanced nighttime consumption.
A good comment tonkatsu,It reminds me of Al Gores” energynet” idea where millions of folks hooked to the grid participate.This consumer cooperative coupled with conservation and green building techniques could eliminate the need for many new power plants.Honda motors has a plan for developing a hybrid electric, plug in type car with a fuel cell system that would spin the meter backwards too.Imagine millions of Solar cell tiled rooftops generating power,and Hydrogen, by electrolisis from water.The Hydrogen could then be used in zero emission hybrid electric vehicles .After the initial investment an owner could generate his own motor fuel and power his home ,selling the surplus back to the utility.
For older internal combustion vehicles,Diesels could be converted to Hempseed oil fuel,and Ethanol vehicles could run on celulosic ethanol or methanol from the Hemp waste.Meanwhile marginal land could be used by farmers to cultivate industrial Hemp food, fiber and energy crops,tractors powered by the products they grow.This would not inflate Corn and Soybean prices and cause the commodoties crunch we have now ,that is hurting the poor.Now that the S.C.U.S. has ruled that E.P.A. can regulate tailpipe and smokestack CO2 levels maybe these things can become more economically attractive to the Utilities. Peace, Love your Mother Earth for she bears you.
Join the dots….
Project Blue Beam
HAARP
Chemtrails
FEMA Prison Camps
Poisons and toxins in food and drink
So-called Vaccinations
Brain Drugs/Bad Medication
VeraChip RFID
Mind Control
Subliminal Messages
Division
Endless Wars
Corporate Greed
Raping of the planet
= The end of the world.
The mind boggles at this…
Don’t believe anything but what your own minds tells you. Look at all the pieces and join them together, and this is what we faced with a small number of greed filled psychopaths leading us all to our demise.
Let’s join together as one and resonate our love as one to help heal the world right now, love is the only force which is capable of nurturing and growth and we owe it not just to ourselves but to our beautiful home our mother Earth and everything we co-exist here with. Love conquers all.
Tonkatsu–
Good idea but wrong application. The only reason for a centralized grid for power distribution is for the purpose of monopolizing the source all electric power all of which sources are using non-renewable fuels for generation.
What we should do IMO is subsidize through tax breaks the decentralization of power generation by individuakl users who are able through either solar, wind, or other renewable generation techniques to supplement the supply of electric power generated for their use.
The centralized utilities are the crux of the problem and not a source of solution to the problem.
Florida who will miss it? it will all be under water. college students can take summer break some place else………
Tanatsu,Good points and I agree,but as a transitional strategy many folks ,renter etc .cant aford to be off the grid imeadiatly.This aproach,like the option to purchase green energy sources fronm the grid,will empower people to make that choice eventially. Peace out. jh
The solution to getting solar power installed is not technical but financial. We absolutely have the technical knowledge to cover every roof with solar.
A new financial vehicle is needed. Essentially the government loans money to a Sallie Mae type corporation. That corporation sells financing at 1.5% above prime to solar installers.
How it collects it’s money is this: The utility user at each housing unit pays the same average utility bill every month as they have paid that unit paid the utility company for the last 24 occupied months. The money goes to the loan holder. If for some reason the average power usaeage solar-input plus grid input exceeds the previous rate of use that is paid at the normal utility rate. Excess power sold to the utility is paid to the account at the highest daytime wholesale rate.
Using a formula like this homeowners would scramble to have solar panels installed as their electric costs would be fixed until the panels are paid off, then cheap or free. For retirees in Florida this would be pure gold.
Landlords would also scramble to have solar panels installed as it would allow them to advertise power only $XX. a month and straight solar in (4,3,X) years. Renters would stay in units that they knew were going to convert from the financed power cost to solar+grid in a year or two. Turnover reduction is gold in the rental property business.
Many cost effictive load reduction retrofits are not installed because the homeowner can’t afford the unit plus the finance costs. Geo-exchange HVAC is cost effective but it’s payback is over 5 years in most locations.
Rental property owners currently have no incentives at all to improve the energy profile’s of their properties so ancient AC units,sludge filled water heaters and decrepit refrigerators are the norm on rental units. Just converting to an ice-storage AC system on every rental unit in Texas would probably negate the need for those proposed coal plants. What’s needed are changes in the laws.
The solutions to Global Warming are not technical but in your legislatures willingness to change the laws to allow improvements to happen.
Building codes are set county by county in the US. Look to your local county reps to start making changes now. There is a lot we can do besides continuing to pine after utility companies who will not change the way they operate unless they are forced to. People ought to be investigating solutions they can implement on their own like converting their cars to electric or installing alternative energy sources for the home. If you want to make a change then do so, don’t wait for the govt or inustry to start, it won’t ever happen.
One_Love has a very good point, but I feel it’s less than 1% of the population pulling that handle in Washington D.C..
We could crush the Oil and Nuke monopoly if the people of this country took their subsidies, and used them to make solor and wind as cheap as possible.
Check out this story which show what is possible:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/the_hybrid_mini.php
A British engineering firm has put together a high-performance hybrid version of BMW’s Mini Cooper. The PML Mini QED has a top speed of 150 mph, a 0-60 mph time of 4.5 seconds. The car uses a small gasoline engine with four 160 horsepower electric motors — one on each wheel. The car has been designed to run for four hours of combined urban/extra urban driving, powered only by a battery and bank of ultra capacitors. The QED supports an all-electric range of 200-250 miles and has a total range of about 932 miles (1,500 km). For longer journeys at higher speeds, a small conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) is used to re-charge the battery. In this hybrid mode, fuel economies of up to 80mpg can be achieved.
Rest of story on the website above.
As long as we’re talking technical solutions.
These large power units are sufficient to power about 10 houses each. 20K of them are slated to be installed in the California desert.
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/
These stirling-solar plants are designed to provide commbined heat and power. At night they can run off the heat from a pellet stove or gas burner. Note that the colder the outside temperature the MORE electricity is obtained from a stated unit of solar exposure/fuel. http://www.sunmachine.de/english/main.html
Geoexchange heat pumps save as much as 50% over standard heating/cooling systems. http://www.geoexchange.org/ or http://www.soundgt.com/economics.htm
Or go completely solar for heating/cooling/power can cut you free from the grid. http://www.cogeneration.net/solar_absorption_cooling.htm
Technical solutions are waiting for political will.
Recomment:Subsidies taken away from Oil & Nuke! They would sock it to us! Never should of started it in the First place.