Spirit in Action

Power to the People (with Alternative Energy)

There are ways to help individuals and organizations to overcome the impediments to adoption of alternative energy sources, and it's the work of RENEW Wisconsin to help get folks in Wisconsin past these problems, into the future. Drawing on the inspirations and experiences of other states and nations, RENEW Wisconsin's executive director, Tyler Huebner helps map a course to a decentralized, non-polluting, inexpensive energy system.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 18 Jan 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along I'm part of a local transition town affiliate called Transition Chippewa Valley And one of our subgroups is folks working on solar power. Back last November, they organized a wonderful one-day conference on affordable solar power. Find that info at solarpowerwisconsin.com But the lead keynote speaker that day was Tyler Hebner, Executive Director of an organization called Renew Wisconsin focused on advancing renewable energy policies for Wisconsin through advocacy, education, and collaborative initiatives. The staff and members of Renew Wisconsin are constantly talking and working at helping Wisconsin transition forward to the energy sources of the future. And I feel fortunate that Tyler Hebner has eked out some time to join us today by phone from Madison, Wisconsin to talk about the promise of alternative energy for Wisconsin, the USA, and the world. Tyler, I'm delighted to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Thanks for having me on Mark, appreciate it. And I appreciate the fact that you came up for our November 8th Affordable Solar Conference we had here in Eau Claire, the one that was sponsored by solarpowerwisconsin.com. Are you in heavy demand? Do you do this all over the state? Yeah, we do myself and colleagues here at Renew Wisconsin do go around the state quite often and speak at events. It's a fun thing to do to get out of Madison and get out to the rest of the state where people are trying to put projects in place and learn more about these technologies like solar energy. And how heavy is the demand for this kind of thing going on now? Is there considerable percolation going on throughout the state? Overall, the cost of solar energy has come down by about half in the last five or six years. So the installed costs to an average homeowner maybe five years ago might have been $30,000 is now about $15,000. So because of that, the interest is definitely increasing throughout the state. It's just become a pretty affordable option for more people because of that price decline. So it's a really exciting time to be working in this industry. But the policies, the rules that are set governing how people can finance these systems and the rates that they're going to get paid and reimbursed for the power they produce have a huge effect on the market too. And where Wisconsin is getting a little bit better overall, we're really missing the pace of change that's happening even in neighboring states and certainly across the country. I'm sorry to hear that we are lagging, at least in some respects. We'll get into the details about that very soon. First of all, I want to recognize, I think just last week, you had a big annual conference for Renewors Wisconsin. Tell me about what that is. Renewors Wisconsin has been around for, I think, 23 years? Yeah, yeah, this will be, this is our 24th year. Our Energy Policy Summit that we have is, in January, this is the fourth year we've done and it was just last Friday. Our theme this year was unlocking the clean energy transition. And we talked about kind of what I alluded to previously there. The rules and the policies that help shape the marketplace for renewable energy and different ways that that can be improved so that we can create more jobs and continue to diversify our energy resources here in Wisconsin towards more renewable energy. It sounds to me, Tyler, like there's a whole lot of advanced things we could talk about, but I think it's probably important to start at the basics, as you did when you did your presentation at the Affordable Solar Power Conference. Let's talk about the overview of solar power in Wisconsin, and maybe a little bit in general, because I want the supply to all of our listeners. We have 20-some stations across the nation who are listening, and so I'd like to have information that's useful to them as well, but give us some idea of the progression. Solar power, as I recall back in the 1970s, usually meant hot water heat. Yeah, and so I think this year, 2014, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the first ever, what they call, photovoltaic cell. So a technology that could receive sunlight into it and produce some amount of electricity coming out of it. And then of course, in the '50s and '60s, we did use solar PV to send satellites up and keep them orbiting the Earth. But yeah, in the '70s, it did become, you know, solar technology, did come into homes and buildings, and there was some expensive at the time, but there were some that put solar PV panels on their home, but you're right that solar water heating was a much more popular technology, and that was true into the '80s as well. Then at the federal level, we had a change in administration from Democrat Jimmy Carter to a Republican Ronald Reagan, and some of those programs were taken away, and the industry did struggle, and so the energy industry is really interwoven with government and the policies, programs that are in place. And so you can kind of see these things ebb and flow, but the technologies have been steadily improving since then, and it's really a much different product now than it was back in the '70s and '80s. Am I correct in my understanding that the efficiency that you get from solar photovoltaic, so that it has about doubled in the last 20 years or something? Yeah, I don't know the number, but that sounds about right. I mean, typically, they say about 15, 12 to 15 percent of the total energy and sunlight that comes into a silicon solar panel will come out as electrical energy, so they say that's 15 percent energy efficient. There's other technologies that are much more efficient, but then they cost more, and there's some that are a little less efficient and cost less. But right now, the most common, about 90 percent of solar panels use silicon as their material, and that's about 15 percent efficient, and certainly they are driving to be more and more efficient. And some silicon panels are upwards of 20 or more percent efficient already today. And renew Wisconsin. I think you're into all kinds of alternative energy sources. It's not just solar. Yep, yep, we work to promote solar energy as well as wind, biogas and biomass, and that's using animal waste or food waste to produce methane, actually, and use that for energy and heat. That's biogas, and biomass is the smart use of wood and other plant products, mainly to create heat. There are some instances where it's creating electricity, too, but mainly for heating sources. And then we also promote hydropower, so the use of water. Okay. Renew Wisconsin has been around some 23, 24 years now, so that means that you originated back about 1990. 1991, yep. 1991. Okay, why did it come about at that time? What was important? What was the niche that you were filling? At that time, the state of Wisconsin was doing some more what they called integrated resource planning. It's kind of a technical term, but basically we were having statewide conversations that were looking at what's our energy going to look like in the future and making sure that we had sufficient resources to provide. For at that time, what was still a growing economy? There really wasn't a group that was involved in those conversations explicitly to promote renewable energy and make sure that all the relevant information about renewable technologies was being utilized as those plans were being discussed and formulated. And that really was the impetus for starting this nonprofit organization called Renew Wisconsin that would take part in those conversations and bring to bear the information that solar power was coming along, wind power was coming along, and hydropower had always been and was continuing to improve, and that these types of resources could actually provide a pretty meaningful chunk of our state's energy future. And it was out of that work eventually that we got in the later '90s an actual stated standard that the state would achieve to get a certain percentage of renewable energy from renewable energy sources. And that was really one of the early ones in the whole country. And we built on that in 2005, 2006 by going up to 10% setting a target in that year to get to 10% by 2015, which we've already met. So we actually, you know, that's really a string throughout Renew Wisconsin's history is just making sure renewables is a part of our state's energy planning. I know that it's an obvious answer, but I think we have to make it explicit here. Why renewables? Why don't we just go with the cheap fossil fuels from all those creatures of pasteons who donated their bodies to our geological structure to give us oil and gas and coal? Why don't we just stay with them? Why do we want to do renewables? You know, it's a great question and it's one of those. Let's start at the basics of the conversation. You know, the first and the primary reason over the long run is that harnessing the sun, harnessing the wind, using our available biomass resources if they're done in the smart way so that they can be replenished using running water. These are resources that, again, have done smartly in some cases or in the case of wind and solar, wind and the sun. I mean, they're resources that come every single day. And they'll be with us for about 5 billion more years, you know, if the sun holds out as long as the experts say. In contrast, the fossil fuels are by nature finite. Although there may be a lot of coal in the ground, there's a finite amount of it. There may be a lot of natural gas and we're getting at more of it, but again, it's not going to last forever. And so at the very highest of levels, it's the idea of using resources that will be here forever instead of resources that won't. And, you know, the next level, then, to me, is a lot of practical effects based on where the markets are right now and where society is kind of heading. You know, our energy, our electric system of the past is based on very centralized, large power plants and running power throughout power lines to everybody's home. And a kind of good analogy is the old mainframe computer system where you had a very few large, critically important computers dashed away in a building somewhere and that was where your computing power was. And now you look at what's happened in the computing market. You went from that to personal computers to laptops and now you're, you know, everybody's walking around with a computer in their hand or a lot of people if you have a smartphone or something like that. So it's become very decentralized and very distributed. I think that the energy, the trajectory of the energy world is going to be the same. It's going to go from a very centralized model to a very decentralized model. And resources that can create energy where solar panels on your house or wind turbines out in the country that can serve farms. Those types of technologies are going to be the future. And frankly, it's the pretty attractive option financially now because these technologies are to the point where, as I mentioned earlier, you know, it can be very cost effective, especially if you can finance the systems over time for the average person. So, you know, multiple layers of reasons why and a big one mentioned is important to so many people is reduced pollution. And the fact that energy coming from the wind and coming from the sun is carbon free. Energy coming from biomass, biogas can be carbon neutral. Energy from hydropower can be carbon neutral. And so way fewer emissions. So a lot of people care a lot about those emissions. And certainly as we look in urban areas, it becomes a very important consideration to try to find a way to get away from polluting sources into non-polluting sources. You know, I don't know if it was on the renewwisconsin.org site, but I saw somewhere a quotation that presumes to be from Thomas Edison talking about solar power. His preference, his thought that solar power was the energy of the future. Can you verify that? And, you know, what was that about? Yeah, I used that actually to open my talk there. He said, "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power. I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." And I've seen that used a lot, Mark. I haven't gone on the internet and made sure that that's exactly what he said. But I've sure seen it repeated by a lot of people, so I felt pretty comfortable using it. And I think it's a great quote, especially coming from Thomas Edison who was right there as we started harnessing electricity, already thinking about how solar would be a superior technology once we get it figured out. Did they have what we would call PV panels? Did they have straight sunlight to electrical energy conversion back then? I mean, I guess wind is actually derivative solar power after all. So there's lots of different ways. It's a good question. At that point, no, they didn't have a way to harness the sun directly for electricity. Certainly they could use its heat, maybe the heat water or some kind of... They didn't have the technology until really the semiconductor research and that age started and I guess that would have been 1955-ish, 1954. That solar photopholtaic cell that could turn the sunlight directly into electricity was invented. So you're with an organization called Renew Wisconsin, Tyler. Is there a comparable agency or organization of the same sort with every state? I mean, is there a Renu Minnesota or Renew Illinois, Renew California, DeFrost, Alaska? I don't know. There is not. There are some other states that have an Iowa, they call it Iowa Renew, for Iowa Renew. I know Renew Missouri is operating there, but we are an independent, all three of those and any others are independent organizations. So, you know, a lot of other groups, I'll throw one out that is in the environmental space, is the Sierra Club. So they've got a national organization and they've got a chapter in each state. And our model, we're actually just our own nonprofit here working for Wisconsin. You said a whole lot of interesting things at the talk that you gave at the Solar Power Wisconsin, the Affordable Solar Power Conference we had in Eau Claire on November 8th. One of the things I found very intriguing was the differences in policy and their effects on Wisconsin and Minnesota. Could you start kind of from square one and explain why? Because I understand that solar was growing at similar rates in the two states until certain policy decisions were made. Yeah, and I'll start by also just mentioning kind of where we are in Wisconsin on energy too, and right now we get about for our electricity mix. This is as of 2012. Basically half or just over half of our electricity comes from coal here in Wisconsin. That's a surprising set of information for some people, but half comes from coal. About 20% comes from natural gas and about 20% just over 20% comes from nuclear power. We do get a reasonable amount from wind energy. Some comes from Wisconsin, and some comes from purchases from Iowa and Minnesota. But solar is right now, it's just 200th of 1%, 0.02% of Wisconsin's electricity mix. So it's just a really, really, really small piece of our electricity mix. And that's the way it was in Minnesota too. We basically have about the same amount of solar power as of about 2012, 2013. In 2013, they were able to pass the law to get to 1% solar. So they passed the law that said by 2020 we want to be at 1% solar. And even when you think about 1%, it doesn't sound like very much, and it really isn't very much. But they did set in place that law, and they set in place a couple other programs and rules that would help them get there. And now Minnesota is off and running. Just a couple weeks ago, they announced a new program that they had put out some bids for, and they received 420 megawatts of solar solicitation. And to put that in perspective, where Wisconsin and Minnesota started at in 2013 was 14 megawatts. So they've already received solicitations for about 30 times as much solar as what they already have. And that law, that's what it was set up to do, is to get them to about 450 megawatts of solar. Honestly, it looks like they're going to surpass that by leaps and bounds, because their large utility, they are called Excel Energy, is also looking to install what they call utility scale solar, so the utility would own or contract for really large amounts of solar power. So it just goes to show when you set in place a law like that or a standard that pushes you in a certain direction, a lot of times it's actually pretty easy to not only meet it, but exceed it. And that's what Minnesota has found with solar. And there's no reason Wisconsin couldn't do the same thing. But for some reason, we're not, and that's a sad thing that we'll explore in just a moment. But let me ask the question in a bigger sense. Again, this program is going all over the U.S. and some places abroad. Are there other states doing particularly well, as California doing, you know, 13 percent? Or how does this compare? And then, of course, talk about Germany, which is kind of the north star, I think, for this. Yeah, Germany definitely has moved out way in front on solar and is actually responsible for a big chunk of that cost reduction I mentioned earlier, where the price of installing solar is about half the price now of what it was even just five or six years ago. And a big reason for that is Germany, because they decided kind of at the same time they wanted to reduce their use of coal and they wanted to get off nuclear power entirely. And so they went full force ahead into the alternatives and set programs up to make it attractive for everybody to put solar on. And boy, they did, and they deployed so much solar that they were able to bring the global cost down by such a large degree because the demand for solar panels went up that the supply chain was able to move a lot of cost out of their overall cost structure in the supply chain. So it was very exciting from the renewable energy perspective. They do have quite a bit higher electric rates over there, but they also use a lot less electricity. So the per person bill is more or less the same when you look at spending habits. Here, states like the U.S., a lot of the activity is really happening along the coast. And one of the major reasons is some policy changes that were made in the mid-90s and early 2000s around the whole structure of how we're going to regulate our electric industry. And some of the states along the coast went through, and Enron was kind of a piece of this, what we call deregulation. In many cases, what that means is that the electric utilities sold off the power plant part of their business. So they had to sell off the power plants to individual companies or groups of companies that would just operate those power plants. And the utilities became more of a, certainly the customer service side, but technically they were operating the grid. So they're operating the grid and moving the electrons around, making sure that it's reliable, et cetera. But they're not owning power plants anymore. And in those states, it's become very competitive for solar power. It also, because of the way they've changed their rules, it allows other business models like those of solar financing companies to really thrive because they really have a level playing field. They can compete apples to apples with those independent power plants. And in states like Wisconsin that are still fully regulated, which means that the utility companies own their generation. So the utilities here still own the power plants. So now you're competing against those power plants. And it's every solar panel that goes up and creates electricity means less electric sales from the electric utility. So they're moving the same amount of electrons around their grid that they're using their power plants less, which means less revenue. That is really at the crux of what the situation is nationally with what are basically battles between electric utilities and the sales of those electrons versus solar power companies that want to install solar on people's houses. But there's another, a number of other states that are leading. And frankly, the states that made the biggest advances in 2014 are not the Californians and not the coast. It's actually the southeast and the south. So the states that made the biggest advancements are Georgia. They got some rulings that instead of investing more in nuclear power, they were going to invest heavily in solar power. They created 1800 jobs in one year, new jobs in solar in Georgia. In South Carolina this past year, they passed a law and then some regulations that followed that will enable the solar market to really come into that state and give people options to put solar on where in the past, the way it was, the utilities really weren't favorable to that. And it was hard to get that market going. And then the third state I'll highlight is Mississippi, where three or four years ago there, again, Republican state, their government, their public utilities commission, the regulatory body for the utilities asked for a study on the costs and benefits of solar power to our electric system. And that study came out and it was incredibly positive for solar. It shows that in most cases, or at least in the average and above average cases, solar power is actually creating more value. So saving more money for all people and the entire electric grid system, then it's costing. When you look at all the pluses and all the minuses, the pluses actually outweigh the minuses over the 20 year, 25 year period, when most solar panels cannot operate. So those are the states with the most exciting advances. You know, it's not California, it's not Massachusetts, it's not these blue states, it's actually deep red states in the south. And for us in Wisconsin, it's frustrating because we know that as basically a purple state where we've moved things forward in the past and how we're a pretty solid red state, it still hurts to see other red states really, really putting us in the dust on solar energy, finding ways to take advantage, create jobs for their states where we're really leaving that investment and that job creation on the table. It's a relief to hear that this is not simply a Democratic Party plank. This is for the welfare of the community, for the well-being. Has the drop in the price of oil in some way negatively impacted the energy for solar? That's a tremendous question, certainly a current event and one that we're all experiencing every time we drive up to the gas pump. And I'm here in Madison, we're still just a hair above $2 a gallon, but I know in many parts of the Midwest, it's below $2 a gallon and we want to change in just a year. That market obviously involves transportation and right now the technologies for renewable energy that we really work on are primarily focused on electricity and somewhat heat. And we don't really work on ethanol or biofuels, more of the transportation fuels historically. I know that there are some people that like to put solar panels on their house and then they might go out and get a Chevy Volt. And so they like to drive those electric miles, they call it driving on sunshine. So for them, their payback on their Chevy Volt got a little bit longer, obviously. The gasoline prices being lower means that you're not saving as much money when you use your own solar panels to drive on your battery power. But overall the oil prices right now are not in the immediate term affecting whether or not people want to put solar on their house or wind farms up because it really is two different markets. The electricity market, the prices really continue to go up for people, especially in Wisconsin. I saw a graph the other day that over the past I think it's 15 years when you adjust for all the different variables Wisconsin's electric rates have gone up more than any state in the whole country. We need just for the variables and that's just incredible for state like ours. Nothing really different than what's been going on in other states. We've just built a lot of power plants in this state and it's really caused our rates to go up. And now we're kind of seeing that we probably built too many or maybe at least we built some that were bigger than they needed to be and we're having to pay for that with higher rates. So on the electric side, the rates keep going up even though the oil prices have come down. When you were talking about the states that are doing better, one of them you mentioned is Georgia. And when you gave your presentation at the Affordable Solar Conference, you mentioned something about a woman who's active with what's called the green tea party. And Georgia, please tell us about that. That's a wonderful story. Yeah, her name is Debbie Dooley. She calls herself a right-wing radical grandmother and she says that she likes green energy. She goes on in her talks and in her writings to talk about decentralized solar power as a good thing because it will reduce the risk of having a big centralized system which she views as a target. As a target for terrorists potentially or other, it's a risky proposition to have all your eggs in one big basket. It's a lot less risky to have power producers all spread throughout the country from her perspective. Also, she does talk about the environment and her grandkids and wanting to make sure that they get to grow up in a world that says nice is the one that she has right now. That is a concern of hers, too. And she's a tea party person. She's one of the founders of the Tea Party nationally. She's a founder of the Georgia Tea Party. Her work in Georgia aligned herself with the Georgia Sierra Club on expanding solar, and I mentioned it earlier, but basically trying to get them to invest less in a new nuclear power plant instead and invest more in solar. And she leading the Tea Party were on the same page as the Sierra Club in that effort. And so they got together and formed a little coalition they called the Green Tea Party. It is a really fun name, but it's real. And Debbie actually came up to Wisconsin this fall as such major conversations were happening around utilities and rates and how solar energy was going to be priced and compensated. A lot of that was happening in the southeast part of Wisconsin this fall. And she came up to really lend her support from a Tea Party perspective that, you know, and from her view, she sees these power companies as monopolies. And she says, you know, monopolies should not be able to crowd out competition like solar power. And she sees that as a really abuse of their monopoly power. And that was another thing that she's really big on. So it was really fun to meet her and have her up in Wisconsin. But the work she did in Georgia led to 525 megawatts of solar power. Again, putting Wisconsin in perspective right now, we were at 14 in 2013. We're probably up to about 17 or 18 megawatts now, but really nothing compared to 525 megawatts that Georgia is going to put in here in the next two years. Well, good for them. That's impressive. And I'd really love to see that kind of coalition because it's really in all of our best interests. So the idea that it would be only liberals or conservatives is truly mistaken. It's unfortunate. I have some more questions I want to ask you right away, but first I want to remind our listeners that we're talking with Tyler Hebner. He is part of Renew Wisconsin. And he spoke at a conference up here in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where I live this past November. This is Spirit in Action, which is an Oregon spirit real production. It's on the web at northernspiritradio.org. On that site, you'll find nine and a half years of our programs for free listening and download. There's a RSS feed. You can stay connected that way. You'll find links to our guests. So you'll find a link to renewwisconsin.org or to solarpowerwisconsin.com, which was the group that organized the conference. You'll find lots of other connection to our guests and information about them. There's a place for comments. We love your comments because we love two-way communication. So when you visit, please do post a comment. Also, there's a place to donate to help make sure northern spirit radio moves forward. Just click on the support donate buttons and you'll be able to help us out. But even more importantly, I'd like to have you support your local community radio station. Community radio stations provide information and they provide music that you get nowhere else on the American radio waves. So please start by supporting your local community radio station with your wallet and with your hands. Again, Tyler Heepner is here, renewwisconsin is the organization, renewwisconsin.org. We're talking about renewable energy in Wisconsin and we're looking all around the nation, of course. So whether you're in California or Washington State or Massachusetts listening, this information applies to you. A question very specifically that you talked about when you presented at the solar power conference. Tyler was about different models for electrical production. I think most of us have grown up thinking of power plants. You've got your coal or your gas or whatever powering them and there's electrical grid that feeds us. And so that's one model. Could you talk about the other models that are possible or that are implemented in various places? Yeah, I can. And I'll tell you some of the most exciting work on this is really happening in New York and Vermont from what I've been keeping abreast of. In New York, basically, they are doing a process. State run, utilities are engaged, state government is engaged, advocates and the general public is engaged as they're able to. They call it reforming the energy vision or REV or REV. So reforming the energy vision. And they basically, from my understanding, they've said, well, let's look at a certain number of years. And I don't know what the number of years is, but maybe it's 20 years out into the future. So what do we want our electricity system to look like? What could it look like? What would be best for it to look like? And then kind of working backwards from there and add a transition from where we are today to where we want to get to then. And the focus, really, I've seen a little writing by the director of this process is on setting up the marketplace to get the results that we want. And if we can set the marketplace up correctly there, then we don't need special programs. We don't need special subsidies because the values that we're trying to skew will be built into the market. So if we value decentralized power because we think it's less risky and more secure, then somehow that's going to be priced in and valued in the market. And that I think is a really smart way to do it. They've made changes to their energy industry along the deregulation, which I mentioned earlier. So they're kind of a little bit further ahead than where a state like Wisconsin is now as far as being ready to have that conversation. But it's still really exciting for them to sort of push the envelope. I think they're the furthest ahead of any state I'm looking at how the future might be different. And it really looks like a much more distributed system where you've got fewer large power plants and you've got more distributed systems. And I think a big piece of that is still technology that's coming around and coming on board around energy storage. So the ability to store the energy from solar panels or wind turbines for wind times when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. And also microgrids. And that's where I'll transition a little bit to Vermont, where I know at least Green Mountain Power, one of the major utilities there, is really looking at what's called microgrids. And that's the idea that maybe for a hospital or a university campus or another sort of defined geographic area, you could actually have a smaller grid within the larger electrical grid. And that smaller grid can operate autonomously. So you could imagine just like a big switch and where they turn themselves off from the larger outside grid and just operate with the resources they have inside their microgrid, whether it's solar, wind, bioenergy, or a natural gas generator for times when it's needed. Or if there's energy storage and trying to figure out how that can work. And the exciting thing about that is if we go with that kind of a microgrid model, certainly renewable energy resources are going to play a primary resource, because then you would be setting up a model where you'd want to build and use more solar right there on the site where your energy uses. And it could be for larger loads, like I said, for a hospital or a university campus or a part of a university campus. So those are two of the kind of exciting looks forward at different ways that this can be done. It's not necessarily going to replace all of our centralized energy generation, but they're both looking at ways to reduce the need to build centralized power plants and replacing those abilities, the power generation, with more distributed resources like renewable energy and energy storage technologies. So very exciting stuff going on there. Certainly California is looking at this as well, and they're working on bringing on a whole bunch of grid scale. They call it grid scale energy storage. So basically, enough energy storage by, I think, 2020 or shortly thereafter, enough storage to replace a huge nuclear power plant or about the same size as a huge nuclear power plant worth of energy storage. So that's tremendous goal to, and if and when that comes to fruition, we'll see how that works. And in California, the need is really driven by their own state rules to get to 33% renewable energy by 2020. So they really need that storage to take advantage, full advantage of the renewable resources, which again, I mean, the weakness of them is they certainly the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time. But as you can couple it with storage, you might have a great solution. Some of the other models that you talked about in your presentation at the Affordable Solar Power Conference included financing because up to this point, you know, there's a monopoly, a power plant that is producing electricity for your town or region or they're buying it via grid. And they've had the energy. It's produced somewhere else and you contract with your local electrical supplier. Obviously, if you're living off the grid and you have your own solar panels or your own windmill producing electricity, that's a different model. You finance the entire system yourself and in your house and therefore you've got your electricity, but talk about some of the other options that are coming up now. Yeah, and the financing really relates to, from our perspective, really relates to how to get people access to renewable energy technologies, whether it's for farms, whether it's solar or small wind or bioenergy type of systems. For homeowners, it's most often going to be solar power. Obviously, if you're in the rural area and you do have good wind, it could be a small wind turbine as well to produce some power for your use there. Where financing comes in, I mean, the biggest barrier to a farm or a business or a family installing renewable energy is that upfront cost. It's that you're paying for a new technology, a new piece of equipment, and you got to pay for it all now. And then the electricity that comes off of that system is free after you've paid for the solar panels, but that's the model where you buy the system outright. The problem, I mean, the barrier with that model is how many, you know, a certain number of people can afford that upfront cost. Again, it's come down a lot in the last five years, but still, let's call it $15,000 for the average home to provide over half of their electrical needs. So, at $15,000, you know, that's a lot of money, so a lot of people don't have that much money in the bank. Where solar is really taking off is in states where it can pay for that solar power system over time. That's really the model that's grown the solar market in the U.S., and the technical term for it is called third-party financing. So, you've got your utility company, that's one party, you've got yourself, that's a second party, and the you in this case has a home and you want to put solar panels on it. And the third party is a project developer or solar company that will help you finance that solar panel system on your own house. So, in Wisconsin, we have unclear rules around the ability of those third-party companies to operate here. And because it's unclear, they're not really willing to take the risk and put their money at risk in case the rules were to change against them. And they were to lose out on that market, or perhaps even have to face a lawsuit because of the way the laws are written. So, I won't go into too many details, but suffice it to say that right now the financing options are pretty limited in Wisconsin. In other states, they're not. About 23 different states allow these kind of financing mechanisms. And where they do, you see that the access to solar really levels out from an income perspective. So, in those states, Arizona is one example where about 80% of the solar installations in Arizona go in for homes that make an average annual income of 40 to $90,000. So, solidly middle income families are 80% of the solar market in Arizona, where without that kind of financing, obviously it's going to be typically more wealthy folks or retired people that have sufficient savings in hand to do that. Certainly not exclusively wealthy people. We have a lot of middle income people in Wisconsin, a lot of teachers that have put renewable energy systems in to learn more about it and to show their students. But the financing really levels the playing field and allows lower income people to participate. Is that the same as what you called the lease model and the community solar model? Talk about the differences similarities between those. Leasing of idea where you wouldn't own the solar panels, but you would lease them from some kind of a solar company. Again, I mean, if you're leasing, then you can do a no money down lease. That's a very common option in the states where this type of activity is happening. The community solar is a different model entirely, actually, and it's a pretty exciting one. Because roughly three out of every four homes nationally, and this is according to the National Renewable Energy Lab, they did a report on this. About three out of every four homes nationally aren't actually good candidates to put solar panels on their roof. Whether their roof isn't oriented towards the south or to the west, or their shading, or the roof condition isn't that good. And so you wouldn't want to put a 25-year set of solar panels up there if the roof is only going to last for 10 years. Or you're going to have to reshingle after five years, something like that. And then, of course, you've got people that live in apartment buildings that can't really control whether they put solar on their roof. So the community solar model really is designed to address that market where people that just can't, they just can't post a solar system on their own property. And so community solar is the idea, and oftentimes it's a conjunction with a utility. A utility will offer this program. And they'll put, let's just say, 100, 200, 500 solar panels out in one big, what's called a one big array. And so you've got the opportunity then for individuals to buy or be a part of the energy output from one panel or two panels, four panels. In some cases, a church might buy a set of panels or a business might buy a set of panels. And this is a really neat kind of newer way to get involved in solar energy. So where it's being offered, it gives the opportunity basically to be a part of solar power and have a solar panel, but not have it on your roof if you don't want it on your roof or can't have it on your roof. So it's an exciting new model and we've had three different electric cooperatives. So that's rural electric cooperatives have offered these programs to their members to participate. And they've been very successful here in Wisconsin. We've got at least a couple more that I'm aware of that are planning to do this. And we've also got some what's called municipal utilities where the city or the municipality runs the electric utility as part of the city. We have two different cities that are planning to offer these programs as well. So it's an exciting new model that will grow the participation in involvement in solar energy. And I think one of them is just local Eau Claire energy. That's where the power for my computer recording this is drawing its energy. And they're going to be doing that. And actually there's a member of board of directors of Northern spirit radio who's working on proposal from one of the possible vendors for working on that. So it is an exciting time right here locally for me in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. But I'm sure it's happening all across the country. Yep, not in every state, but it's certainly growing. Wisconsin wasn't the first state, but we are really taking advantage of this opportunity, especially those rural electric co-ops like Eau Claire, which is the planning stages of getting one themselves. So that's pretty exciting. You mentioned Germany as kind of a paragon or virtue. They've really set their mind on this direction. They put their shoulder to the wheel and they're producing significant parts of their energy so that they can get rid of nuclear power and not be dependent on coal. China is a peculiar case. I seem to recall a couple of years ago, a few years ago that somehow with all the pollution that they have, they've got some serious motivation to try and find something that isn't going to choke all other people to death. And also that they have kind of taken the lead in solar production. That is to say that they're producing the panels that a lot of us are using and that the US has lagged behind. But there are some solar panels in the Midwest at least so that factories where they're being produced. Yeah, that's right, actually. There's one that was open even in Wisconsin in Milwaukee and that's actually planning to reopen and start manufacturing and selling solar panels again. And there's I think three is the count in Minnesota now because of their great expansion into solar energy. I think three companies have located there to manufacture or assemble solar panels. So there's definitely opportunities here in the Midwest. There's a large one that I think's based on Oregon's solar world. But you are right that the vast majority are manufactured in China and other Asian countries. They really have, as far as I understand, they have some manufacturing subsidies to really encourage that in China. I know that we've got just a couple minutes left here. I wanted to ask a little bit about you, Tyler. First of all, what's your age? I am 32. So you were eight years old when Renew Wisconsin was birthed. You grew up with a much different situation with respect to energy production. Multiple volatility cells were definitely, they didn't exist when I was in high school, or at least if they did, they were astronomically expensive, just unthinkable. So you've grown up in a different world, a different set of technological possibilities than what I grew up with. Was the Hebner family an environmentally forward looking family? How did you get into this? What's your motivation and why are you putting your life and your hands to this? Is it just because the paycheck's so good? Well, I'm laughing at the notion that I came from an environmental family. And I grew up in Iowa and my parents are conservative Republicans. And my dad has always been interested in wind energy and solar energy. From his perspective, the wind is free and the sun is free. And we have to figure out this technology and get the cost of technology down so that we can harness free energy. That's been his perspective forever and why he was such a big proponent of wind energy and got me interested in it as I was a kid. And started to see wind turbines popping up. The one that's most striking to me is in middle school, I think, going to play a basketball game at a town about an hour away called Nevada. It's spelled like Nevada, the state, but in Iowa, the town is pronounced Nevada and they had two wind turbines right there at their school. Pretty big ones. So I always thought that was very interesting. And then when I went off to college, was in electrical engineering and kind of circled back around towards the end of my tenure there to being really interested in energy and energy technologies and get some reports on what it would take to do solar powered cars and then went off to a master's degree in California to really learn what I needed to learn to get into this industry. But it's always been, for me, my passion is how are we going to do this transition? I mean, I think it's an inevitable transition, but the timing is a huge question mark. And whether or not Wisconsin is going to lead or even be part of the conversation or just follow along later and lose out on most of the benefits, that to me is what's important. This transition from centralized generation of electricity relying on fuels like coal that will not last forever. How are we going to transition ourselves into distributed generation that's more secure that relies on some and wind and bioenergy and hydro resources that are going to be around forever? That to me is one of the biggest challenges of my generation and it's what I'm really honored and proud to be working on. And it's one that Wisconsin is really turning their face the other way right now is this transition and the opportunities that come with it to create a whole bunch of jobs, to get out in front on research development and innovation and building new technologies, figuring out how to do it right, do it better, and then export our knowledge and our company's goods to other states and nations that are going to make this transition. I mean, we're just totally missing out on that possibility. Instead, holding on to the way that things always have been in the past. You know, I think we're going to see that we lose out on economic development, investment and jobs because of it. So I'm really passionate about how this transition is going to happen technologically and economically and I'm hopeful that through our work here at Renew Wisconsin, we can help our state take advantage of the near-term opportunities and build a long-term economic driver for the state and clean energy technologies. One last question, Tyler. What about the motivations for you personally about this? Is it just that you're an engineer in your training? So you could just be into all the gizmos. You like a fancy new gizmo. Is there another layer of values? This is spirit and action that people are listening to right now. Is there some spirituality overview values that are part of why this is important? Well, I'll say for me personally and not to disappoint you and your listeners, I'll say for me personally, you know, I see it as a huge challenge and as an engineering major and background, like to solve problems. So for me, this is just one of the biggest problems that we can solve. And that's why I like working on it and trying to figure out solutions that are better for the state of Wisconsin and hopefully for the region and the nation and the world. Really, that's where my motivation lies. I'll tell you that a lot of other people have a lot of other motivations and certainly encourage that. And people's passions for the environment and for using the natural resources in the best way that we can. By that, I mean wind and sun and bio energy are cow power that we have here in Wisconsin. You know, harnessing that there is certainly an environmental ethos and a spiritual ethos that comes along with it that a lot of people utilize for their passions as to why they work on these things. But for me, like I said, it's really an opportunity to make a difference and an opportunity to hopefully improve the energy sector so that we can then go on to maybe even more important problems, health, economy, security. Well, I think that we're really fortunate in Wisconsin that Iowa was willing to lend us one of their proud sons. That we really need people with a good mind for the technology as well as the values and the energy to pull these things forward. And so I'm very appreciative of your work, Tyler. We have been speaking with Tyler Hebner with Renew Wisconsin. I'm so thankful for the 24 years now that Renew Wisconsin is working on getting Wisconsin in the right direction. And I know that each time one of us makes this kind of a change, it changes the rest of the world. You, Tyler, working within Renew Wisconsin and Renew Wisconsin working within this broad scope of the United States and the world making this change. It really gives me great hope for the future. So thank you, Tyler. Thank you, Renew Wisconsin. Thanks especially for joining me for Spirit in Action today. Absolutely, Mark. It was a real pleasure. Thanks for having me on. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, NorthernSpiritRadio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You