It was a cold day up on the top floor of the downtown parking
garage—Cloudy. Windy. Spits of rain. We huddled under the
elevator portico and cracked jokes about the weather.
“It’s getting so these solar dedications are so common
around here, they’re boring,” said Reno City Councilmember
Dave Aiazzi. “I think that’s a good thing.”
The purpose of our visit to that breezy platform was the
installation of 30 kilowatt solar panels to the roof of the downtown
parking garage, enough solar power to fuel the needs of the downtown
West Street Market. City Council representatives were there to talk to
the media, a few staffers, and energy industry types—we all
huddled around, backs to the wind, hands stuffed in pockets.
“Should have been installing wind turbines today.”
“Oh no, you watch, on that day, it’ll be dead as a
doornail.” “This is Reno, after all.”
Solar panels are cool enough. These are just one in a series of five
solar projects overall that the city of Reno is building this year
through its Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Initiative—a
combination of wind, solar and conservation retrofits that will total
more than 556,000 kilowatt hours per year, saving $69,000 in energy
costs annually.
But what else is cool about this project is the financial aspect of
it. Like many improvement projects, this one is funded through a
combination of many sources—some Recovery Act money from the
federal government, some rebate money from NV Energy. But the city is
taking advantage of a new tool for financing renewable energy
construction: federally-backed Clean and Renewable Energy Bonds (or
CREBs). Like traditional bonds, CREBs is a mechanism for borrowing
money up front for a project and paying the loan back over time. But
where traditional bonds frequently look to taxpayers or ratepayers to
finance the payback, CREBs relies on guaranteed energy savings. Those
$69,000 in energy cost savings, then, will be helping to pay off the
construction bonds—not taxes, fees or general funds.
CREBs are just one of an alphabet-soupcon of renewable energy
financing tools the feds have cooked up to facilitate the speedier
adoption of renewable energy technologies by municipalities and local
governments. There’s also the EECBG—Energy Efficiency
Community Block Grant; and the QECB—Qualified Energy Conservation
Bonds; and who could forget the RZED—Recovery Zone Economic
Development Bond? Not to mention the FBI, the CIA and the BBC.
And B.B. King. And Doris Day. Dig it.
But seriously, this is good news. Some days, it’s easy to get
depressed about the future. A lot of really old thinking seems to be
clogging up the airwaves and getting in the way of progress. But I have
to say, standing up there with city staffers, council, energy guys and
other media heads, with the storm rolling down the ribs of the Sierra,
the possibility of living in a sustainable community seemed just a
little bit more … well, possible.
And it made me think that while the national news media was giving
waaayyy too much attention to the teabaggers and other
attention-grabbing obstructionists last summer, some smart and
hard-working people in our own downtown were quietly at work paving the
way for a better future for our community.
A few posed photographs in front of the solar panels, and we all
turned to leave—and then, of course, the sun came
out—shining down through shreds in the cloud cover, torching up
the aspen on the mountain flanks, and of course, illuminating the shiny
new frames of the solar panels. And no, I did not just make that
up.