The US Department of Agriculture announced their Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grant application recently. These grants can pay for up to 25% of the eligible costs of a renewable energy project. This is a great opportunity to take advantage of funding and implement your renewable energy and/or energy efficiency projects. The deadline is now May 31, 2013.

The US Department of Agriculture announced their Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grant application recently. These grants can pay for up to 25% of the eligible costs of a renewable energy project.

What’s available? USDA Rural Development has recently been made aware of access to additional funding for the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) which will increase the 2013 funding from approximately $20 million to $60 million.

What are the deadlines? The application deadline for the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Improvement (REEI) and Feasibility Study grants has been extended from April 30, 2013 to May 31, 2013 to facilitate the spending of these additional funds. The application deadline for the REEI guaranteed loans is July 15, 2013. There will be no opportunity for the Energy Audits and REDA this year, due to the statutory application filing date of April 1.

Earlier is better: If you’re ready to submit your application, go ahead and get it in to USDA staff so they can review it and provide feedback on any missing information which will need to be submitted before the deadline. As the deadline approaches, applications will likely pile up making an advanced review of your application more difficult to complete.

How do you apply? For those interested in an application template, they can be found on the MN REAP webpage under their respective technology. The page also contains information on applicant eligibility, past awards and potential financial assistance.

Need more background? To learn more about applying, please see a recent blog post and an in-depth fact sheet about REAP from CERTs.

Looking for a simple project idea? A Mills Fleet Farm rebate for solar-powered electric fences expires, April 30th. Click here to learn more about that opportunity.

Dan Thiede, CERTs (14 Posts)

Dan Thiede is the Communications Coordinator for the Clean Energy Resource Teams, or CERTs, at the University of Minnesota. CERTs works to advance the adoption of
renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in communities across
Minnesota by helping people learn, connect, and act.

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Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service official in charge of approving applications for tax-exempt status, denied wrongdoing in response to accusations that the IRS targeted conservative organizations seeking nonprofit status for heavier scrutiny between 2010 and 2012.

“I have not done anything wrong,” Lerner told the House Oversight Committee during a hearing about the IRS’ practices Wednesday. “I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

Lerner’s opening statement before the committee was the only information she would provide at the hearing. As advised by her attorney, Lerner invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself by testifying and declined to respond to questions from lawmakers. She added that by refusing to subject herself to questions “some people will assume I have done something wrong. I have not.”

After Lerner delivered the opening statement, committee Chairman Darell Issa, a Republican of California, asked her to leave the committee room.

Before she could exit, however, South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican on the committee, protested Issa’s dismissal of the witness.

“She just testified; she just waived her Fifth Amendment right to privilege. You don’t get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross-examination,” Gowdy said. “That’s not the way it works. … She ought to stand here and answer our questions.”

Issa implored her to reconsider her decision and asked if she would be willing to discuss testimony she had provided to the committee at earlier hearings.

“I will not answer any questions or testify today,” Lerner responded.

“I decline to answer that question for the reasons I’ve already given,” Lerner added, and Issa dismissed her from the room.

Despite her unwillingness to speak before the bipartisan House panel, Lerner previously answered questions from the Treasury inspector general, and a transcription of her responses, in which she denied that the IRS practices were influenced by outside agencies, was provided to the committee.

With Lerner’s absence, the committee moved on to question four other witnesses: the IRS’ outgoing Acting Commissioner Steven Miller; former Commissioner Douglas Shulman; Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George; and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal S. Wolin.

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While one’s earning potential increases with a college degree, you don’t necessarily need to spend $40,000 a year for a diploma for a job that pays as much.

Jobs search site CareerCast.com released a list of 14 of the best jobs without a college degree.

Tony Lee, publisher of CareerCast.com, said opportunities for high school grads and post-high school training are increasing.

CareerCast.com pulled the 14 jobs from its 200 Jobs Rated Report, which uses data from the Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics. CareerCast judged the jobs on aspects including environment, income, stress and outlook, or expected employment growth through 2020, as forecast by the Labor Department.

The highest-paid job by median salary in this year’s list is web developer, which has median salary of $75,660.

“Web developer has really taken off as a career for computer-savvy job seekers who either are self-taught or took a few college-level courses but didn’t graduate, and who are comfortable enough with their skills to make a meaningful contribution,” Lee said. “Demand is so great in this field that not having a college degree isn’t a huge turn-off to many employers, especially the smaller start-up firms.”

Who knows? Maybe you could be the next David Karp, 26, the founder of website Tumblr? Search engine company Yahoo just bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Instead of finishing high school, Karp was home-schooled.

“The trend continues to be that college graduates will experience a lifetime of higher earnings than non-graduates, but we also still see that non-college grads can have a bright job future in a wide range of fields,” Lee said.

Here is a list of CareerCast.com’s best jobs that don’t require a college degree, in order of median salary.

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The board voted on Monday to award a grant of $53,170 to the MET School to install a 41.76-kilowatt solar array at its Paul Crowley East Bay Campus in Newport. It’s one of three solar projects that the new school is planning as part of its goal to be a net-zero energy consumer, meaning it would generate all the energy it needs.

The board also awarded a $25,000 loan to the Narragansett Bay Commission to fund a feasibility study for installing solar arrays on its two inactive landfills at the Bucklin Point Wastewater Treatment Facility in East Providence.

So far this year, over two rounds of funding, a total of $262,504 has been awarded from the Renewable Energy Fund, which is supported by a surcharge on all Rhode Island electric users. The funds have gone to nine businesses and organizations.

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Unlike the establishment media in Pennsylvania which either does not cover climate change, severely undercovers climate change, or reports on the controversy over whether climate change is real at all, I want to be very straightforward about this on Keystone Politics. A statement from the G8+5 Academies which represents the national academies of science or its equivalent of Brazil, India, South Africa, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, the United States, France, Mexico, Germany, and Russia says quote, “Climate change and sustainable energy supply are crucial challenges for the future of humanity. …  large reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases, principally CO2, are needed soon to slow the increase of atmospheric concentrations, and avoid reaching unacceptable level. However, climate change is happening even faster than previously estimated; global CO2 emissions since 2000 have been higher than even the highest predictions. Arctic sea ice has been melting at rates much faster than predicted, and the rise in the sea level has become more rapid. Feedbacks in the climate system might lead to much more rapid climate changes. The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable.”

So that’s the factual context as established by the world’s science academies. This year, on April 24th, the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium put out a report entitled On The Need of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to Take Certain Actions to Reduce The Threat of Climate Change. It cites a climate change action plan put together by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in 2009 that compiled fifty-two recommendations to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions including carbon dioxide from a baseline set in the year 2000 by thirty percent by the year 2020, and laments that the vast majority of the recommendations have not yet been implemented. At the time, the PA Department of Environmental Protection also found that Pennsylvania is responsible for one percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, obviously much greater than the state’s share of the world’s population.

The PA Environmental Resource Consortium now insists that Pennsylvania must establish a legally binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction target that matches Pennsylvania’s share of the world’s emissions. Their report says quote, “Climate change, perhaps more than any other environmental problem facing the world, raises questions of basic fairness because CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere. In other words, all CO2 emissions are contributing to elevated CO2 atmospheric concentrations without regard to where in the world the emissions come from. Because the level of atmospheric concentrations of GHG will determine the amount of warming that the world will experience and the amount of warming will differentially affect millions of the world’s poorest people most harshly, all emitters of GHG emissions, without regard to where they are located in the world, are threatening people around the world. Thus, a state like Pennsylvania cannot avoid questions of basic justice when establishing a GHG missions target because any GHG emissions target is implicitly a position on Pennsylvania’s fair share of global emissions.”

They also cite a 2008 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists that listed impacts of climate change specifically on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I was going to edit it down for time’s sake, they’re all so serious that I want you to hear them all. “Many Pennsylvanian cities can expect dramatic increases in the numbers of summer days over 90°F, putting vulnerable populations at greater risk of heat-related health effects and curtailing outdoor activity for many individuals. Heat could cause urban air quality to deteriorate substantially, exacerbating asthma and other respiratory diseases. Heat stress on dairy cattle may cause declines in milk production. Yields of native Concord grapes, sweet corn, and favorite apple varieties may decrease considerably as temperatures rise and pest pressures grow more severe. Snowmobiling is expected to disappear from the state in the next few decades as winter snow cover shrinks. Ski resorts could persist by greatly increasing their snowmaking, although this may not be an option past mid-century as winters become too warm for snow – natural or human-made. Substantial changes in bird life are expected to include loss of preferred habitat for many resident and migratory species. Climate conditions suitable for prized hardwood tree species such as black cherry, sugar maple, and American beech are projected to decline or even vanish from the state.” The PA Environmental Resource Consortium adds that because that report is from 2008, quote “it is therefore plausible that climate impacts on Pennsylvania will be less than or greater than those described above … because recent global GHG emissions have recently been exceeding worst case levels predicted just a few years ago, it is more plausible that climate impacts on Pennsylvania could be significantly worse than those described above.”

So it is for our own sake as a Commonwealth as much as for global responsibility and justice that Pennsylvania must address climate change in a much more serious way than it has thus far. One important way to do that is with renewable energy projects. While the new report from the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium calls for a drastic new plan to reduce our carbon emissions, there are already some major renewable energy projects in the state that could serve as models for such a plan. Solar energy and wind energy are small parts of Pennsylvania’s energy sector, but they are part of it.

One of the largest solar energy projects in Pennsylvania is the Keystone Solar Project in Lancaster County, a joint project of Community Energy Solar, Bright Plain Renewable Energy, groSolar, and Advanced Energy Industries. It provides six megawatts of power. One megawatt is enough to power about nine-hundred homes in the northeastern United States, so this plant is able to power five-thousand-four-hundred homes. A press release from Community Energy Solar says the Keystone Solar Project will quote, “supply the highest-quality green electricity – local solar power – to customers who sign up for a share of the generation.  Several early high-profile customers have already signed up for a share of the output, including Franklin Marshall College, Eastern University, Clean Air Council, the Philadelphia Phillies, Millersville University, and most recently, Marywood University and Juniata College. ‘This is the greenest of the green — local jobs building fuel-free power that will last for decades,’ said Brent Beerley, Executive Vice President of Community Energy.” In March of this year, the Keystone Solar Project was picked by the Solar Energy Industries Association and the Solar Electric Power Association as a “Project of Distinction” at the 2013 PV America East solar conference. If Pennsylvania got serious about climate change, this is just the kind of project that could be replicated across the state to make solar energy an option for more and more Pennsylvanians.

Wind energy is also slowly making its way into our state’s energy system. The Associated Press recently reported that in 2012 the number of wind installations in Pennsylvania nearly doubled, now providing about one percent of the state’s electricity. That’s far behind Iowa and South Dakota, both of which get over twenty percent of their state’s electricity from wind power, and Minnesota and Colorado that get over ten percent from wind, but out of all 50 states, Pennsylvania is ranked pretty high up as having the sixteenth highest wind energy output in the nation. PA now produces one-thousand-four-hundred-thirty megawatts from wind energy. Again, one megawatt can power
about 900 homes in PA, which means we currently produce enough wind energy to power one-million-two-hundred-eighty-seven-thousand homes in our state. The spokesman for a company that has four wind farms in PA says quote, “‘Long-term, we remain enthusiastic about the future of wind’ in Pennsylvania … adding that while no further winds projects have reached the permitting stage here, various others are in the ‘early planning process.’” Enough to power over a million homes is a huge deal, and that’s how it stands right now. Again, if PA got more serious about climate change, this is the existing framework that could be replicated to make wind power more widely available.

In addition to renewable energy projects like solar and wind, it’s also possible to cut back on our state’s greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide by using energy more efficiently, which would cut back energy usage overall. A school district in Pennsylvania recently won a national award for its successful energy efficiency efforts. North Penn School District in Montgomery County and a small part of Bucks County received an Energy Star Partner of the Year award from the federal Environmental Protection Agency in March of this year. The Alliance to Save Energy, which runs the PowerSave Schools program that North Penn School District participated in, says that North Penn students led a variety of projects including awareness campaigns, websites, performing energy audits, interpreting data, and making recommendations for better energy practices. They quote North Penn District Energy Manager Tom Schneider saying, “Over the past year we were able to save more than $1.1 million in utility costs, an amount equal to the combined salaries of 21 first-year teachers. This was achieved through operational and behavioral changes and with no capital expenditure.” Accomplishments of the district that led to the award include slashing energy use by 20% in 2012 and 35% in 2013, preventing 5,600 tons of carbon dioxide from being released, and conducting 200 student-run classroom energy audits to increase natural light, improve ventilation, and reduce appliance energy use.

Now, student-led awareness campaigns and energy audits may not seem like a huge deal at first, but let me repeat that this year North Penn School District reduced its energy usage by over one-third. That shows a tremendous amount of potential. Imagine if under a new climate change plan for Pennsylvania every school district in the state was required to take the same steps to reduce their energy usage that North Penn took. If one school district could reduce its energy usage by a third, why not try to reduce the energy usage of every school district by a third? That alone would drastically reduce the energy needs of our state, and therefore drastically reduce the new renewable energy projects like solar and wind that our state would need to replace older and dirtier forms of energy production that contribute to climate change. These are all methods we must use to reduce our state’s greenhouse gas emissions. Hanging in the balance are our wildlife, our crops and plant life, our air, our health, and even our capacity for winters where it snows, but also the lives of impoverished people in developing nations who will suffer for our actions. Every year that goes by without Pennsylvania getting serious about climate change puts us that much closer to a time when it will be too late to stop its worst impacts.

*This is a transcript of a video segment from my new PA politics Internet newscast called Counterpoint PA, you can watch the video here.*

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