Carbon footprint and solar panels
Dear Editor:
Regarding "Must permit fees be obstacles for solarizing businesses? Sierra Club volunteer survey finds wide discrepancies in fees, some clearly unreasonable" (May-June Yodeler) - This is terrific legwork and provides leverage for lowering the barriers to solar.
We need to promote strategies that reduce our carbon footprint. While solar panels are a sexy and dynamic visual demonstration of alternative non-polluting energy, reducing our energy consumption is actually the most important means of reducing our carbon footprint. It is the quickest, easiest, and most cost-effective approach, by far.
As the cost of photovoltaics comes down, making solar more viable, it is still more effective to first reduce consumption (through all the usual non-sexy but extremely effective means such as increased insulation, efficient fixtures and appliances, better insulated windows, passive solar and shading, etc.) Government agencies need to target improved building performance of new as well as existing buildings as a first major step towards reducing the carbon footprint of our communities.
If the funding for Berkeley's Solar Financing program had been invested, instead, just on subsidizing homeowners to improve existing building performance, the funding would have been, maybe, 10 times more effective in reducing carbon!
We need to keep this in mind as we devise and promote strategies to reduce global warming and impact climate change. Hopefully, forward-looking strategies similar to Berkeley's, through State Assembly Bill AB-811 and other programs, will be able to leverage public financing ever more effectively.
After all is said, I am really delighted at the Sierra Club for raising awareness on the importance of solar energy!