solar | Environment.org

It was sunny and warm for the end of November on the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in northern Montana. Joseph Eagleman was standing on a grassy hill looking at a 20-panel solar array in the backyard of a Chippewa Cree elder.

It was built under the Solar for All program, a Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act-funded project that distributed $ 7 billion to build residential solar across the country. Here on Rocky Boy’s, around 200 homes would have received solar funded by the federal dollars.

This home was the first to get panels in Queensville, a small community of modest homes in one of the reservation’s valleys. The home is brown, two stories, and fully electric, which is one of the requirements to qualify for Solar for All funding. Eagleman met me there to give me a tour of the panels that …

How community solar turned a Superfund site into savings in Illinois

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| Pollution

As someone who spent several years as a workers’ rights organizer, Fredy Amador is intimately familiar with the financial struggles people face in the current economy. Northern Illinois’ skyrocketing energy bills make the situation even tougher.

Now, Amador has become an evangelist for something that can provide a modest measure of relief: a community solar project, built on a Superfund site too polluted for much else in the city of Waukegan where he lives, about 40 miles north of Chicago.

Residents who subscribe to get energy from the solar farm are guaranteed to see savings on their energy bills, under a state program incentivizing solar in low-income areas.

The 9.1-megawatt Yeoman Solar Project, which went online last month, can provide energy for about 1,000 households, as well as the Waukegan school district, which owns the land.

The school district bought the site in the 1950s hoping to build a new high school. …

California sides with big utilities, trimming incentives for community solar projects

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| Pollution

This story was originally published by CalMatters.

California’s utilities regulator adopted new rules for community solar projects on Friday, despite warnings from clean energy advocates that the move will actually undercut efforts to expand solar power options for low-income customers.

The state’s biggest utility companies advocated for the new rules.

Community solar projects are generally small-scale, local solar arrays that can serve renters and homeowners who can’t afford to install their own rooftop solar panels. They are one part of the state’s overall strategy to eventually run the power grid entirely by renewable energy.

The California Public Utilities Commission’s 3-1 ruling preserves and expands programs that will allow any ratepayer to subscribe to a pool of projects and receive a 20 percent rate reduction, said Commission President Alice Reynolds. But it also reduces future compensation for solar providers and residents.…

Climate change will impact the value and optimal adoption of residential rooftop solar

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| Climate

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 19 April 2024; doi:10.1038/s41558-024-01978-4

Climate change will affect the adoption of residential rooftop solar photovoltaics by changing the patterns of both electricity generation and demand. This research projects that climate change will increase the future value and optimal capacity of household rooftop solar across the United States.
Nature Climate Change…

What Is A Solar Eclipse? Complete Guide With Amazing Eclipse Facts

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| Wildlife

What is a solar eclipse? On this page, you’ll discover what causes a solar eclipse, how often solar eclipses occur, and the different types of solar eclipse.

You’ll also find out about umbras, coronas, Bailey’s beads, the difference between partial and total eclipses, paths of totality, annular eclipses, and more.

Get the complete lowdown on solar eclipses in preparation for the total eclipse that will be seen in many parts of North America on Monday, April 8, 2024!

You can download a free printable question sheet for this page here.

Page Index

You can read the whole page to become a solar eclipse expert, or use the quick links below to find the facts you need.

Table of Contents

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Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community moves forward with first solar canal project in the US

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This story was originally published by the Arizona Mirror.

In an effort to address the ongoing drought affecting the Southwest, the Gila River Indian Community is taking an innovative step forward by launching its Solar Canal Project to construct the country’s first solar-over-canal project.

“A tribe is leading the way,” Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Roe Lewis said, adding that the shovel-ready project will immediately address water conservation.

The Gila River Indian Community and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed an agreement on Thursday in Sacaton, Arizona, kicking off construction on the first phase of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project Renewal Energy Pilot Project, which is expected to be completed in 2025.

“This new technology fits and supports our culture and tradition as we look forward to being sustainable in the future in a very real way,” Lewis …

Solar and wind

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| Climate

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 04 October 2023; doi:10.1038/s41558-023-01840-z

Solar and wind
Nature Climate Change…

Nevada shows states how to build workforce for solar energy boom

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| Pollution

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a regional collaboration of NPR stations, and Climate Central, a nonadvocacy science and news group. It is republished with permission.

In northern Nevada, east of Reno, a mountainous desert unfolds like a pop-up book. Wild horses on hillsides stand still as toys. Green-grey sagebrush paints the sandy land, which is baking under the summer sun.

On a 10-acre slice of this desert, people are working to turn this sunshine into paychecks. As society phases out fossil fuels and builds huge new solar energy plants, this region is grabbing a share of that green gold rush by retraining workers for work that is spreading across the West.

At this training center for the Reno branch of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, Francisco Valenzuela uses a wrench to secure …

Environment.org

Tag: solar

Native families were promised free solar. Trump took it away.

How community solar turned a Superfund site into savings in Illinois

California sides with big utilities, trimming incentives for community solar projects

Climate change will impact the value and optimal adoption of residential rooftop solar

What Is A Solar Eclipse? Complete Guide With Amazing Eclipse Facts

Page Index

Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community moves forward with first solar canal project in the US

Solar and wind

Nevada shows states how to build workforce for solar energy boom