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We
have undergone some changes here at the Solar Living Institute. Our
Executive Director of the last 4½ years, Bob Gragson, has moved to
Madison, Wisconsin to become Executive Director of Friends
of Troy Gardens, a local CSA and community gardening program. His
position there will enable him to address his concerns with the need for
local community food production in the face of impending oil depletion
which has for years been a significant issue for Bob.
On
behalf of the entire staff and board, we thank Bob for his many years of
contribution to the Solar Living Institute. We will miss him in Hopland,
and wish Bob the best. Also, if you liked his newsletters here at the
Institute, you can Sign up for his new Email Newsletter at Friends of Troy
Gardens.
Having
held the position of Workshop Director at the Institute for the past year,
I am honored to be taking on a new role as Managing Director of the
Institute. As a result, we are currently accepting applications for a new
Workshop
Director in addition to a Landscape
Manager to supplement our site staff. Additionally, Tim Dolan, our
accountant, has been promoted to Finance Director and Karen Kallen, our
former administrative assistant, has been promoted to Office Manager as we
continue to grow.
I
am deeply committed to our mission of promoting sustainable living through
inspirational environmental education, and very much look forward to
working with our incredible staff, board, interns, students and supporters
to further our mission.
As
always, please continue to email
us your ideas, feedback and suggestions. I look forward to hearing
from you!
For
the Earth,
Lindsay Dailey
Managing Director
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Back
to School Special |
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 The
global citizenry is ready for change. People from all over the world
are signing up for our sustainable living workshops faster than we
can keep up! In order to meet the demand, we have added a variety of
new workshops to our fall schedule, including the following popular
favorites:
Join
the ranks of those who are heading back to school this fall; sign up
for any regular priced workshop by October 1st and receive $20 off.
Just use the coupon code "Back to School" when checking out on our
website. |
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Sustainability
Intensive |
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 Where
better to learn how to go green than by immersing yourself in a
5-day sustainable living intensive at the Solar Living Center in
Hopland, the eco-living capital of the world?
This
intensive will provide you with the skills to redesign your
life--covering energy, food, shelter, water, and food--in a
sustainable way.
Sign
up for individual classes, or sign
up for the entire series and save $50 at www.solarliving.org.
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Volunteer
Day at SLI |
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 On
Sat., Oct 6 from 10 AM to 5 PM, there will be a volunteer day
at the Solar Living Institute. If you would like to help staff and
interns prepare the site for the fall, please let us know by
contacting our Office Manager, Karen, at 707-744-2017 or karen.kallen@solarliving.org.
You
should bring work clothes, gloves and your lunch. We will be
providing a dinner meal to celebrate the day of work at 5 PM.
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Green
Career Conference |
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 If
you've been thinking about finding your niche in the emerging green
economy, you won't want to miss the Solar Living Institute's second
annual Green Career Conference taking place in San Francisco on
November 17.
As
the global issues of climate change and peak oil become increasingly
urgent, we must rethink the way we occupy the planet and satisfy our
basic needs, including food, shelter, transportation and energy.
Redesigning these basic needs will create a plethora of new jobs,
entrepreneurial ventures, and exciting opportunities.
Join
the Solar Living Institute and its cadre of sustainable living
professionals for an interactive day of practical information that
will help you find a rewarding career, and make a living while
making a difference!
Last
year's conference sold out early. People are already signing up for
this event. Seating is limited. Sign up now to ensure your space at
this special event.
Register
now for the Green Career
Conference... |
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Workshops
2007 |
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 Register
now for the workshop of your choice before it sells out. Response to
our workshop program this year has been overwhelming. Demand for our
workshops is hot! Almost all workshops offered to date have sold
out. So register early!
With
over 200 workshop days offered in 2007, our program has grown
substantially. We are offering a variety of workshops in Southern
California in both Los
Angeles and San
Diego, and we have started to expand to the East
Coast where new incentives are making solar an attractive
investment. We are now offering workshops in Tlaxcala,
Mexico, and continue to offer workshops in San
Francisco, San
Jose, Hopland
here at the Solar Living Center, and other locations.
Select
a topic below for a listing of workshops in an area of interest to
you:
Check
out our complete 2007 workshop
schedule... |
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SLI
Empowers Youth |
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 In
early September, the Solar Living Institute teamed up with various
organizations to provide solar installation training to 24
low-income urban dwellers who participated in a unique workforce
development training sponsored by the City of Richmond.
With
one of the highest violence rates in the country and a polluting
Chevron refinery in their backyard, residents of Richmond have
historically faced high unemployment rates. But the solar industry
in the Bay Area is booming, and the non-profit Solar Richmond
recognized an opportunity to connect underemployed youth with
meaningful jobs in the solar industry where they could make a
difference and transform their community both environmentally and
economically.
The
Solar Living Institute was invited to provide 3 days of hands-on
training to the 24 young attendees, after which trainees gained
real-life experience installing a system on a low-income home
through San Francisco-based Grid Alternatives. Participants, all of
whom are long-time residents of Richmond, are now connecting with
various solar companies in the Bay Area for employment
opportunities.
Ryan
LeBlanc, resident renewable energy instructor at the Solar Living
Institute and trainer for the program, was excited to have shared
his passion for solar and environmental justice with this
traditionally marginalized community. "It was really inspiring to
see the students make a connection between the pollution from the
local oil refinery and the high rates of asthma in Richmond, and
then explain how solar can help provide clean energy alternatives.
The idea of solar really clicked for a lot of the students."
We
plan on offering further trainings with Solar Richmond to continue
to connect urban youth with green economic opportunities. Donate
now to support the non-profit Solar Living Institute in offering
these types of life-changing trainings. Any contribution helps!
For
more information and video coverage of this exciting
event... |
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Support
the Institute! |
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 Partners,
who support us through annual dues and our
growing continuous-giving program, are essential to funding the
Solar Living Institute. The financial support of folks like you,
which can range from as little as $35 a year to $2,500 or $10,000 a
year, helps us continue to grow and thrive.
The
Solar Living Institute is growing rapidly. Your contributions are
critical to help us to continue to grow since our work is far from
over! If you have never been an Institute partner, or if your
partnership has lapsed, won't you please join
us in inspiring and educating people about sustainable living?
Even the smallest contribution can help.
Find
out more about our partnerships,
and some of the many thank-you gifts you can receive for your
support. |
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GoodSearch
Features Us |
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 The
Solar Living Institute will be featured as The Charity of the Day on
GoodSearch on Sept. 30.
You
can give money to the Institute without paying out any money!
GoodSearch is an online search engine that donates one cent to the
charity of your choice (such as the Solar Living Institute) for
every search you perform.
GoodSearch
is partnered with Yahoo, so your searches are as good as any other.
Using GoodSearch is simple - just go to this
page and you will automatically be contributing to the Solar
Living Institute. Make it your homepage, one of your home tabs, add
it to your Favorites, or download it for your toolbar, and it will
be even easier to support our programs.
GoodSearch
has also started GoodShop. Follow the link to GoodSearch above to
support the Institute and use the link from there to shop at
GoodShop and support the Institute with your purchases at these
online stores.
If
everyone who reads our newsletter used GoodSearch for their online
search needs, it could generate over $100,000 for our programs here
at the Solar Living Institute. Thanks for your support!
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Friends
of Troy Gardens |
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 Former
Solar Living Institute Executive Director has moved on to become the
Executive Director of Friends of Troy Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin.
If you liked his email newsletter at the Solar Living Institute, you
can sign up for his new email newsletter in his new
position
On
31-acres of urban property, Troy Gardens integrates mixed-income
green-built housing, community gardens, an organic farm, and
restored prairie and woodlands.
The
Friends of Troy Gardens, in partnership with the Madison Area
Community Land Trust and the Urban Open Space Foundation, is
dedicated to developing, managing and stewarding Troy Gardens.
Troy
Gardens' environmental education programs include a nationally
recognized leadership program for teenagers, an award-winning
children's garden, and an innovative partnership with the University
of Wisconsin.
Neighbors
care for 340 family garden plots in the Community Gardens. Volunteer
Stewards restore and maintain native tall grass prairie and maple
woodlands in the natural areas. Over 100 households pick up weekly
bags of fresh organic vegetables from the Community Farm. Proud
homeowners have recently purchased 30 green-built townhomes built
around common courtyards. |
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New
Source Book Sale |
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 Real
Goods Solar Living Sourcebook - Special 30th Anniversary Edition:
The Complete Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies and Sustainable
Living
by John Schaeffer (2007)
Regularly
priced at $35, the Institute is offering this great book at a
special sale price of $25 for a limited time.
Concerns
over dwindling resources and environmental degradation are driving
many to seek alternatives to our wasteful, polluting lifestyle.
Clean technologies such as solar power, wind power and biodiesel
fuel are soaring in popularity.
The
Real Goods Solar Living Sourcebook - Special 30th Anniversary
Edition
is the ultimate guide to renewable energy, sustainable living, green
building, homesteading, off-the-grid living, and alternative
transportation, written by experts with decades of experience and a
passion for sharing their knowledge. This fully-updated edition
includes brand new sections on Peak Oil, Climate Change,
Relocalization, Natural Burial, Biodynamics and Permaculture. It
also boasts the latest product listings and completely rewritten and
expanded chapters on:
- Land
& Shelter
- Natural
Building
- Passive
Solar
- Biofuels
- Sustainable
Transportation
- Grid-tied
Photovoltaics
- Solar
Hot Water Systems
--
plus over 150 pages of maps, wiring diagrams, formulae, charts,
solar sizing worksheets and much more.
Whether
you're a layperson or a professional, novice or longtime aficionado,
the new Sourcebook
puts the latest research and products at your fingertips -- all the
information you need to make sustainable living a reality.
Order
your copy today.... |
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All
You Need is Sun |
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 A
new design for solar thermal electric generators could bust the
technology out of niche status and supply the country's entire
electric load, according to ... people who make solar thermal
electric generators.
Physicist
David Mills, chief scientific officer and founder of Palo Alto,
Calif.-based solar-thermal company Ausra, has bigger ideas:
concentrating the sun's power to provide all of the electricity
needs of the U.S., including a switch to electric cars feeding off
the grid. "Within 18 months, with storage, we will not only reduce
[the] cost of [solar-thermal] electricity but also satisfy the
requirements for a modern society," Mills claims. "Supplying
[electricity] 24 hours a day and effectively replacing the function
of coal or gas."
The
company insists it can do this at a cost of just 10 cents per
kilowatt-hour, analogous to the price of electricity from burning
natural gas in California if a cost was imposed for the emission of
carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas (as the state's Public
Utilities Commission is considering).
The
new design involves building lots of low-to- ground, resilient
mirrors instead of one ginormous parabolic mirror.
Mills's
design -- a compact linear Fresnel reflector -- allows for greater
ground coverage, lower weight and greater durability than
precision-shaped parabolic mirrors. "You can drop stones on it and
they bounce off," Mills says. "We would be able to build these in
Florida in the hurricane zone."
This
Fresnel solar thermal plant also eliminates oil, directly heating
water to a lower temperature of roughly 535 degrees F (280 degrees
C) at a higher pressure, about 50 bars, or 50 times atmospheric
pressure. Then, it uses the resultant steam to turn the same
low-temperature turbines as those employed in nuclear reactors.
The
amount of electricity produced is simply a function of the sun's
bounty and the number of mirrors. "We're moving from 80- to
100-megawatt designs to 700 megawatts and above," says John
O'Donnell, Ausra's executive vice president.
For
more information... |
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Post-Oil
Agriculture |
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 The
decline in the world's oil supply offers no sudden dramatic event
that would appeal to the writer of "apocalyptic" science fiction: no
mushroom clouds, no flying saucers, no giant meteorites. The future
will be just like today, only tougher. Oil depletion is basically
just a matter of overpopulation - too many people and not enough
resources.
The
most serious consequence will be a lack of food. The problem of oil
therefore leads, in an apparently mundane fashion, to the problem of
farming.
To
what extent could food be produced in a world without fossil fuels?
In the year 2000, humanity consumed about 30 billion barrels of oil,
but the supply is starting to run out; without oil and natural gas,
there will be no fuel, no asphalt, no plastics, no chemical
fertilizer. Most people in modern industrial civilization live on
food that was bought from a local supermarket, but such food will
not always be available. Agriculture in the future will be largely a
"family affair": without motorized vehicles, food will have to be
produced not far from where it was consumed. But what crops should
be grown? How much land would be needed? Where could people be
supported by such methods of agriculture?
The
most practical diet would be largely vegetarian, for several
reasons. In the first place, vegetable production requires far less
land than animal production. Even the pasture land for a cow is
about one hectare, and more land is needed to produce hay, grain,
and other foods for that animal. One could supply the same amount of
useable protein from vegetable sources on a fraction of a hectare,
as Frances Moore Lappι pointed out in 1971 in Diet for a Small
Planet. Secondly, vegetable production is less complicated. The
raising of animals is not easy, and one of the principles to work
with is, "The more parts there are to a machine, the more things
there are that can go wrong." The third problem is that of cost:
animals get sick, animals need to be fed, animals need to be
enclosed, and the bills add up quickly. Finally, vegetable food
requires less labor than animal food to produce; less labor, in
turn, means more time to spend on other things. A largely vegetarian
diet is also the most healthful, but that is a separate issue.
The
amount of land needed for farming with manual labor would depend on
several factors: the type of soil, the climate, the kinds of crops
to be grown. The highest-yielding varieties are not necessarily the
most disease-resistant, or the most suitable for the climate or the
soil, or the easiest to store. The weather also makes a big
difference: too little rain can damage a crop, and too much rain can
do the same. Unusually cold weather can damage some crops, and
unusually hot weather can damage others. Without irrigation -
relying solely on rain - the yield is less than if the crops were
watered.
For
more really excellent
information... |
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Learn
from Books |
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 In
our bookstore we have an area that lists the
latest titles that we have added. Our latest editions include
the following: A
Handmade Life, Build
Your Own Solar Heating System, Building
a Straw Bale House, Down
to Earth Cookbook, Genetic
Roulette, Green
Roof Plants, Growing
Green, How
to Grow More Vegetables (7th Ed.), Natural
Beekeeping, Natural
Timber Frame Homes, New
Sustainable Homes, Solar
Living Sourcebook, Solar
Revolution, Terra
Madre, The
Green House, The
Homeowner's Guide to Energy Independence, The
House That Jill Built, and To
Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work.
We
provide FREE shipping on book and DVD orders totaling $100 or more.
Be
sure to check out our books in the following categories:
Shop
with the Solar Living Institute, and help support our valuable work!
Visit
our Bookstore!... |
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Jobs
at the Institute |
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 We
have two job openings at the Solar Institute.
Please
follow the links below for more information on the positions and how
to apply:
We
also know many of you are interested in green careers from the
feedback we receive from you. Put our 2007
Green Career Conference in San Francisco on Nov. 17 on your
calendar now.
For
energy and environmental positions throughout the world, the
following are some good websites for your review:
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Quick
Links |
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