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With Al Gore receiving the Nobel Prize for raising awareness on
climate change, environmental concerns are on everyone's mind. In this issue,
you'll find great articles on the effects of climate change on a very
critical finite resource -- water, the latest China Renewable Energy and
Sustainable Development Report, and satellite solar power plants.
As always, the Solar Living Institute is dedicated to bringing
you solutions. Solar Living Institute and Real Goods founder John Schaeffer
explains why he's convinced that solar has finally gone mainstream, as he
recounts his experience at the Solar Power 2007 conference.
Read about our 2nd annual Green
Career Conference taking place at UC Berkeley on November 17th, where hundreds
of attendees will find out about opportunities to make a living while
contributing to the shift towards a sustainable future.
Finally, for your reading pleasure, we've added a new feature to
our newsletter that will help you stay in touch with what's happening at the
Solar Living Institute. Each issue will contain an edition of The Village
View, a column by and about our dedicated community of interns who join us
from around the globe to gain practical skills and then take sustainable
living to the masses.
Thank you for your support! Together, we are making a
difference.
Lindsay Dailey
Managing Director
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Solar
Business Workshops
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 The
Solar Living Institute is proud to offer our most popular workshops for the
last time in 2007! Andy Black, renowned Solar Financial Analysis, Sales
Consultant and owner of OnGrid Solar Energy Systems, will share tips and
secrets from years of experience financing and selling solar systems. Make
the most accurate and compelling financial case possible for the value of
PV systems, and maximize sales effectiveness and marketing opportunities.
You will receive interactive and take- home examples of the processes and
tools that Andy has developed and successfully used for 6+ years. The
strategic insights you'll glean from these courses will save and/or earn
you thousands in avoided mistakes and increased sales. Both of these
classes also qualify for NABCEP continuing education credit!
Space is limited, call 707-744-2017 or visit www.solarliving.org
today!
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Workshop
Harvest Special
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As we begin to wind down our busy workshop season of over 200
courses, you won't want to miss the remaining few workshops on the calendar
this fall. From renewable energy to fossil-fuel free transportation, our
workshops provide you with the skills you need to find a new job, green
your home, or break your oil addiction! A few highlights are as follows:
Sign up by November 1 and use coupon code "Harvest"
at checkout at www.solarliving.org
to receive $20 off any remaining 2007 workshop. Classes will sell out-hurry
and sign up now!
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CleanPowerFinance.com
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 The Solar Living Institute
is proud to introduce you to our newest sponsor, Clean Power Finance.com.
Clean Power Finance is dedicated to bringing solar (both solar electric and
thermal), wind, small hydroelectric, energy efficiency upgrades and other
types of renewable energy to the mass market. Based in San Francisco, Clean
Power Finance has partnered with renewable energy experts to help you
purchase your home or small business' alternative energy system. Their team
includes experts in renewable energy, consumer finance, and consumer online
services. Clean Power Finance also provides their solar installation
partners with tools to help them grow their business and reduce costs. The
Solar Pro Tools service provides a complete system configuration, pricing,
and financing platform for a low monthly fee per user. For more
information, go to http://www.cleanpowerfinance.com,
or call (877) 9- SOLAR-9
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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 at UC Berkeley 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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From
Our Founder
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Solar Goes Mainstream!
The Solar Power 2007 Conference in Long Beach, California, in
late September, was a real eye opener. This young conference has doubled in
size every year for the last three years and this year there were nearly
9,000 paid attendees - the largest solar conference ever, unless of course
you count SolFest and the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair, which are
consistently larger. I've been going to solar conferences since the early
1980s, and most were noted for their rag tag conglomeration of mission
passionate solar pioneers with stars in their eyes.
This year was different. It was the first time I felt
underdressed at a solar conference with business suits being the attire of
the day. Gone were the mom and pop garage solar businesses and in their
place were billion dollar giant companies like SunPower, QCell, Sharp
Solar, Kyocera, Conergy, and SunTech. Watching Whole Earth Catalog Founder
Stewart Brand interview CNN maven Ted Turner on a plenary stage was a real
treat for me and an especially unique juxtaposition of the last 40 years of
innovation. Ted commented that we should be dropping solar panels on Iraq
instead of bombs.
A few staggering facts and figures that I took away from the
conference:
- PV has been growing 70% - 80%
annually in the U.S.
- Solar hot water is growing 50% -
80% every year
- California has an RPS (renewable
portfolio standard) of 20% by 2010, meaning we need to have 20% of our
power coming from solar by then.
- Most CEOs estimate that by 2010 we
the world market for PV will be about 15 GW (gigawatts or 15,000
megawatts). Compare this to our current level of a little over 2 GW.
- Today, worldwide, we get 1/10 of
1% of our power from solar
- By 2030 we will get 30% of our
power from solar
- By 2100 we will get 70% of our power
from solar
In the same "CEO Forum," most CEOs agreed that the
solar economy would reach "grid parity" (where solar costs the
same as utility company power) by 2011- 2012 in the U.S. At this point the
market will break wide open as there will no longer be any barriers to
solar entry whatsoever.
One of the biggest challenges in the solar industry today is
the silicon shortage, which has caused the major PV manufacturers to limit
the supply to its dealers for the last couple of years, which has wreaked havoc
for many smaller installers. It is expected now that this silicon shortage
will be gone in approximately two years and the solar floodgates will again
become wide open. Many manufacturers are working on PV modules that use
less silicon like thinner wafers, thin film technologies, concentrators,
and metallurgic grade silicon.
Driving home from the conference my strong sense was that the
PV market right now is where home computers were in the late 1970's and
cell phones were in the late 1990's. It's both gratifying to be a pioneer
in this industry having sold the first PV module in America back in 1978
and daunting to see the tidal wave of the solar economy washing up on our
shores so quickly. In the long run it's just what we need if we're to have
a chance to mitigate global warming.
For the Earth,
John Schaeffer
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Annual
Solar Celebration
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 Join
NorCal Solar at the beautiful Berkeley City Club on October 18th to share camaraderie,
network with industry contacts, and to participate in an exciting new solar
recognition program. To learn more and purchase tickets visit www.norcalsolar.org
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The
Village View
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 Welcome to our first
installment of The Village View- a new feature of the Solar Living
Institute newsletter that will bring you regular updates about the exciting
happenings of our mighty interns and progress on the construction of our
beautiful intern village!
Meet the Fall 2007 Interns
Mason Burch is a Connecticut native recently transplanted in
the heart of Berkeley, is a phenomenal asset to our rapidly expanding
workshop program. She is working hard to develop her knowledge of all
things sustainable - especially the nuts and bolts of solar power!
Giles "Jai" Charle is our in-house philosopher-
musician-community builder. A site intern with an emphasis on the human
experience of the internship program, he has been moonlighting as our most
thoughtful natural building artist.
Hailing from from the Land of 10,000 Lakes, Alison Feik is a
spectacular site intern that has added graceful patterns to the cob and
natural plaster of our newly constructed garden building. And, of course,
who could forget her debut at the 2007 SolFest Veggie- Oil Wrestling
Extravaganza!
Another east coast to west coast transplant, Lauren Minnis is
an incredible workshop intern. Be it helping with our kids' education
program or cooking a delicious meal for the other interns, her many skills
have been a much appreciated addition to the SLI family.
Barrett Raftery is our entrepreneurial jack-of-all-trades, and
has been consistently pitching in to help with all areas of the Institute's
programs. When he's not working the turntables in his off time, he is
soaking up a diverse mixture of knowledge on topics ranging from renewable
energy to the art of acorn flour.
Stay tuned for more and for more information about our unique
internship program or to apply, visit
our website!
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GoodShop
- with a heart!
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 Did
you know you can make a donation to the SLI every time you buy products
online?
You may already be using the exciting new Internet search
engine called GoodSearch. If you do, every time you search the Internet,
the Solar Living institute or other non-profit, school or charity of your
choice earns a penny. The SLI has already earned hundreds of dollars
through this innovative cost-free method of fundraising. If you are not
already using GoodSearch, just go to www.GoodSearch.com
to find out how.
And now you can also use GoodShop.com, a new online shopping
mall which donates a percentage of each purchase to your favorite cause.
Although here at the SLI we don't recommend shopping as therapy or
entertainment, we all need things from time to time, and often online
shopping is more ecological than a trip to the store. So the next time you
need something online, look for it first through the GoodShop.com mall.
More than 100 great stores, including SolFest sponsor Gaiam,
offer travel, clothing, electronics and more through GoodShop, so that
every time you place an order, you'll be supporting us. Target, Macy's,
Travelocity, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Staples and over one hundred other
retailers will donate a percentage of each purchase you make to the Solar
Living Institute!
Just go to www.goodsearch.com
and be sure to enter the Solar Living Institute as
the charity you want to support.
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Natural
Building in Mexico
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 Escape
the shortening days and cool weather with an incredible 2-week workshop in
Tlaxcala, Mexico. In this exciting course taught by world-renowned natural
builder and architect Alejandra Caballero, you will learn a variety of
natural building techniques and practices that will provide a new paradigm
for the construction of habitable spaces using local resources and
bio-climactic design principles.
Caballero has been teaching natural building, permaculture,
and ecological restoration techniques at Rancho el Pardo, a 400-acre family
farm, for over 15 years. In this unique workshop you will learn hands- on
architecture and natural construction methods that are rooted in thousands
of years of tradition!
Natural
Building & Traditional Architecture (Nov. 20 - Dec. 1, 2007)
For more information about this special course, please call
707-744-2017 or visit www.solarliving.org.
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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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Global
Warming: Water
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 "Global
warming will intensify drought, and it will intensify floods,"
explains Stephen Schneider, editor of the journal Climatic Change and a
lead author for the authoritative Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Why?
As the air gets warmer, there will be more water in the
atmosphere. That's settled science ... You are going to intensify the
hydrologic cycle. Where the atmosphere is configured to have high pressure
and droughts, global warming will mean long, dry periods. Where the
atmosphere is configured to be wet, you will get more rain, more gully
washers.
Richard Seager, a senior researcher at Lamont- Doherty Earth
Observatory of Columbia University, looked at 19 computer models of the
future under current global warming trends. He found remarkable consistency:
Sometime before 2050, the models predicted, the Southwest will be gripped
in a dry spell akin to the Great Dust Bowl drought that lasted through most
of the 1930s.
The potential for conflict is more than theoretical. Turkey,
Syria and Iraq bristle over the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Sudan,
Ethiopia and Egypt trade threats over the Nile. The United Nations has said
water scarcity is behind the bloody wars in Sudan's Darfur region. In
Somalia, drought has spawned warlords and armies.
Already, the World Health Organization says, 1 billion people
lack access to potable water. In northern China, retreating glaciers and
shrinking wetlands that feed the Yangtze River prompted researchers to warn
that water supplies for hundreds of millions of people may be at risk.
For
more information...
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China
Renewable Energy
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 As
China's appetite for energy continues to grow, so too does its
implementation of renewable energy. The country's wind, biomass and solar
industries are moving at an impressive pace -- officials are planning to
generate roughly 120,000 megawatts (MW) from renewable resources by 2020.
The monthly China Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development
Report from China Strategies, LLC covers the latest political, financial
and technological developments in China's rapidly growing renewable energy
industries. The report examines the month's activities for policy makers,
non- governmental organizations, companies doing business in China, and
other interested parties.
In the September edition of the China Report, author Lou
Schwartz gives an in-depth look at China's ¥2 trillion long-term renewable
energy development program, the latest growth in the Chinese PV industry
and a round-up of the newest laws that impact the acceleration of renewable
energy in the country.
For
more information...
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Satellite
Solar Power
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 A
new federal study released a week ago concluded that continued increases in
oil prices may finally make the generation of solar power in
orbiteconomically competitive.
The report urged the government to sponsor a demonstration of
the technology to spur private investment in the concept.
The orbiting power plants would reduce the nation's dependence
on imported oil and help reduce the production of carbon dioxide that is
contributing to global warming, according to the report led by the National
Security Space Office, part of the Department of Defense.
Since the Space Age began 50 years ago, scientists have
dreamed of launching acres of photovoltaic cells into orbit and beaming the
electricity electromagnetically to Earth's surface but have stumbled over
the project's high cost and the technical difficulties.
The report estimated that in a single year, satellites in a
continuously sunlit orbit could generate an amount of energy nearly
equivalent to all of the energy available in the world's oil reserves.
NASA and the Department of Energy have spent $80 million in
the last three decades to study space-based solar energy, but the effort
faded in the mid-1990s.
Critics have charged that ground-based solar energy is more
economical. But putting the solar factories in space would allow them to
operate 24 hours a day and would eliminate interference by clouds and
adverse weather, said Charles Miller, director of the Space Frontier
Foundation.
Miller said that, even if implementation started immediately,
it would take at least 10 years before energy could be produced in
significant quantities, and it would take several generations of satellites
to reduce the cost of the technology to a reasonably low level.
For
more information...
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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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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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