When it comes to sustainable energy, America really IS the land of opportunity

There is a sad fact that we have to face....the US is a very wasteful country. Our politicians like to talk about all the waste in our federal government, but truth be told, that pales in comparison to the amount of food, energy, water, material that we waste on a day-in and day-out basis. This attitude of waste grows logically out of two different characteristics of our early country: First, the amount of available space that existed in North America during the 17th through 19th centuries, and second, the fact that our country developed all of its lasting infrastructure after the Industrial Revolution and during an era of nearly-free energy resources. Efficiency was not an issue...progress, prosperity, and profit ruled the day.

Now that we are dealing with the repercussions of that, one might think that we have to completely change our infrastructure to move to a more sustainable future...

But they would be wrong.

Precisely because we have been so wasteful, we have an extraordinary opportunity to make improvements...potentially even more so than even Europe (where infrastructure naturally supports sustainable action more effectively) or China and India (where they are starting with mostly a clean slate and do not have the burden of sunk investment. In order to move to a more sustainable economy, but without the financial shock that comes from contraction, we need to make three major shifts:

1.  Eliminate fossil fuels from our mix of electricity generation.
2.  Shift fossil-fuel burning as a source of heating energy from our buildings.
3.  Reduce vehicle milage per unit of GDP and shift remaining to cleanly generated electricity.

If we were starting from scratch, we would need to develop a large grid infrastructure to handle the new loads shifting from fossil resources for buildings and vehicles. Because we are so wasteful, we can build this capacity much more cost effectively through efficiency in our existing buildings and systems. Meanwhile, as we close coal, nuclear, and natural gas electricity-generating plants (in that order) and add new renewables, we can, again, use efficiency to reduce the pain associated with dropping new generation.

This also opens up great opportunities for innovation. New technologies and design strategies make it so that as we renovate or replace buildings in existing, developed cities, we can introduce distributed generation assets that are easier to install. With advances in communication, grid operators can have an even better handle on these distributed resources than they traditionally had on large utility-scale generation. We are learning that the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy resources can happen more swiftly and with less disruption than previously thought.

Many environmentalists treat our culture of inefficiency as a pox that we should try to wipe out by degrading all of us for years of efficiency sins. Instead of that negative view, we should focus on the opportunity...we can make great strides, very quickly, and with no disruption to quality of life. In fact, if we do it well, we can increase quality of life dramatically...across the whole spectrum of Americans...while we grow more and more efficient. Americans have shown, as Churchill said, that we will do the right thing once all other options are exhausted.

We are just starting to do the right thing...and we will all be the better for it.

www.folkartfromtheharbor.com

Friday Five: September 5, 2014

In another post this week, I made a reference to Pompeii. There are definitely days when I feel like the guy who saw the eruption coming but spent more time worrying about trying to convince people it was going to happen then getting the heck out of town.
5 terrifying facts from leaked UN climate report

" It’s a long list of problems: sea level rise resulting in coastal flooding, crippling heat waves and multidecade droughts, torrential downpours, widespread food shortages, species extinction, pest outbreaks, economic damage, and exacerbated civil conflicts and poverty.
But in general, the 127-page leaked report provides starker language than the previous three, framing the crisis as a series of 'irreversible' ecological and economic catastrophes that will occur if swift action is not taken."

The rising middle class in China is forcing the government into actions that will reduce pollution and simultaneously reduce the carbon in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the waning middle class in this country cannot accomplish the same thing.
China brings forward start date of carbon trading scheme

"The rapid growth of a Chinese middle class has gone hand in hand with increasing unrest in the country over the damage caused to the air, water and soil by the nation's rapid industrialization.
According to Reuters, the Chinese government has pledged to reduce the amount of carbon emitted per unit of GDP by 40-45 per cent of its 2005 levels by 2020."

I wanted to just write "Nicaragua?" as a "clever" way of highlighting that other countries in the Americas are stepping up where we cannot. Then I thought, who am I...in the country in which I live...to be anywhere near that snarky. We could learn much from Nicaragua on this issue.
Nicaragua on the rise as next leader in renewable energy
"Last year, 51 percent of the country’s energy came from renewable sources, and the goal is to reach 74 percent by 2017, and 90 percent by 2020.
What’s important to note, though, is the country still has massive renewable energy potential and is ripe for investors to make the stated goals a reality."

America uses twice as much energy per capita than most of our leading, developed economic competitors (and four times as much as China). Either you believe that we do not know any better than to be wasteful or that we do not care. Whichever you choose, it's not a good thing.
"Zombie" servers and inefficiency drive waste at data centers

"These 'zombie,' or comatose, servers are among the examples of energy waste documented in a report about U.S. data centers released Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). If those facilities were to cut electricity consumption by 40 percent—half of what is possible using the tools now available to improve efficiency—the electricity savings would amount to $3.8 billion and 39 billion kilowatt-hours, according to the report.
That's enough to power 3.5 million American homes."

Read the ruling by the judge...all the way through. It's worth hearing at least some idea of what happened over the month leading up to the start of the spill and during the spill. We talk about the value of the pressure to produce, and how the push for profit should be considered a positive trait. If you look at the actions of the technicians and engineers through the lens of the drive for profit, the actions taken appear to be logical, albeit completely unethical...and as it turns out, illegal.
BP may be fined up to $18 billion for spill in Gulf

"By finding that BP was, in legal parlance, grossly negligent in the disaster, and not merely negligent, United States District Court Judge Carl J. Barbier opened the possibility of $18 billion in new civil penalties for BP, nearly quadruple the maximum Clean Water Act penalty for simple negligence and far more than the $3.5 billion the company has set aside."

Happy Friday!

National Laboratory Update: Flashes for 9/3/2014

DOE 'Knowledgebase' Links Biologists, Computer Scientists to Solve Energy, Environmental Issues
With new tool, biologists don't have to be programmers to answer big computational questions.

Livermore team awarded for hydrogen production research

The award recognizes the team for its work developing models of photoelectrochemical solar-hydrogen production and corrosion processes.

New Process Helps Overcome Obstacles to Produce Renewable Fuels and Chemicals
NREL demonstrates a concept that provides opportunities for the successful conversion of lignin into a variety of renewable fuels, chemicals, and materials for a sustainable energy economy.

Chromium's Bonding Angles Let Oxygen Move Quickly

The result is a novel material with potential applications in fuel cell technology

Enjoy the journey!

What if everything you thought you knew were not exactly true?

"Conventional wisdom" in the utility-scale renewable energy world says that we can never reach a high penetration of renewable sources of electricity generation because of the intermittency of wind and solar. Also, based upon assumptions of traditional transportation analysts, we will be limited in the number of electric cars that we can plug into the grid because of the significant increase in infrastructure that will have to be added because these vehicles will all tend to plug in at precisely the time we experience the peak electricity demand (after work on summer evenings). Because of this, we have had to temper our goals of increased use of non-damaging energy sources; if the grid cannot handle them, and we need to invest in much more battery storage and upgrades to transformers and transmission lines, it will be a long time before we reach even modest goals.

Thankfully, I have stumbled back into podcast listening, and have reconnected with the work of Steven Lacey who now hosts the Energy Gang podcast at GreenTech Media. I originally found Steven's work when he hosted the This Week in Renewable Energy podcast, and I find the work that he does provides the best balance of what's ahead and what's possible. In just the few weeks I have been listening, I have come across information that takes down the assumptions about interconnecting electric vehicles and renewable sources to the grid...and it's all for the better.

Electric vehicles and the 1950s version of the average American's day

Thanks to some research by Pecan Street Research Institute out of Austin, we know that EV charging habits would not be quite so deleterious to our grid infrastructure as originally thought. Even ignoring for a moment the opportunity available in using energy efficiency to create capacity for new load, the habits used to predict the dire circumstance no longer exist on a grand scale. The load spike assumption relies on a model that predicts people work 9 to 5, and drive home to immediately plug in the car that they have driven to work. Over the past forty years, we have moved to a much less reliable model of employment. Some people work from home, many use alternative transportation, and still others will follow price signals and plug in when it costs less. All of these factors and other contributed to the result that EV charging nowhere near approached the models predicted; that means good news for widespread EV adoption. This will contribute to opportunity related to the next misconception.

A high penetration of renewables may have equal or lower intermittency to conventional fuels...even without storage

Economic estimate of the cost to integrate renewables have almost always added the "gotcha" cost of adding energy storage in order to deal with intermittency. Work at the Rocky Mountain Institute, as well as real-world data from Germany, has shown that when taking into account the variability of loads - and when those loads appear - that the higher the penetration of renewables, the more the grid acts like the current grid. Non-renewable thermal plants already have expected downtime rates of 10-15%, and their failure is much less predictable than solar or wind plants. The existing grid management strategies to deal with that intermittency can carry over to the renewable intermittency without a loss in reliability. Add into that the opportunity presented by the storage capacity of say, 100,000,000 electric vehicle batteries, and we have - at worst - the same reliability with significantly lower environmental impact.

In order to achieve widespread adoption of both of these sets of technologies, we will need to make significant improvements to our grid. It will need to become smarter, more reliable, and better and communicating with the end user. All of that improvement needs to happen anyway as our grid in many eras exceeds the average age of the population. These targeted improvements are necessary regardless of the energy source, so renewables and EV offer no additional requirements. Also, if we move toward more distributed renewables and deeper dives into energy efficiency, we will need to spend less and less on the upgrading of the utility-scale power lines. If planned out, this means we could actually achieve this transition to renewables for much less than expected. Amory Lovins points out during his visit with the Energy Gang that with no new technology adoption and no new policy, a transition to an almost entirely renewable electricity generating grid would SAVE us $5 trillion over the next 35 years.

I know we can do it faster...and that was before I found out how wrong some of my assumptions were.

Going back to schools that teach

Today is back to school day in our house, and among all the normal activities...finishing summer reading, making sure uniforms fit, figuring out which lunch table to sit at...it's a good time to consider the importance of school buildings to our community, and ways that we can make them even more important.

In many communities, schools already hum from early in the morning until late in the evening. Students go to class, of course, but community groups use facilities for meetings, local youth groups maximize the use of athletic and fine arts facilities when the school does not need them, and in extreme circumstances, schools provide shelter to those displaced from their homes. Schools provide an excellent foundation for sustainable communities, and we have many ways to make them even more so.

• Preserve schools located in community centers. For the past couple of decades, many communities have pushed their schools to the edge of their community because of a combination of the low cost for the land and the larger footprint that modern schools take up. This removes the ability for students to walk or bike to school, as well as losing the embodied energy of the existing school buildings.
• Use the buying power of the school to encourage the purchasing of local, healthy food options. This supports local food systems that provide community resilience, and directly benefits the health and learning opportunities of the students.
• Leverage the long-term position of the school to enter into long-term agreements for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Utility-scale renewable energy provides environmental benefits, but local, community-based systems provide the added benefit of a self-sufficiency that helps in emergency situations. As an added benefit, schools tend to be out of session during the times of highest system performance, meaning that they can export the additional energy to local homes.
• Manage materials in such a way as to minimize how much we dispose of in landfill. Schools use many consumable materials, and have a large, often passionate workforce to help collect and manage materials.
• Create a generation of sustainability natives. Just as children born over the last 20 years are digital natives that have never known a world without computers, students today will never live in a world without the impacts of climate change. These students can then bring what they learn into the community to make life better for all.

One in five people spend some part of their day in a school. The lessons we learn there permeate to all aspects of our life. In order to make these school buildings as useful to our communities as possible, we all need to advocate and support efforts to reduce or eliminate their negative impact on the environment and make them even more self-sufficient.

The (dangerous) fracking Ponzii scheme

Product manufacturers know all to well one of the primary rules of the marketplace: incumbents cede market share only when something costs less or has a greater "cool factor". That is why the new competitor to my favorite brand of juice drink cost $0.30 less, or why when Apple asked me to spend $400 on something that comes free with my cell contract, it has to do all this "extra stuff". Over the long haul, these new entrants to the marketplace have to raise prices or cut back on product in order to remain competitive, but their investors will tolerate losing money for a couple of years if the long-term viability of the product will lead to profits and return on investment down the road.

Such is the state we now find ourselves in the market for natural gas in the United States. For the better part of the past decade, we have enjoyed historically low prices for natural gas fueled by a huge expansion of supply from hydraulic fracturing (fracking), notably in Northeast, the Southern Plains, and the West. Under normal circumstances, companies would limit how much they distribute of these resources to ensure long-term production and viability. However, when this technology started to produce, the market had three competitors that could scuttle any long-term adoption:

Cheap electricity from coal and nuclear.

Renewable energy technologies.

Energy efficiency. 

In order to compete, and win, natural gas had to drop prices in order to create a challenging market for coal/nuclear, stave off investment in renewables, if possible, and keep demand as high as possible. And that they did: From 2006 to 2012, the price of natural gas dropped by 75%, with a number of ramifications.

US electricity generation by source (EIA)

The timing of this drop could not have been better in the electricity marketplace where natural gas trailed coal and struggled to top nuclear. Coal plants that had avoided the necessary investments needed to comply with decades' old regulations were reaching the point where they had to upgrade. A large portion of the nuclear fleet was entering the timeframe where they needed to re-permit, and therefore make investments into the facilities. In order to justify these investments, the industry needed certainty about the level of energy prices they would receive. A glut of natural gas in the marketplace changed the economics, and coupled with a new ability for the EPA to regulate carbon emissions and a tragedy in Japan at Fukishima, coal and nuclear plants have started closing. Meanwhile, natural gas plants continue to come online. As a result, the share of electricity generated in the US from coal has dropped from 50% to about 35% over the past 15 years, while natural gas has doubled its position from 15% to 30%. Nuclear, after holding steady for the better part of the last two decades has started to decline.

Meanwhile, the US energy consumption per capita - which sits at twice that of nearly all of the developed world - that saw a significant downtick when the Great Recession hit in 2008, has now started to rebound. Instead of taking advantage of ridiculously low rates of borrowing to establish a solid foundation of low energy use on which we could rebuild our economy, we as a nation chose to cut back on investment and instead, put our stock in a hope that for the next two decades, prices for energy would remain low. Science and economics tell us that we are in for a rude awakening.

The fracking industry has sold the US that we have a large amount of extractable resource sitting under the US, that we can sustain this production for decades to come, and that natural gas does not harm the environment anywhere near as much as coal. All of these claims are starting to unravel. A recent EIA report drastically dropped the projected resources available in the Monterey shale deposit by 96%. Although directly related to the oil from fracking and not natural gas, this calls into question the estimates of economically attainable resources in other shale deposits. Along those lines, for the better part of the last five years, the industry itself has questioned the long-term economic viability of fracking. Fracking wells drop off production significantly in just two years, necessitating that industry build more and more wells to justify pipeline development and meet production goals. Meanwhile, the mantle of environmental benign-ness that the fracking industry touted against a small number of detractors ten years ago has crumbled as more and more research suggests that the environmental benefits lag while more and more issues result from the whole process of extracting fossil fuels from rock formations.

In order for the industry to continue its current rate of market penetration, it must continue the myth of environmental benefit, invest in more and more wells to get that boon of production from the first year, and build more infrastructure around natural gas so that high enough demand exists when prices will inevitably go up. That is the scheme on which investors have been sold in order to make it work: Keep investing in new wells now, even though they will not produce, because we can keep America hooked on gas. 

The problem is, it's a lose-lose for the country.

If prices do not go up, then investors will lose money and back out in droves, drastically cutting supply and increasing the cost to the average American. If natural gas gains market dominance, then prices will do up to compete with larger profits to be gained from exports, and increase the cost to the average American.

The window is closing. Our last great hope is to reduce our dependence on all forms of energy, but especially fossil fuels, and increase the penetration of renewable energy into our electricity market. If we do that, we drop demand drastically, and introduce energy sources with much lower operating costs into the marketplace. These create downward pressure on prices, and provide us a measure of resiliency against future prices shocks.

If we do not make the necessary changes...well, we all know what happens to the people left standing when the pyramid scheme collapses.

Friday Five: July 18, 2014

This week has seen a great number of stories about increased numbers of earthquakes, water shortages, and fracking chemical disclosure. With my birthday coming up, I am using my author's prerogative to focus on the positive and forward-thinking...it also helps that almost every one of these supports statements I have been making for several years now.

We start with the electric car revolution, and how it will not only change transportation, but also the ways we produce and use power at home. Combined with smart-grid communications technology, it will also change the way grid operators manage distributed resources. We have heard so much about the cost of battery storage for solar, and assumed it had to be a stand-alone battery system in the basement. What if the battery is sitting in your driveway surrounded by soft, bucket seats and an eight-CD sound system?
Electric cars will change the way you power your home
"The most striking data was from EV owners who also had solar panels. From 7 a.m. to midnight, they used about one-fourth as much power from the grid as the typical household, because they were getting power from their rooftops and often selling power back to the grid. In other words, they took very little from the grid when demand was high — at times even helping to increase supply — and took much more from the grid when demand was low. They helped smooth out demand."

Of course, in the future I see, there isn't a car in every driveway...but maybe we can adapt the plan a little bit to store cars around the city so they can balance out the grid and provide the same benefit as if they were parked right outside ones house.
Helsinki's ambitious plan to make car ownership pointless in 10 years
"Subscribers would specify an origin and a destination, and perhaps a few preferences. The app would then function as both journey planner and universal payment platform, knitting everything from driverless cars and nimble little buses to shared bikes and ferries into a single, supple mesh of mobility. Imagine the popular transit planner Citymapper fused to a cycle hire service and a taxi app such as Hailo or Uber, with only one payment required, and the whole thing run as a public utility, and you begin to understand the scale of ambition here."

Creating a space like this, powered by low-to-no cost renewable energy, with ubiquitous, low-cost public transportation, and full of the culture and activity that urban areas provide...it might just bring back a whole host of cities that we had left for dead.
What's the key to turning around Rust Belt cities?
"Some cities effectively prepared for this change, Piiparinen said. Pittsburgh’s educational institutions, for example, produced developers with strong tech skills who could create start-ups in Pittsburgh, especially in the areas of robotics. Buffalo just completed a clinical sciences building, part of $4.4 billion of medicine-related development announced in 2012. Cleveland’s new strengths are rooted in medical device companies, largely because of the Cleveland Clinic, which started doing heart research and married manufacturing and health sciences."

We can even look past carbon to other destructive forms of energy extraction, and if we trust our ingenuity, we can make sure that when we use energy to improve our quality of life, we do not threaten anyone's life or quality of life in the process.
As more nuclear plants shut down can distributed energy fill the gap?
"In the last couple of years, five nuclear power plants in the U.S. have been put on the list for closure. These plants are getting challenged from two sides: competitive natural gas and renewables are eroding the economics of merchant projects, while technical challenges associated with age are making the plants more expensive to operate. In this week's show, we'll look at whether renewables and efficiency are capable of filling the gap left by retired nuclear plants, including the SONGS plant in southern California."

As I predicted, utilities are at the crossroads: either get behind distributed renewables and energy efficiency, or go down fighting - but you will go down. We are already seeing that play out. We cannot life in a country based upon liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then tell someone they have to support a monopolistic business enterprise if it does not make sense to them. Those enterprises do not have to exist in that fashion...and the successful ones are already changing their business model willingly.
Green Mountain is a perfect example of how utilities can embrace distributed renewables
"Enter, Green Mountain Power, the leading electricity provider in the state of Vermont. Rather than simply working against the (likely inevitable) spread of distributed generation, the utility has been transforming itself a company with a business model that puts renewable energy and distributed generation at its core."
In Iowa, solar is fighting back against utilities, and winning
"IPL, the local utility, noticed the solar panels going up, and promptly complained to the Dubuque City Council. The local utility board agreed with IPL in March 2012, but Eagle Point appealed, and in April of last year, the Polk County District Court overturned the utility board’s decision, partly because, as the ruling put it, “The customer will still be connected to the grid, will still be an IPL customer, and must continue to purchase energy and capacity from IPL. Eagle Point is neither attempting to replace or sever the link between IPL and the city. it is simply allowing the city to decrease its demand for electricity from the grid.” In other words, the solar panels weren’t any more illegal than an energy-efficient appliance would be."

Happy Friday!

Friday Five: June 6, 2014

On the quality of life front, there was only one main story this week, and everyone has a different take on it.Some think that it merely codifies the direction the economy is already heading.
Hopes for impact of carbon rules in US are modest
"'I don’t think it’s a revolution because our carbon emissions are already going down because of cheap natural gas,' said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a consultancy. 'It’s not Obama’s war on coal. It’s reality’s war on coal. Natural gas turns out to be better than coal in the marketplace.'"

Some – especially those in the fossil fuel industry – think it will increase the cost of electricity and could eliminate more jobs than it saves.
5 things to know about emissions caps
"As more wind turbines and solar panels are installed, jobs in fabrication, construction and sales will shift there. Ditto for new natural-gas-fired power plants, which could lead to more drilling jobs in gas-rich states from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania."

Others, even those who have railed against environmental protections in the past, understand that when taken in total, the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Obama acts to curb carbon
"The apocalyptic predictions have been made before, without coming true. In 1990, when Congress approved new measures to reduce acid rain, critics said they would cause electricity rates to climb without doing any environmental good. (I was one of them.) Some anticipated a 'clean air recession'.
In fact, electricity rates have declined in inflation-adjusted terms since the restrictions were adopted, and the favorable results — including lives saved — have been far greater than expected. The economy boomed in the 1990s. A 2003 report by the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget found that the benefits of these and related air pollution rules were at least 11 times more than the costs."

And some see how the effects of carbon pollution go beyond economics, human health, or even the availability of energy…down to the issues of basic human and civil rights.
Climate change is a civil rights issue
"These vulnerable children end up missing more school because the air they breathe makes them sick. Their parents miss work they can’t afford to lose.
Utility companies have kept these plants running decades longer than they were designed to last because air pollution laws had loopholes that made it cheaper to keep old plants going than to replace them with newer, cleaner power plants. Profits were more important than people."

Meanwhile, others want you to know how far you could reduce the impact your lifestyle has on the quality of life of others.
Tiny-home-in-a-box will turn 200 sq. ft. into a sophisticated dining room AND trashy nightclub
"The CityHome was designed to be an all-in-one furniture module for tiny spaces: It can transform a room from a bedroom to an office to a kitchen, for example, with a literal wave of the hand. This is the future!"

Happy Friday!

JIM URQUHART / REUTERS

A time to start repairing

I recently read the thoughtful and inspiring piece that Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in the Atlantic regarding his reversal on the concept of reparations for the African-American community.  Although I agree wholeheartedly with his arguments in that article and a subsequent defense, I write not to argue the merits of the case, but rather to offer a potential piece of the solution.  As Coates' article points out, governments and pillagers used housing as a way to extract wealth from the African-American community throughout most of the 20th century.  In order to begin to recognize this harm and make amends, I propose that we truly make the cost of living easier for those due these reparations...

Pay their energy bill for the duration of their time in the building.

The most optimal form this would take would include permanent installations of renewable energy systems and energy efficiency technology.  Although we can easily set up a trust from which regular distributions would pay for energy bills, we would soon find it much more lucrative to use the fund to invest in eliminating (or nearly eliminating) the energy bill altogether.  This would have three primary benefits to the African-American community:

First, it would provide relief to the resident.  For homeowners, it would immediately reduce the cost of ownership, freeing up resources to ease the cost of living and to allow for savings and future investment.  For renters, as long as the process included the proper oversight, it would mean immediate relief in out of pocket expenses.

Second, it would create value in the community.  Buildings that use little energy and have renewable energy improvements have greater value than those without.  In addition, extending the opportunity to all black-owned buildings would incentivize the movement of capital to black-owned buildings.  This could provide an opportunity for some communities to fight off gentrification by encouraging black investors to take advantage of the opportunities in real estate.  When selling these buildings, those black owners can receive a greater return, and use the marketplace to their financial benefit.

Third, it would provide several ancillary opportunities to increase capital flows into the black community.  Fearing the inefficiency of governmental program management, the funds that provide the capital for this program would best use community cooperatives to manage the development of energy assets.  The community would then set the parameters for which technologies get adopted, who performs the work, and how the profits get invested and dividends get distributed.  These cooperatives can make sure that local contractors and businesses get the opportunity to do the work, that local community members get the opportunity to invest, and that capital flows to manufacturing jobs that maximize the return to those for whom the reparations are intended.

We have debated the case for reparations for over a century, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.  In the meanwhile, we have the opportunity to start recognizing that we as a country have taken wealth from one race to the benefit of others.  This is not a chance occurrence, but one specifically executed by our society for hundreds of years.  Investing in the clean energy and energy efficiency can improve quality of life, and in this case, can begin to heal the wounds that 300 years of racism have inflicted.  More importantly, it respects those who receive the benefit, because it trusts them to turn the investment into permanent wealth.  Lastly, it provides the tools to end the erosion of communities so that we might finally deliver on the promise that all are created equal.