Local governments can go solar together. That’s what we are trying to do here in the middle of Pennsylvania. It’s environmentally sound and makes sound financial sense. It’s just common sense at this point.
A couple of years ago Penn State (where I work but don’t speak for) received an unsolicited bid for a solar power purchase agreement (PPA). The size of the project would meet our stated climate goals and the price was low enough that it raised our eyebrows. Was it too good to be true?
Penn State put out its feelers and learned that solar projects across the PJM grid, including Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania were big enough and low-cost enough that they could break even or beat the cheap and heavy fossil and nuclear grid here in central Pennsylvania. A year later, Penn State (a notably risk-averse institution in my opinion) signed a 25-year solar PPA with Lightsource BP for 70 MW of solar power. As part of the team that worked on that inside Penn State, I wanted to transfer what I’d learned elsewhere.
In 2017, Ferguson Township adopted a Net Zero Climate Change Resolution. I was then vice-chair. Our board, driven in part by citizens concerned about President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, decided to act. It’s clear to us that climate change presents a threat to people here in Pennsylvania and around the world. It’s not for nothing that the US Department of Defense has called climate change a “threat multiplier,” the World Economic Forum has rated inaction on climate change as one of the most impactful and likely risks to the global economy for the last three years, and Federal Reserve Researchers this week have stated that climate change could well lead to “larger and more frequent macroeconomic shocks.” Only people who are paid to disbelieve this or are lost in a media-induced partisan hallucination deny this. Reality is here.
Ferguson Township resolved to face reality. We have started with an inventory of our greenhouse gas emissions and are moving ahead to formulate a plan for how we can draw down those emissions. The plan has to be fair, transparent, and economically feasible and we have to cooperate with other governments, businesses, and institutions to get it done. Where are those opportunities?
To start, every level of government has facilities and every government purchases electricity. One municipality like Ferguson Township doesn’t buy that much. But what if you pool municipalities with bigger energy users like a water authority with all of their pumps and a school district with all of their buildings or a county government with multiple facilities? In the Centre Region, we could create a regional intergovernmental solar power purchase agreement. Instead of a million kilowatt/hours we would have 30 or 35 million kilowatt hours (kWh). And just like with insurance where you pool risks to get costs down, a pooled purchase gets costs down and creates common will to meet environmental goals.
Before continuing, I’ll say I’m not an energy consultant or a climate scientist. But I watch the industry and have the good fortune to work alongside consultants, solar energy developers, and elite faculty at Penn State working on solar. I’ve also watched solar knock the pants off of the International Energy Association’s predictions for years and seen 10% growth in the solar industry in Pennsylvania last year. I can count at least nine Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contributors among my colleague including several coordinating authors. Whatever grains of salt you need, take them.
Solar energy produces no greenhouse gases. That’s why Project Drawdown rates solar farms as the #8 best climate solution were they to be deployed at scale. My rough estimates for our regional PPA show that we would stop 20,000 or so tons of CO2 a year from ever entering the atmosphere and further warming the planet. That’s like removing 4,500 cars from the road or planting about 350,000 trees.
Expand that across Pennsylvania, the nation’s second biggest energy exporter and the source of disproportionate share of historical emissions. If the 2,500+ municipal governments, 100s of school districts, and dozens of counties worked in groups like this, we might do the equivalent of removing a million or more cars from the road or planting 100,000,000 trees. The planet, the nation, and the Commonwealth need that. In fact, in Pennsylvania we have a Green Amendment in our state Constitution that makes clean air and water a right. It’s not only a right and the right thing to do. It’s already cheaper.
Right now, most institutions where we live are paying 5.1 cents a kWh for electricity. That’s cheap. But based on experience and my discussions with solar developers and consultants in Pennsylvania, the prices we would get for a solar power purchase agreement would fall between 4 and 4.8 cents kWh. Do the math. At 30 million kw/h the savings among us ranges from $90,000 to $330,000 in the first year.If a $10/ton tax on carbon shows up, we will also avoid $200,000 worth of costs that producers will pass on to consumers. And that price is coming in the not-too-distant future. And if it goes up? For municipal and county governments, school districts, or authorities funded by ratepayers, these numbers matter.
I’m not a starry-eyed pie-in-the-sky dreamer. This is all driven by reality, the reality that climate change is a real and pressing threat, but one that we have the tools at our collective fingertips to avert, to reverse warming, and to make better lives. One of those tools is solar energy. I’m hopeful and cautiously optimistic that what we are starting to do here in central Pennsylvania will make a difference. It’s the first step for us. May many more follow.
Peter Walks for Democracy 