While many of you are enjoying the last precious days of your summer vacation and area children prepare for the upcoming school year, here at Clean Currents we're busy gearing up for the next round of the Green Neighborhood Challenge (GNEC), which officially begins on October 1st.  

Armed with a new and improved program structure, new website, new promotional materials, new video, and a new staff member to lead the program, we are more excited than ever to help build more sustainable communities in the Mid-Atlantic through our hallmark community engagement program!

Earn Green for Going Green!

Through the Green Neighborhood Challenge, communities and non-profit organizations can earn money to fund their environmental initiatives.  For every household that signs up for Clean Currents wind power or solar power, Clean Currents makes a donation back to that community group or non-profit.  

Clean Currents provides all participating GNEC groups with promotional materials and works closely with each group's leader to spread the word about making the switch to clean energy and living more sustainably.  You can learn more about GNEC HERE.

New and Improved GNEC

We have a new and improved program structure for GNEC this year, which will demand less overall work from our community leaders and allow the Clean Currents team to give more individual attention and support to each participating group!  Each participating group will choose a 60-day period within the year to run their GNEC campaign.  This 60 day period could be at a time when a group is particularly active, has other activities planned through which they can promote clean energy, or it could lead up to a time when a group is hoping to have enough money raised to start a green project in their community.

Clean Currents staff will work closely with each group leader during their 60 day campaign to support their efforts with one-on-one meetings, promotional materials, a presentation in their community, and support in designing a community workshop on environmental stewardship.

Groups will now receive a $30 donation per residential wind power enrollment if they meet the goal of 15 enrollments over the 60 day period.  Additionally, groups will not have to wait for their donations, since they will be awarded directly after the culmination of their 60 day campaign.  Clean Currents will honor all wind power enrollments outside of the 60 days with a $15 donation that will be awarded around Earth Day 2013.  Also new this year, we will be awarding a $200 donation to participating groups for every home that goes solar through our new Solar PPA or Solar Thermal programs.  To learn more about the new structure for the GNEC program, visit our WEBSITE.

Educate, Activate, Inspire!

We are going to kick off this year’s Green Neighborhood Challenge with a training workshop for community leaders, where they will become their neighborhood expert on clean energy and learn new and innovative ways to engage their communities in becoming more sustainable.

When:  Saturday, September 8th from 2pm – 5pm
Where:  The Old Parish House at 4711 Knox Road College Park, MD 20740 (walking distance from the College Park metro station)

If you are interested in getting your neighborhood, school, faith-based community, or non-profit involved, RSVP HERE or contact Emily Conrad at econrad@cleancurrents.com.

Seasoned Champions and New Players

In the past, a diverse number of groups led by enthusiastic and dedicated individuals have made large strides in their communities’ greening efforts through GNEC. 

Since the beginning of the GNEC program in 2009, Greener in Greenbelt has taken the overall Gold Medal with 344 total wind power enrollments, earning their community nearly $4000 in donations!  Thanks to the dedication of Greener in Greenbelt's leaders (Lore Rosenthal, Michael Hartman, John Lippert and Jane Young, and Luisa Robles), the group has been able to consistently encourage its community members to switch to wind power at home and adopt more sustainable lifestyle choices.  Greener in Greenbelt's leaders are also helping Greenbelt become an EPA Green Power Community, which requires at least 3% of the power their community uses to be from green energy sources.  The community has allocated their donations to support the Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society (CHEARS), which hosts green living festivals, plants suburban permaculture gardens, and provides a forum for environmental education through research, literature, and the arts.  An effective tactic that Greener in Greenbelt used was including information about the GNEC program and the benefits of signing up for wind power at home in welcome letters that were sent out to new residents of the neighborhood.

But this year, Greener in Greenbelt was challenged for its Gold Medal by the Friends of Fillmore, who directed the money they raised towards environmentally friendly arts supplies for children in low-income communities.

We are looking forward to supporting new participating groups in this year’s GNEC, especially from the Baltimore and Annapolis areas, along with an increased representation from Prince Georges’ and Howard counties!

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It seems as though we were just planning our Memorial Day getaways, but alas, the end of summer is nigh -- and as we sail into summer's sunset, let's take a look at what's occured during the past few months ...

On all counts, the summer of 2012 was the hottest on record, setting new high temperature benchmarks across the country, exacerbating one of the worst wildfire seasons in history, and causing the worst drought in the United States since that of the mid 1930's dust bowl.  In fact, the full economic consequences of this summer's drought have not yet hit, as experts are predicting prices for grains--and in turn, prices for meat--to soar as farmers prepare for record low harvests.

It was also a cruel (cruel) summer for the globe's usually ice-clad regions.  Climatologists are expecting a record low for Arctic sea ice this season, beating even the most aggresive warming trends and forecasts. 

However, there have also been some notable highlights for the environment and renewable energy.  Installed wind power capacity in the United States surpassed 50 gigawatts, or enough to power 13 million homes.  And although it has not cleared all congressional hurdles, the Senate Finance committee included a one-year extension of the Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) to a broad tax credit extension bill.  We already wrote about the importance of extending the PTC for the future of the domestic wind power industry and the thousands of jobs it supports.      

But the fight for a greener, more vibrant, and healthier future is not over.  As the election season heats up, energy policy will continue to be a hot button issue, so we encourage you to read up on Governor Romney's and President Obama's respective stances on energy so that you can make the most informed decision come November 6.

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Clean Currents is happy to present our August Customer of the Month: Charlie Garlow.

Charlie lives in the Woodmoor Neighborhood in Silver Spring, MD.  He is a lawyer and co-owner of The Green Commuter bike shop located in Takoma Park.

When asked what his favorite Clean Currents wind powered business was, he couldn't help but say his own, The Green Commuter, which sells standard and electrically powered bicycles.

Charlie was selected the our August Customer of the Month because of his commitment to minimizing his impact on the environment and spreading knowledge and information on sustainability to others.

Perhaps most notably, as you can see in the picture, Charlie is a bit of an electric vehicle enthusiast.  He owns and drives an electric car that even has solar panels attached to its roof, an electric motorcycle (pictured), and an electric bicycle.  He can also be found puttering around on his unicycle (although it's powered by his own legs and not electricity).  

Charlie will be will be riding his electric motorcycle cross country to promote renewable energy and electric vehicles.  The ride, called Fun Run in the Sun, is a project of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington, DC, of which Charlie is the President.

Charlie also serves on the board of CCAN, helps to organize DC's annual tour of solar homes, helps his neighborhood of Woodmoor participate in Clean Current’s Green Neighborhood Challenge, and as a board member of the YMCA of Silver Spring, is pushing to get solar panels and a solar thermal system installed on the property to help power the building and heat the complex's pool.

Clean Currents salutes Charlie's dedication to green energy and sustainable choices.  If you're interested in being spotlighted in a future "customer of the month" spot, please contact us.

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We're entering the final stretch of Presidential campaigning and energy is one of the top issues that continue to be brought up by both President Obama and Governor Romney.  Both men have reiterated their support of "homegrown" sources of energy in order to provide greater energy security for the country, but differences arise when it comes to their overall energy policies.

To cut through the cable news punditry that's proliferating on the subject of each's energy policy, here's a quick reference guide:

Governor Romney

Mitt Romney's proposed energy policy focuses on decreasing environmental regulation of energy while increasing production of domestic carbon-based energy resources in the hopes of creating jobs and bolstering the economy with lower prices for energy.    

Specific points of his plan include "amending the Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview" – meaning there would be no government attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants in a Romney administration. When Mr. Romney was governor of Massachusetts, however, he did sign on to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a pact among east coast states (including Maryland) to reduce greenhouse gases from power plants. Other points of Romney's plan include "preventing overregulation of shale gas development and extraction" and "opening America’s energy reserves for development".  Romney has also weighed in on the renewable energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), saying he would end the credit.

Shale gas development, otherwise known as "fracking" is an especially hot button issue in our region, due to the Marcellus Shale formation in the Mid-Atlantic.  Numerous studies have shown that natural gas fracking can be quite harmful and dangerous to the surrounding environment, including contamination of aquifers and the release of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas - not to mention the devestation to property values after entering fracking leases. This is an issue that deserves more study.  

President Obama

President Obama coined the "all of the above" term earlier this year in his State of the Union address when he said "We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy."  Some concerned citizens criticize the President for seeming to support increased use of fossil fuels in power plants when he ran on a platform that was very "green energy heavy".  But his energy policy does pay specific attention to expanding clean energy resources as well as improving energy efficiency in our transport network and infrastructure.  

President Obama was in Iowa this week stumping for domestic wind power, citing the Department of Energy's recently released 2011 Wind Technologies Market Report.  According to the report, domestic wind power accounted for 32 percent of all new electric capacity added to the U.S. grid last year while generating thousands of jobs.  The report also found that over 70 percent of equipment installed at U.S. wind farms came from U.S. manufacturers, including the turbines and supporting towers, blades, gears, and generators.  This has helped to create the roughly 75,000 wind related jobs (which coincidentally is about the same size as the domestic coal industry) in the country, spurring a growing domestic industrial base.   

Those who oppose the PTC argue that it has not led to real job growth or significant energy production.  However, facts seem to refute his stance.  In addition to creating thousands of new jobs, technological improvements to wind turbines that have yielded larger turbines and lighter blades have caused the price of wind power to drop precipitously in just the past few years.  According to the Department of Energy, the price of power from new wind projects that came online in 2011 averaged about 40 percent less than in 2010 and 50 percent less than in 2009.  Domestic wind power production also just hit the symbolic 50 gigawatt capacity last week - or enough to power 13 million homes. 

Neither candidate seems focused on the billions that the much larger (and much richer) fossil fuel industry receives in tax credits and rebates from the Federal government every year.  Also, neither candidate seems willing to tell Americans the hard truth – that our dependence on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change. The drought in the middle of the country is showing us the economic and human devastation we face if we do not address climate change seriously.     

Energy literally powers our daily lives and has outsize effect on the health of the economy so it deserves to be top of mind when considering whom to support in the upcoming election. 

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