Green Choices Consulting

09/20/2026

Exactly!
Long Island commercial building owners need to get onboard!
LIPA has special programs for you.

America's solar industry has discovered that its largest untapped resource is not land in the desert Southwest but the rooftops of its industrial and commercial buildings — and the Department of Energy's Commercial Solar initiative has identified 1,000 gigawatts of rooftop solar potential on American warehouses, factories, shopping centres, and office buildings that could be deployed at zero land acquisition cost.

The US has approximately 8 billion square metres of commercial and industrial rooftop space — warehouses, distribution centres, factories, retail centres, schools, hospitals, offices, and government buildings — of which less than 5% currently hosts solar installation. The technical potential from this existing rooftop area, assessed by National Renewable Energy Laboratory using satellite roof mapping and irradiance modelling, is 1,000 GW of installed solar capacity — more than triple the current US total solar fleet.

The barrier is not economics. Commercial rooftop solar at current panel prices and US electricity tariff rates achieves payback periods of 5 to 8 years at most US commercial electricity rates, and 3 to 5 years in California, Massachusetts, and New York. The barrier is transaction cost: the legal, structural engineering, permitting, and financing complexity of rooftop solar on a building with a commercial mortgage, a commercial lease, and a utility interconnection application creates soft costs of USD 0.80 to USD 1.20 per watt — as much as the panel hardware itself.

The Inflation Reduction Act's direct pay provision — allowing tax-exempt entities including government, non-profit, and cooperative organisations to receive ITC equivalent cash payments directly — has eliminated the tax equity financing complexity for 40% of commercial rooftop potential.

America's factories have the best rooftops. They just haven't used them yet.

Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) & US Department of Energy, Commercial Rooftop Solar National Assessment 2024

09/20/2026

Leasing your farmland to a solar company can provide extra revenue that helps you keep your farmland!

Solar panels on farmland do not necessarily take the land out of production.

The dung from cattle and sheep fertilizes the soil. The panels provide shade for the animals.

Crops grown in solar fields can provide a greater yield.

And, perhaps, solar in vineyards can modulate the temperature and provide heat when the temperature drops overnight. Currently, vineyards in Napa use fan heaters.

09/20/2026

Another great idea.
Let’s use the wind that vehicles generate to power our grid!

🇪🇸 Spain is turning the wind created by passing cars into electricity.

Spanish highways are being explored as more than just transportation routes. A pilot project near Madrid reportedly tested bladeless vortex turbines installed beside a busy road, designed to capture the turbulent air produced when vehicles pass at high speed.

Instead of using large rotating blades, these slender cylindrical devices oscillate when exposed to airflow. Their movement is then converted into electrical energy through electromagnetic induction, creating a compact system that can operate close to existing infrastructure.

The electricity generated could potentially support low-power applications such as highway lighting, road signs, sensors, and emergency communication equipment. While the output from each unit is relatively small, multiple turbines working together could provide useful distributed power in suitable locations.

One advantage of this concept is its compact design. Bladeless turbines can require less space and fewer mechanical components than conventional wind turbines. They may also be suitable for locations where large rotating blades would be impractical, including roadsides, railway corridors, airport areas, bridges, and industrial zones.

However, the technology still faces important challenges. Its performance depends on traffic volume, vehicle speed, airflow patterns, weather conditions, maintenance requirements, and installation costs. Researchers must determine whether the electricity produced can justify the expense of deploying and maintaining large arrays.

The bigger idea is what makes this technology interesting: infrastructure could potentially serve two purposes at once. Highways would continue moving people and goods while also capturing small amounts of otherwise wasted energy from traffic-generated wind.

09/20/2026

Bravo UK!
As close as they are to other countries, those offshore wind farms are safe!

Britain's coastline has become one of the most productive clean energy zones on the planet.

The United Kingdom has built an offshore wind industry that stands as one of the most developed in the world. With some of the strongest and most consistent wind resources in the North Sea, Irish Sea, and off the Scottish coast, the UK has systematically expanded offshore capacity over two decades of sustained investment and policy support. Today, UK offshore wind capacity exceeds 14 gigawatts, with massive projects like Hornsea One and Hornsea Two — among the largest offshore wind farms ever constructed — feeding electricity into the national grid and powering millions of British homes.

The economics of UK offshore wind have shifted dramatically. Early offshore projects required substantial government subsidies through Contracts for Difference auctions. As technology matured, turbine sizes grew, installation techniques improved, and supply chains deepened, costs plummeted. Recent auction rounds have seen offshore wind bid at prices competitive with new gas generation, without subsidy. The industry is now a major employer across coastal communities in Yorkshire, Scotland, and the northeast of England, where ports and manufacturing facilities support the construction and maintenance of offshore turbines.

The UK's next phase of offshore wind development involves even larger projects in deeper waters, requiring floating wind platforms rather than seabed-fixed foundations. Scotland's waters are particularly suited to floating wind, and early pilot projects are demonstrating the technology's viability. The government has set ambitious targets to reach 50 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, requiring a sustained build-out pace that the industry is gearing up to meet. Britain's bet on wind power is becoming one of its most successful energy decisions in modern history.

09/06/2026

THIS!

One of Britain’s earliest wind farms has been fully recycled and reused, in a first that could herald the start of a new domestic sustainable energy recycling industry.

Scottish Power said an external review of the decommissioning of old turbines from its Hagshaw Hill wind farm in Scotland showed that less than 0.1 per cent had been sent to landfill.

The breakthrough for the project came after Northern Ireland-based Plaswire pioneered ways of recycling old wind turbine blades, which have historically been hard to dispose of sustainably.

Plaswire’s boss Andrew Billingsley told The Times it was preparing to develop a second recycling facility in Scotland that could create dozens of new jobs, in anticipation of handling increasing volumes of blades as old wind farms come to the end of their life. “We need a lot of investment — we have to grow fast,” he said.

Billingsley said it had finished recycling all the blades earlier this year. Plaswire cuts up the blades within a chamber that contains waste dust, then shreds them down to small pieces less than 1cm in size. These pieces are then processed at high temperature to blend them with recycled soft plastics, such as from food wrappers. The end result is a polymer that is essentially plastic reinforced with fibreglass and can be used to replace timber or concrete, with applications ranging from fenceposts to construction.
The Times
link in comments 👇

08/15/2026

Solar is quick and cheaper to install, and cheaper to operate and maintain.
Renewable adoption is not slowing, even without federal support.

The future of energy is here!⚡ New York is adding more clean energy this year than ever before, setting a new record. Renewable energy projects are some of the fastest to build, bringing reliable, homegrown power online today to meet growing demand. Clean energy is delivering on its promise.

08/10/2026

Locally generated renewable energy is energy independence! And energy security!

One of the most common criticisms I hear about solar is that it's "foreign-owned" or "made in China."

Fair concerns to raise. But what I don't understand is why they almost always stop at solar, not just to build the infrastructure, but to keep it operating.

Take nuclear power. In 2024, only about 8% of the uranium delivered to U.S. reactors came from domestic sources. The remaining 92% was imported, primarily from Canada (36%), Kazakhstan (24%), Australia (17%), Uzbekistan (9%), Namibia (4%), and Russia (4%). Even beyond mining, uranium must be converted, enriched, fabricated into fuel, and transported through an international supply chain.

Solar is no different. China has become the world's dominant manufacturer of solar cells and modules, although U.S. manufacturing capacity has expanded rapidly over the past several years. The industry still depends on a global supply chain for silicon, wafers, cells, glass, aluminum, electronics, and other components.

Then there are fossil fuels. People often think of oil, coal, and natural gas as purely American because we produce so much of them domestically.

But unlike a solar panel or wind turbine, fossil fuels require continuous extraction.

Every single day.

That requires steel for drilling rigs, pipe, compressors, turbines, pumps, valves, electrical equipment, control systems, specialized drilling tools, refineries, LNG terminals, shipping, tankers, and other international commodity markets.

Even when the fuel itself is produced in the United States (which is certainly not always the case, either), the equipment, replacement parts, industrial minerals, electronics, and manufacturing that keep the system running are deeply tied to global supply chains.

And when domestic production can't meet demand, or when markets shift, the United States imports millions of barrels of crude oil and petroleum products from around the world. Energy has always been an international business.

None of this is an endorsement of the status quo.

In fact, I think it’s an argument for investing more heavily in American production across the board.

That means strengthening domestic manufacturing for energy infrastructure. It means responsibly developing American supply chains where it makes sense. And it also means recognizing that responsible agrivoltaics can strengthen another form of national security: our food supply.

One of the overlooked benefits of colocation is that it allows farmland to continue producing food while also producing electricity. Sheep continue grazing. Cattle can graze. Pollinator habitat supports nearby crops. And don’t forget about fruit, vegetables, and yes - row crops. If done thoughtfully, agrivoltaics doesn't have to replace American agriculture. It can help keep farms in business and domestic food production on the landscape.

To me, that's a much more productive conversation than pretending we have to choose between food security and energy security. We should be pursuing both.

But if foreign involvement only becomes a concern when we're talking about solar (and not imported uranium, globally manufactured gas turbines, Chinese rare-earth processing, internationally sourced electronics, or the global supply chains that support fossil fuels), then we're not really having a conversation about foreign dependence.

We're having a conversation about one technology while giving every other technology a pass.

If the goal is greater American energy independence, stronger domestic manufacturing, and a more resilient food system, you'll find me in that conversation every time.

But let's be honest about the fact that every energy source depends on the rest of the world in one way or another. The question isn't whether foreign involvement exists. It's where we want to reduce it, and how we're going to do it.

07/15/2026

Cooling towers have been found to be a major source of Legionnaires disease. Droplets from the contaminated water on rooftop cooling towers fall down and infect people.

Geothermal heat pumps make cooling towers obsolete. They’re also way more efficient than conventional a/c and thus cost less to run and to maintain.

Go Geo!

07/13/2026

The “What about China” argument for doing just a little is falling apart.

China is aiming for half of its electricity to come from non-fossil sources by 2030, up from a 42.3% target for 2025, in a new five-year plan ​for the energy sector.

07/11/2026

Just imagine how much we could generate with many more wind farms!

A win for wind!

South Fork Wind delivered nearly 10 gigawatt-hours of electricity to Long Island’s grid across the July 4th long weekend, providing New Yorkers with reliable, locally generated energy during peak-demand windows.