Author Archives: Andie Migden

President Trump has been a long-time climate change denier. We know this from his rants during his campaign, his tweets —his most famous being that the global climate change is just a “Chinese hoax”—, and from Trump’s writings in his book titled Crippled America. I’m glad our President has the environmental knowhow to make an anti-climate change claim with such certainty! Not to mention, according to The Express Tribune, China is becoming world leader in clean energy investments. One would expect a businessman like Donald Trump to strive to be a leader in our future energy economy. Instead, he wants to invest in the dying coal industry. Contrary to popular belief, coal is not seeing its demise due to environmental policy, but rather due to the growth of the natural gas industry.

Anyway, what does this mean for solar and other climate change policies?

Although President Trump’s new budget has cut the EPA’s budget by an unprecedented 31% and eliminated the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), state governments are still holding true to their commitment to clean energy. Environmental responsibility is now reallocated to the states, and it will be the accumulation of our local governments to uphold their advancement towards a low-carbon future. States and cities are big players in curbing climate change and control a majority of the legal and policy power regarding these efforts. For example, the state public utility commissions regulate investor-owned electric utilities, state legislatures set up portfolio standards, and they decide on building codes. Below are some examples of policies that are expected to thrive and survive under the Trump Administration.

1. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI: This is a cap-and-trade policy that limits the amount of CO₂ emissions in nine of its member states. This cooperative effort includes Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The RGGI CO₂ cap declines 2.5 percent each year from 2015 to 2020.

2. Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards (RPS): 29 states have RPS which requires utilities to sell a specified percentage or specific amount of renewable electricity. Iowa was the first state to implement an RPS in 1983 and Hawaii has the most aggressive at 100% renewables by 2045. These policies support the renewable energy market and help diversity the overall energy mix. States with no standard or target goal include many in the southeast region.

3. Net Metering Policies: 44 States have net metering policies, which financially incentivizes the switch to renewable energy. These types of policies allow distributed generation customers to sell excess electricity to a utility at a retail rate and receive credit on their utility bill. In New York, for example, people who have residential-scale solar installed will have their excess energy stored in a bank credit system. People can pull from that system throughout the subsequent months if needed. At the end of the year, if there is leftover net excess generation (NEG), their utility will pay their customer according to the amount that is leftover.

4. La Plata Electric Association’s (LPEA) Renewable Energy Credit in Colorado: The accumulation of small policies like these can go a long way! This policy applies to solar photovoltaics, wind, and hydroelectric and is scalable to include commercial, residential, industrial, and federal sectors. For residential, the incentive is $16/kW for a maximum system size of 10 kW. Basically, customers of LPEA who have a solar array will be paid $16/kW of excess electricity generated by their system.

5. What will happen to North Carolina’s Investment Tax Credit?: Homeowners in North Carolina who install a solar system on their home are eligible for a 30 percent dollar-for-dollar tax credit up until 2019. This program is designed to gradually decrease credits from 2019 to 2022. The credit applies to technologies such as PV, solar water heating, wind and others until 2019, when it will then gradually decrease to 10%.

Although the Trump Administration is actively trying to rip apart the strides made towards clean energy, the accumulation of states still hold the power to curb climate change. Furthermore, there isn’t a question of whether or not renewables will take a stronger hold in our energy market, but rather a question of when. In addition to environmental gains, switching over to renewables will be smarter economically, is better for energy security, and we will allow us to be less dependent on foreign oil.

The move to green energy seems like the smart move to me.

Article By: Andie Migden

My journey with United Solar Initiative began in January of 2015 when Alex Wilhelm, founder and co-president of USI, and Charlie Egan, project development coordinator of USI, gave a presentation to my class about what USI is. They spoke about the non-profit’s plan to help replace dangerous kerosene lamps used in remote communities in Nicaragua with a cleaner solution: solar energy. They passed a piece of paper around the room and asked students to provide their names and email addresses if they wanted to become part of the team. United Solar Initiative’s mission, as well as Charlie and Alex’s passion and dedication to USI, were more than enough to make me and about eight other students want to join USI as its first wave of UNC volunteers!

In our first meeting, I learned that the non-profit was still in its infancy and had tremendous momentum and potential for future growth. Its leadership consisted of students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Appalachian State University, and other professionals of various backgrounds. By that time, USI had already completed four successful solar installations with support from Strata Solar, LLC., Sisterhood Communities of San Ramon, and Appalachian State’s Department of Technology and Environmental Design. The new team and I were given more background on how USI got started, what its mission is, and how important our help was to them. The story went something like this:

United Solar Initiative began in early 2013 with only three volunteers. Alex Wilhelm, Steven Thomsen, and Ed Witkin used their knowledge about the harmful effects of kerosene lamps, their awareness about the problems that developing communities faced without access to electricity, and their passion to find a solution in order to create USI’s mission.

Co-founder Steven Thomsen and Project Development Coordinator Charlie Egan stand in front of USI’s first completed project on a primary school in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

United Solar Initiative concentrated its first efforts on a project in a remote village in Nicaragua and successfully installed a small-scale solar panel system on a school. Installing the system made the volunteers realize that they were resolving a bigger issue than just eliminating the need to use dangerous kerosene lamps.  Solar not only gave this community electricity for the first time, but it also connected them to the world for the first time. Now that the school had electricity, it closed education gaps for children, it allowed for phones to be charged, and it allowed for job trainings to be held once the sun went down.

All smiles here: The students at Verapaz Primary School in Verapaz, Nicaragua are enjoying their newly-solarized classroom.

We were all captivated by the impact United Solar Initiative had on these communities and by the dedication that the people sitting around us had towards its cause. Our newly expanded team was ambitious from the start. We all focused on different tasks and met weekly to discuss and collaborate new ideas and to set goals for the organization. That summer we concentrated on branding the organization. We built recognition and broadened our audience through revamping our website and being active on our various social media outlets.

During that time, USI expanded to welcome Brandon Durham and Jack Schaufler to its team. With help from its various support groups, United Solar Initiative was able to lead two more projects in remote communities in Nicaragua. USI acted as a supervisor for local companies Suni Solar and SONATI to ensure seamless installation throughout the entire process. USI completed a total of six projects that ranged in size from 240-watt systems to 500-watt systems, depending on the size of the roof and the needs of the community.

Two installers from local company Suni Solar work to set up this 250-watt PV system on a primary school in San Jose, Nicaragua.

Throughout the following year, United Solar Initiative also launched a few new campaigns. The Humans of Solar campaign and the High School Ambassador program. Humans of Solar features business leaders, people in the solar and energy industry, and people who have solar. Every other week, we would post an interview and a photo of our featured Human of Solar. This was a huge success and we reached upwards of 5,000 people! Our High School Ambassador program allowed local high schools to get involved in fundraising for USI and allowed its students to take on leadership roles.

Recently, United Solar Initiative’s new partnership with World Vision opened up the opportunity for solar to help with another important issue: alleviating water poverty. World Vision is the leading nongovernmental provider of clean water. They reach one new person with clean water every 30 seconds. Through our partnership, United Solar Initiative will solarize water pumps by replacing the traditional hand-crank and diesel-powered pumps with solar-powered pumps. The partnership is bringing clean water to communities across Ghana, Africa this summer. Once these efforts are finished, 100 new solarized water pumps will be built and it will give 80,000 people access to clean water. That is something truly remarkable.

This past spring, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to interview William Kamkwamba, author and speaker from Malawi, Africa, who at the age of 14 taught himself how to build the windmill that would power his home. He spoke about the dire need to resolve the issue of water poverty in his community and all over sub-Saharan Africa. Kamkwamba expressed how our efforts with World Vision will save tons of women and children from walking 6 kilometers every day in order to get water. The solar-powered pumps allow women and children to have more free time to either go to school or help out with other daily tasks. Solarizing water pumps, therefore, helps people directly by giving them access to clean water and indirectly by freeing up more time.

William Kamkwamba, the author of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, gladly agreed to be interviewed for our Lug-a-Jug promotional video and explained the importance of alleviating water poverty.

My co-volunteers and I are forever proud to be a part of an organization that gives so much and works so hard to make sure that everything is done in the right way. Now with new co-presidents Lydia Odom and Shep Byles, I look forward to seeing where USI is headed. United Solar Initiative strives to make it known that issues of energy and water poverty are becoming more important to resolve every day. Now that the cost of solar has significantly gone down, there’s no reason why people in underdeveloped and remote communities shouldn’t be connected to the rest of the world. There’s no reason why people in Africa shouldn’t have access to clean water powered by clean energy.  United Solar Initiative aims to alleviate these issues one panel at a time.

Article By: Andie Migden, USI Volunteer

United Solar Initiative could not have found a better fit. When World Vision originally reached out to United Solar Initiative, members of USI knew good things were in store.

World Vision, the largest nonprofit provider of clean water in the world, is making strides to expand its efforts in drinking water provision. The organization recently extended its already bold commitments to provide clean water in the coming years. Currently reaching a new person with water every 30 seconds, by 2020 the organization hopes to provide clean water to a new person every 10 seconds. And by 2030, it plans to provide water to every person in every community that it serves.

For World Vision, an expansion of these efforts means an expansion of its partnerships in order to do its work both more efficiently as well as on a larger scale. That’s where a partnership with USI is brought into the picture.

Over the next several years, United Solar Initiative will solarize 100 World Vision water pump systems in 10 different countries, the majority to be installed in West African countries. The average solar panel system, at 2500 watts, will provide the energy needed to give water access to between 1500 and 3000 people, depending on the community size and pump system type.

Keith Kall, senior director of strategic partnerships with World Vision, spoke to the nature of the relationship.

“Some of these communities where we work are off-grid, or if they are near or on-grid, the grid is really unreliable. So to have a solar company or solar-focused nonprofit is a great partner to be associating with,” he said.

A partnership with an organization like United Solar Initiative helps World Vision to better its potential as a water provider as USI offers solar energy solutions. Kall noted that through such a partnership, where USI provides solar panels and installation expertise, “that really allows us to use the money that we do have to go farther.”

Steven Thomsen, co-founder and vice president of USI, believes that the partnership with World Vision “lets us both play to our strengths.” The partnership “allows us to focus on our core competency,” deploying solar power in developing countries, and allows USI to “start learning about clean water (provision),” he said.

Thomsen attended the World Vision WASH conference, the Water and Sanitation Hygiene community of practice meeting, hosted in Ethiopia in May of 2015. He described that the conference brought together World Vision’s partners, donors, and supporters from across the world in order to plan a scaling up of World Vision’s efforts. He was not only impressed by the organization’s ambitious new goals for 2030, but also the different approaches its partners are taking to aid in solutions to the water crisis, citing new water tablets as well as the creation of a Sesame Street Character that addresses the importance of clean and safe drinking water access.

“There’s so much more to solving (the crisis) than putting in wells,” Thomsen said.

This certainly holds true of Kall’s outlook, who points to water as a key aspect of a country’s development. World Vision’s model in these communities, in most situations, is water pump installations that are paralleled by providing other development efforts — education, economic development, and health programs. While this model looks different for every community, he notes that “everything is in fact predicated on water.”

Without the water that these communities need, Kall explained that underperformance becomes a reoccurring motif in terms of meeting economic development, education, and health goals. When women and children have to spend time each day walking for drinking water, “a large part of your population (is) not engaged in economic development work… and a lot of young children don’t go to school,” he said.

“Eighty percent of diseases are water-related in the developing world, so any type of health interventions will underperform as well without access to clean drinking water,” he said.

It is Kall’s personal belief that these “interventions are accelerated once clean drinking water is available.”

This water crisis is an issue United Solar Initiative originally came into contact with when completing its first projects in San Ramone, Nicaragua in the summer of 2014. Thomsen recalled his experiences there.

“We asked the community members, ‘What are the biggest needs you see on a daily basis?’ One of their first responses was, ‘We need access to clean water.’ So we thought, okay, how can we use electricity to help bring clean water to people?” he said.

USI had been hoping to address the water crisis issue since this encounter but was unsure how to overcome the barriers put in place by the complexity of the water pump installation process. This question was answered by the offer extended by World Vision — a perfect way for USI to create this shift in its approach.

“Ultimately our goal is to provide electricity to people living without it, and that can take a lot of different forms… Our core mission remains the same, but what that electricity is being used for is changing,” Thomsen explained.

Co-founder and President Alex Wilhelm expressed his enthusiasm for what the relationship has to offer, noting that World Vision is “giving us the perfect way to go about our mission.” He is excited particularly by the project’s “scalability and the ability to impact thousands of people.”

Wilhelm hopes that these projects will mark the foundation of a long-term relationship. In such a relationship, USI hopes to be a part of many more projects beyond the initial 100 that have been outlined, perhaps to become the partners solely responsible for World Vision’s solar installations.

Kall explained that World Vision’s 2020 and 2030 goals would be unattainable without good partners. As United Solar Initiative becomes key to helping attain these goals, it will be allowed to expand its horizons, redefining what it means to provide solar energy solutions. Through this partnership, United Solar Initiative’s work has been given more purpose, as it hopes to create a larger impact on the developing world. Throughout the relationship, the organization hopes to see its empowerment of developing communities through solar energy come to fruition.

Article By: Meredith Ratledge