The New Solar Homes Partnership (NSHP) is a 10-year, $400 million program of the California Energy Commission to encourage energy efficiency and solar power in new home construction. Specifically, the NSHP works with builders and developers to install 400 megawatts (MW) of solar energy on energy-efficient CA homes in the next ten years. The Partnership focuses on new single family homes, multi-family homes, and affordable housing construction.

The NSHP officially began on January 2 of this year, and it just crossed a milestone with its first approval of a new home community. The subdivision of Wisteria in Rocklin, California is made up of 60 homes, 35 of which will all have solar power systems that come standard, totaling 82 KW of renewable energy. Christopherson Homes is building the community.

Solar power may be exciting, but California energy policy puts greater emphasis on efficiency because it is the most cost effective way of cutting emissions. By combining efficiency with solar, the NSHP can help ensure that the projects are as affordable as possible.

The Partnership’s incentives encourage homes to be 35-50 percent above current efficiency standards.
The NSHP hopes that the Wisteria project will be the beginning of a self-sustaining market and that 50 percent of all new homes by 2017 will be super energy-efficient and solar powered.

Go Solar California!

Solar Buzz

Although California ranks second in total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that cause global warming, the U.S.’s most populous state is also one of the lowest emitters on a per-capita basis.

That’s right; the average Californian emits fewer CO2 emissions than people in all other states except Idaho, Vermont, and Rhode Island. According an Associated Press analysis of 2003 data (the latest U.S. Department of Energy numbers available), Californians are responsible for about 24,000 pounds of CO2 per person per year. In comparison, Wyoming emits 276,000 pounds per capita annually.

True, California has less heavy industry that many other states, and mild weather means residents aren’t blasting the heat or air conditioning as often as others. But although Californians drive just as far, live in homes just as big, and have just as many gadgets, the analysis found that policies put in place in the last 30 years have made the Golden State more efficient than almost any other.

Since the oil embargo of the 1970s, lawmakers have barred utilities from buying power from highly polluting plants, required more renewable energy, and have enacted energy-efficiency standards for new homes and buildings. The state has considered banning traditional incandescent light bulbs and creating fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, although the latter idea has been tied up in the courts. Last year, California became the first to require a statewide cap on climate change emissions, cutting them 25 percent by 2020.

Claudia Chandler, assistant director of the California Energy Commission, told the AP that these energy efficiency measures have eliminated the need to build 20 large power plants. Other estimates have shown that the average California family spends about $800 a year less on energy than it would have without these efficiency improvements.

Associated Press, via the Daily Breeze
Washington Post

As California implements a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide (CO2), a major contributor to global warming, it’s eyeing the European CO2 market as a model. Creating similar market-based mechanisms to fight global warming could create a more thorough, comprehensive solution to the problem.

California officials met with EU lawmakers last week to discuss cap-and-trade, a system in which industries are given a limit as to how much CO2 they can emit. For companies that cut emissions more than what is regulated, they receive credits. That company can then turn around and sell those credits to other companies that cannot or will not cut their CO2 pollution, thus allowing them to meet their requirements, too. So the further a company can reduce its CO2, the more money it can make from selling or trading its extra credits.

The California Global Warming Solutions Act signed into law last fall by Governor Schwarzenegger requires a CO2 market, but the state has learned that creating its own unique market could be very costly and complicated. Linda Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, told Reuters: “Our governor has asked us to design a market that could be compatible with the ETS, the European trading system.”

California is the 12th largest CO2 polluter on the planet, so their entry into the European market could mark the beginning of a global CO2 trading system. Adams hopes that other nations will join:

"California and the European Union can't solve this problem alone. We think working together and working with China and India and other countries will lead to a solution."

Reuters, via Planet Ark