City Council praised for advancing solar energy
The Alliance for Renewable Energy, a local citizen group, detailed and celebrated actions the city has taken in the past three years. The alliance also laid out the future of Laramie’s push for solar.
Ahead of a planned “solar tour” this weekend, the Alliance for Renewable Energy highlighted its accomplishments and ongoing efforts at a local government work session this week.
The presentation comes as the United States faces worsening wildfires, heatwaves and hurricanes as a result of climate change — and as Wyoming grapples with its fossil fuel past and an uncertain future.
The alliance is a local citizen group focused on decreasing carbon emissions by promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency. Representatives from the group found a receptive audience in the Laramie City Council, the Albany County Commissioners and the Environmental Advisory Committee during a joint work session Tuesday.
Alliance Vice President Ed Koncel kicked off the presentation by recapping the city’s renewable energy efforts, spelling out the alliance’s involvement from the outset.
“In 2019, Laramie City Council asked the (Environmental Advisory Committee) to develop a carbon neutral proposal,” Koncel began. “The time frame? Less than two months. What followed were a series of intense, thoughtful subcommittee meetings.”
On March 3, 2020 — in one of the council’s last in-person meetings before the pandemic struck Wyoming — councilors unanimously approved a resolution committing to carbon neutrality by 2050.
Since then, the council has taken action to increase renewable energy production in Laramie, applying for three — so far winning two — Blue Sky Grants. Those grants supported solar installation at the Laramie Rec Center and the Laramie Ice and Event Center.
Work has continued, in partnership with the University of Wyoming, to quantify Laramie’s emissions. The council also joined Mountain Towns 2030 — an organization that seeks to help communities hit carbon neutrality two full decades before Laramie’s stated deadline of 2050.
And just one week ago, the council voted unanimously to take part in the U.S. Department of Energy’s SolSmart program, which will grade Laramie’s commitment to solar and provide advice on how to do more.
Councilor Erin O’Doherty said the Alliance for Renewable Energy had been instrumental in many of those developments, especially joining Mountain Towns 2030 and SolSmart.
“When you brought that to our attention, it was a real game changer,” O’Doherty said.
‘Little groundswells’
Throughout, the presentation featured photos of large gatherings, at council meetings and also at a climate strike in 2019. The photos highlight an underlying reality about how change occurs at the local governmental level — people show up, in numbers.
Mayor Paul Weaver said the visible, widespread support gave legitimacy to the movement and allowed the council to move ahead with concrete actions, such as setting a carbon neutrality goal.
“It’s really critical to have that community buy-in, communication and support for these kinds of projects,” Weaver said. “That can be a burden on many of our residents and citizens, but it really is necessary.”
Evelyn Hill, a member of the environmental advisory committee, also praised the local organizing around climate action.
“It gives me chills to think about all these dedicated young people,” she said. “It’s really wonderful, but as wonderful is seeing our town become involved with our students and the entire state of Wyoming. All the people working together to get the little pieces done is what it’s going to take.”
And change has to happen at the local level, Hill added.
“I don’t see the federal government leaping up and saying, ‘No more of this,’ ‘We need this,’ or ‘We need that,’” she said. “It’s these little groundswells that are making a big difference right now.”
‘Great but also late’
The alliance presentation continued as Sean Moran highlighted upcoming events, including the solar tour this Saturday and the Shepard Symposium on Social Justice Climate Summit in April.
Moran also spoke to the importance of collaboration between the city, the county, the university and others.
“We’re continuing to look into comprehensive climate action plans for Laramie,” he said. “How do we reach these goals and how do we maybe be a model for other communities around Wyoming. We’re not in this alone. We all have something to give. We can also be supportive to others within our Wyoming community.”
But there are significant hurdles ahead of Laramie’s solar advocates.
The SolSmart program will help to identify permitting processes, city ordinances, fees or other roadblocks that could be tweaked to make solar development more attractive. But legislative fights at the state level are disincentivizing solar development, members of the alliance said.
The issue of net metering was hotly debated by lawmakers before the last session of the Wyoming Legislature. Net metering basically allows small renewable energy producers — like residents with rooftop solar — to get a discount on their electrical bill as compensation and incentive for the electricity they supply to the grid.
Currently, this discount is only available to those with a generating capacity of 25 kilowatts or less. The alliance and other solar advocates want to see that limit raised, arguing such a change would encourage more businesses to install solar panels.
“It’s not cost effective for Wal-Mart or a Target or other big businesses to put on 25 kilowatts,” Koncel said. “One of the biggest criticisms of industrial scale solar is the amount of land that it uses. This, to me, is the greatest reason to promote rooftop solar.”
Both councilors and commissioners were supportive of these goals, and of doing what both governmental bodies could to promote solar.
Commission Chair Pete Gosar also praised the city’s solar development.
“It’s great that the city’s doing it; it would be great if every house did it,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll be racing the city down the path to sustainability, hopefully we’re getting into a friendly rivalry.”
Albany County recently gave the greenlight to a 26,000-acre wind farm planned for south of Laramie, with commissioners explicitly citing the need to take urgent action on the climate crisis.
But the specter of irreversible and catastrophic climate change still hangs over these discussions, approvals and developments. And the most recent report from the International Panel on Climate Change, compiling data and findings from across disciplines, is a “code red for humanity,” according to the UN Secretary General.
“All of these moves are great, but also late,” Mike Selmer said during the work session’s public comment period. “Climate disruption is coming and we need to make sure our city is prepared to deal with it.”
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