SMOGTOWN

Texas Congressman Joe Barton, along with fellow Republican Greg Walden, last year pressured the Justice Dept. to release documents on the secretive prosecution of former high-flying, emissions-broker Anne Sholtz. Barton, a global warming skeptic and longtime champion of big oil, made news again recently for his comments that the federal mandate for BP to set aside $20 billion for cleanup of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill amounted to a “slush fund” and shakedown. Guess what? He was forced to apologize.

Washington Post story on his outburst, which was curious to say the least. Here’s the official contrition from him in an MSNBC update.

I’m just wondering when Barton will get around to explaining why he and House lawyers and investigators were chomping at the bit to learn more about Sholtz and what her air pollution-exchange scandal says about a  possible greenhouse gas cap-and-trade, when a national energy/climate bill was on the front burner, and why he’s allowed it slip from it from his political consciousness now that the bill’s propsects faded.  Could it be Barton’s entire reasoning was to slam Obama, via California, and shield the petroleum sectors? Naw, couldn’t be.

In any event, my story on Sholtz — and it’s contexualized and expanded in our book Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles – won gold in the Southern California Journalism Awards Sunday night. I dislike even mentioning this, because I am ambivalent about subjective honors, but in this case I make an exception because after all these years, there is still more heat than light about the Sholtz caper and Barton’s real motives, let alone why the Justice Dept. handled her the way it did and all that CIA stuff.

It comes from Santa Barbara environmental activist, David Lange. Here’s his blog. David, a passionate concerned citizen, has an interesting soundtrack to it that speaks in metaphor. Very well done!

Happy Father’s Day

* Ensuring California’s millions of cars are as smog-free as possible has never translated into a system that’s corruption free, and never will.

From the L.A. Times: “A South Los Angeles smog check shop has been shut down by state regulators and may face criminal charges for routinely certifying pollution-belching vehicles as smog-free. Undercover surveillance by the state Bureau of Automotive Repair found that in a two-hour period, each of the 13 smog tests conducted at AM PM Smog at 6401 1/2 S. Avalon Blvd., was fraudulent … A state audit earlier this year found widespread fraud statewide, with almost one-third of older model vehicles failing surprise roadside tests even though they had earned passing grades at inspection stations …”

* Big stunner out of Washington, D.C. Politicians are politicizing the Gulf Oil spill to push for clean energy legislative, including a carbon “cap-and-trade” market. In Casa Blanca terms, I’m shocked at this dirty pandering. Restoriong gooey, tarry wetlands and petroleum-shellacked beaches and controlling the earth’s temperature are distant cousins of the green movement, or are they?

L.A. Times coverage.

* So Aghanistan actually does have natural resources that don’t include Taliban grunts with scarves and AK-47s? As if the average Afghani will get any benefit from this.

From the New York Times piece. “The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe …”

* Tell me this isn’t true, 30 years after a painful OPEC oil embargo that illuminated our need to wind down our dependence on fossil fuels, particularly from nations prone to hate and attack us, and intensity the search for clean, renewable energy. What was it George Washington proclaimed about foreign entanglements? Anyway, America’s addiction to cheap energy prices and our devotion to the status quo has done China wonders. They’re the country with the boundless solar power future.

From MSNBC. “… Solar power accounts for less than 1 percent of U.S. energy usage, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. And although many industry watchers see big potential, the giant U.S. market currently ranks fourth in solar electric capacity — behind Germany, Italy and Japan …”

* On this last note, all I can say is that it’s about time and why wasn’t the old anti-corruption unit able to competently prosecute and investigate the Anne Sholtz cap-and-trade fraud? 

L.A. Times coverage: “U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr. announced Friday that he was creating a specialized unit to prosecute public corruption and civil rights cases, such as those involving politicians or police officers accused of crimes.

The move effectively restores a similar unit that was disbanded by Birotte’s predecessor, Thomas P. O’Brien, two years ago.

“My experience has taught me that oversight breeds public confidence in government, and public confidence breeds better government,” Birotte wrote in a memo circulated to his staff, a copy of which was obtained by The Times. “The public needs to be able to rely on federal law enforcement to act as a watchdog for public institutions and the individuals who hold positions of trust in those organizations …”

Here’s my little Op-Ed on the lessons of former emissions broker Anne Sholtz, who defrauded the very smog cap-and-trade she helped concoct. We write about her spectacular and alarming escapades at length, as well as about L.A.’s air pollution market, in Smogtown: the Lung Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles.

“In the toxic air of Los Angeles is a primer on human nature as we debate a national cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases.

During the 1990’s, Southern California manufacturers, weary of decades of stern regulation, wanted a new way to shrink their emissions of sky-smudging, health-damaging oxides of nitrogen and sulfur. Their answer was the planet’s first smog cap-and-trade system. Its name was awkward — the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, or Reclaim — but its implications seismic. Industry finally had flexibility in achieving its cuts, and a motive to reduce more than their yearly pollution cap. They could sell unneeded “credits” for profit!

Though environmentalists caterwauled about corporate sellout, the anti-smog officials were on board. For years, they’d been sandwiched between federal clean air mandates and industry accusations that they had crippled the region’s manufacturing muscle with overzealous rulemaking. Why not allow the market to be the magic?

Leading this vanguard environmentalism was Anne Masters Sholtz, a 30-something Caltech economics professor and aspiring emissions-broker. Her brokerage, which used the Web and advanced software to match trades, lined up heavyweight clients and enlisted marquee financial institutions as trade clearinghouses. Sholtz bought a spectacular hillside estate, won niche celebrity, and had a seemingly blue-sky future in the mecca of whiskey-brown air.

The problem is the system was vulnerable. During California’s electricity brownouts in 2000 and 2001, speculators made a killing off the boutique, $90-million-a-year market by hoarding credits the utilities needed to run full time. By then, Sholtz had twice fleeced the system.

In 1996, she misappropriated roughly $2 million in credits belonging to Chevron, then Mobil Corporation and another client and sold them to Southern California Edison. A few years later Sholtz lulled another client, a New York-based trading outfit called A.G. Clean Air, into believing she owned credits the company needed to complete a lucrative trade with Mobil. In truth the credits weren’t available.

Predictably, local regulators were in the dark about both episodes until industry complained to them. As her case illustrates, and Europe’s cap-and-trade scandals corroborates, even the best-intentioned oversight is laps behind sophisticated schemers, be they full timers or just desperate like Sholtz. Concoct a market anywhere, whether for beads or subprime mortgages, and they’ll show up.

Two House Republicans today are moving to unseal court records of Sholtz’s federal prosecution in a ham-fisted effort to hurt President Obama’s chances for a carbon market. If there’s chicanery with smog, imagine a trillion-dollar greenhouse market, they say. But the Sholtz case is too important for politicization, because global warming is a global threat now.

I’m against Obama’s plans because a more straightforward carbon levy seems more cost-effective and less contrived. Yet cap-and-trades can work, as they generally have in L.A., as long as we remember that to make a commodity out of something is to arouse temptation.”

To read the entire New York Times “Room for Debate” online forum, click here.

Here’s the link to my last story about Sholtz and L.A.’s cap-and-trade. It’s a tale of environmental fraud and foreign intrigue unlike any others.

From the L.A. Times story

“Metropolitan Los Angeles, extending to Riverside and Long Beach, remains the smoggiest city in the United States, with an average of more than 140 days a year of dangerous ozone levels, the American Lung Assn. reported Wednesday in its annual assessment.

All of the nation’s 10 smoggiest counties are in California, with San Bernardino, Riverside, Kern, Tulare and Los Angeles leading the pack. And the state’s cities and counties, with their ports, refineries, power plants and crowded freeways, rank near the top for particle pollution.

“This is not just a nuisance or a bother,” said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, the lung association’s California policy director. “Thousands of people are being rushed to emergency rooms. Thousands of people are dying early as a result of air pollution…. It is a crisis.”

The report comes at a time of conflict over the state’s efforts to slash emissions. Citing the recession-battered economy, trucking and construction firms are seeking to delay California’s rules to limit diesel pollution from operating big-rigs, forklifts and other equipment …”

Let Freddie Mercury reinforce the point: We are the champions … of smog … mostly by our own making!

Here’s the tease to my Op-Ed on the subject.

“Californians: meet your sun. Or, rather, remember it.

Despite living in America’s premier green state, most of the state’s homeowners continue to rebuff solar power as a way to shrink their electricity bills, and simply plug into their local public utility much as their parents did.

The numbers paint the apathetic picture. Out of 7.7-million single family homes statewide, only about 50,000 have roof-mounted photovoltaic cells. In Los Angeles, the nation’s eighth sunniest city, only 1,627 homes boast solar hookups …”

There’s a lot more to say, and I will, but for now, I encourage you to read the opposing viewpoints and reader commentaries.

Right now, to reiterate, no matter California’s “status” as the greenest of greens, a meager 1 out of 154 homeowners currently use solar power. Does that sound like consumer acceptance to you? I fear we may learn how catastrophic this is as the environment continues to degrade and we experience an earthquake, terrorist attack or other awful event that knocks out power plants and leaves people with no way to electrify their lives and meet their needs until the juice is back on (and yeah, I know you need a fuel cell).

Anyway, here’s the link and I hope it proves a little thought-provoking. Just don’t buy into labels. Buy into the numbers and the big picture.

Class: pay attention!

* Excellent perspective on the phoniness and promise of Earth Day from the Washington Post. Link.

* California Solar Initiative: billions on the line, millions of lives potentially at stake, and yet most are in the dark. For your enlightenment, link up. California: meet Spain. Link to New York Times story on their solar-lifestyle.

*Boeing scientists use organic remedies to remove toxins at Santa Susana Field Laboratory site. Enough said with the L.A. Daily News headline. Link.

*When it comes to long distance running, L.A.’s toxically perfumed air give local athletes that competitive edge. Coughing will knock you off that medal stand. See the L.A. Marathon. Link to L.A. Times blog.

* An EPA man of substance: where was this guy when I was reporting on chromium, et al? Link from the Patt Morrison radio show on KPCC.

* Now this is a real-mini, but will the Third World embrace it in the name of post-climate change and unglamorous function. At least GM is trying, which is better than wallowing in bankruptcy blues. Link to MSNBC story.

* A couple of morsels on California’s climate law, which right now is anything but orderly. L.A. Times story on opponents pouring in money for initiative to delay the climate-change-fighting legislation. Link. On the same subject of global warming, here’s what the California Air Resources Board projects will be the economic benefits of the bill. Link to L.A. Times piece.

* The law of unintended geology – how the Haitain quake will reverse ecological repair. From the Newsweek story

” … Since the earthquake decimated Haiti’s capital city, much has been said about the country’s dire poverty. But Haiti is not only the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere; it’s also the most environmentally degraded. Less than 1 percent of its original forest cover remains, and 6 percent of the land has virtually no soil left. Both are due to a vicious cycle of overpopulation, poverty, and natural disasters. Each increases susceptibility to the other and as time wears on, it’s evident that to be effective, all problems must be attacked at once. For what some say was the first time, scientists were trying to do just that—Levy and Fischer’s work was among the first steps toward a more integrated development program addressing both economic and environmental concerns. Now that work has been put on hold …”

* Here come the fast-talking men from L.A. again – interesting piece on turning pillaged Owens Valley into a giant solar energy farm. From the L.A. Times story:

“First it was silver ore that streamed to Los Angeles from the rim of the Owens Valley, then the water from the valley floor.

Now, L.A. has come back for the sunshine.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the agency responsible for turning Owens Lake into a dusty salt flat and snatching up nearly every acre from Lone Pine to Bishop, has its sights on transforming the Owens Valley into one of largest sources of solar power in America …”

* Erin, where art thou? An update on the legal career of activist Erin Brockovich. Los Angeles Business Journal story

* Pretty good story from the L.A. Weekly about the health effects of living near freeways. Their toxic, as if we didn’t know that. Some relatively new studies here and a rambling search for City Hall accountability. Link

* Steak AND Smog: the cows of the Central Valley and the greenhouse- methane problem. L.A. Timesstory

* A potential game changing way to produce electricity at home with a fuel cell that combiones air and different fuels without combustion. Think of the countless benefits. L.A. Times link:

For what it’s worth, distinguishing smart environmentalism from phony or compelled enviromentalism are about as different as smog and carbon dioxide. There are digital forests built around this subject, but I tripped across an interesting site called Crunchy Chicken, whose blogger had a thoughtful post on the subject.

“We all know them – they are the environmentalists who make everyone feel inadequate. The ones who push the issues so hard it turns off everyone else, even other environmentalists. They are the die-hards who set the bar so high that people don’t even bother listening to what they have to say anymore because they accept no compromise and make you feel inferior to boot.

So, how does an environmentalist get their message across and educate others while at the same time seeming reasonable and open-minded? Well, for starters, leading by example is the best approach. You can lecture people all you want about any given issue, but the end result is generally raising people’s hackles. Nobody likes to be attacked or criticized for their choices.

As we head into the holidays, it is likely that we’ll be interacting with a lot more friends, family and co-workers and the topics of saving money and the environment are sure to come up. When they do, use it as an opportunity to educate people with some easy to digest facts and offer up what you do to mitigate your impact.

Wait for their lead to offer more information. You will find that if you throw out a few ideas or facts about a topic, people are generally interested in learning more and they get excited if they feel like they are part of the process, rather than approaching it with a series of “you shoulds” or some long-winded response.

When I’m in a mixed group, I’m oftentimes reluctant to spew too much information for fear of overwhelming people. In addition, the possible result of coming off as too stern is offense at one end and boredom at the other …”

For the entire post, click here.

Here’s a look at three technologies that California residents are using to cut their energy bills and turn their homes into clean, mini-power plants.

February 7, 2010

By CHIP JACOBS

Note to readers: the following story is a longer, slightly different version of the article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other outlets on February 5, 2010. To see that version, click here.

Not long ago, most Californians harvesting green energy at home had pretty much one way to turn: toward their eaves. Rooftop solar panels might’ve resembled giant aviator-sunglasses, with a typical setup costing as much as a luxury car, but they at least delivered power-bill savings without anxiety. Trying to capture rustling winds or subterranean heat or even streamside hydro-electricity sounded as farfetched as it did impractical, and never found consumer traction.

Well, chalk another one up for the green revolution.

Today, with more user-friendly technology on the market and meaty taxpayer-subsidies available to begin popularizing the concept, the era of limited choices is fading. Homeowners out to shrink their reliance on the local utility grid and live greener without opting for standard solar-cells can now do so, depending on where they reside and their tenacity to stick with it.

Experts believe converging trends makes it an idea worth bouncing around. As energy demands continue to tick upwards and governments crack down further on greenhouse gases, everyone – including consumers who previously shrugged off home-generation as a quixotic extravagance — will likely pay more for their electricity and natural gas.

New power plants are just prohibitively expensive to build. And no one knows when the next energy crisis will strike.

“Renewable energy produced at home shouldn’t just be for the granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing people,” said Angelina Galiteva, chairwoman of the non-profit World Council for Renewable Energy. “It should be for everyone.”

But will more than a hardy band of believers really commit to churning out kilowatts in their own backyards and communal grounds, when just one of 154 California single-family homeowners right now even run solar cells? Will the temptation to lock down energy costs, or the desire for more self sufficiency, catch on in the forward-looking West Coast as it has throughout Europe?

Check back in 2030 for concrete answers. For now, take a look what at some are already doing.

SMALL WIND

People driving along gusty interstates near such places as Palm Springs are accustomed to seeing commercial wind farms, where turbines as high as buildings spin lazily against a blue sky. These days, a modest but growing number of individuals are trying that technology inside their own fence-lines.

Roughly 10,500 small turbines were sold to homes, farms and businesses nationwide in 2008, according to the American Wind Energy Assoc. While the numbers aren’t in yet for 2009, demand remained strong in spite of the Great Recession, said Elizabeth Salerno, the association’s director of data and analysis. A survey of small-turbine manufacturers has projected a 30-fold increase in the U.S. market by 2013.

Locally, some of the growth is emanating from companies eager to contain their electricity tabs. In Palmdale, for instance, city officials have cleared the way for businesses to install wind turbines up to 60-fee-high to crank out their own clean power. Among them is Wal-Mart, which has a 17-turbine project planned for its Sam’s Club outlet in Palmdale.

Potential wise, though, the largest new pool of converts may be individuals such as Ernest Ramirez. He and his wife live in Oak Hills, an unincorporated, blustery section of western San Bernardino County dotted with spacious homes on multi-acre lots. They inherited their wind turbine when they bought their 3,250-square-foot property equipped with a pool and hot tub in 2003.

Ernest Ramirez can’t imagine life without out it now.

Perched on a slender tower about 80-feet high, the turbine has three, 10-foot-long blades that whip often enough to keep his power bills from Southern California Edison at about $100 a month, or roughly a quarter of what he calculates he’d fork out otherwise.

Gusts are so fierce in this part of the Cajon Pass that they have been known to snap trees and jackknife semi-trucks. But Ramirez welcomes a bad hair day. His 10-kilowatt device, which initially struck him as a hovering insect, not only is a money saver. It salves his environmental conscience.

“When I get out of my car and it’s blowing 35-mph and I have to stay inside the house, at least I know I’m saving money,” said Ramirez, a 46-year-old grant writer. “Wind is such a precious resource.”

Ramirez said he can count seven neighbors with their own wind turbines. When the blades on his turn fiercely, they produce a droan that Ramirez compares to a helicopter takeoff. All things considered, it’s a racket he’s happy to have.

Still, what works in windblown San Bernardino County won’t necessarily fit everywhere.

To make economic sense, a homeowner considering a turbine should live in an area where 10-mph winds are frequent, and be paying at least 10-cents a kilowatt hour for electricity, according to the wind association. Permitting is also a challenge in many communities; some neighbors consider the spinning contraptions as noisy and eyesores and even a threat to birds.

The technology certainly isn’t cheap, running about $3,000 to $6,000 per kilowatt installed or roughly $30,000 for an average system, experts say.

Sweeteners are being dangled to cushion some of that sticker shock. Homeowners can get a hefty rebate from the state of California – as much as $12,500 for a typical 5-kilowatt setup. They’re also eligible for a 30-percent Investment Tax Credit from the federal government.

GEOTHERMAL

Everybody knows that solar panels and wind turbines are rock stars of today’s renewable energy world. Fewer might suspect that one of the more intriguing contenders to reduce high utility bills cooks right under our feet.

Geothermal heat pumps, which have been around since World War II, consume 25-perent to 50-percent less electricity than conventional systems, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Their magic comes from the physics of heat-exchange and vapor compression.

First, pipes are buried, sometimes hundreds of feet down, and formed into a loop. During winter, a refrigerant-type fluid circulating through the loop grabs the heat and transfers it into a structure’s air-handler. When air conditioning is needed in the summer, the process operates much like your refrigerator: the pump draws heat from the home’s interior and dumps it back into the Earth.

Geothermal heat pumps are cousins of regular heat pumps, which draw in hot air from outside. The difference is that geothermal is more efficient because soil temperatures, even just a few feet underground, remain fairly stable year round. Geothermal systems also have few moving parts, so they’re quiet and durable. They can be adapted to provide a home’s hot water.

Dennis Bushnell, a NASA scientist who studies renewable fuels, said that geothermal heat pumps are relied on by a fair number of homeowners and others from Virginia to the Northeastern states. People who reside in warmer Sunbelt states could especially benefit from them, he said, because the loop works best when the temperature stays above 30-degrees.

The equipment is “not exotic at all,” said Langley. “You can go on the web and buy one today.”

Now for the bad news: upfront costs are painful, sometimes twice as much as conventional heating and cooling units.

If your wallet can withstand that initial blast, one satisfied customer says the quick payback time and minimal maintenance expenses make it worthwhile.

California’s electricity crisis motivated John Sergneri to install a geothermal heat pump on his 1,280-foot tract-style home in Petaluma. It cost $40,000, approximately $15,000 more than a traditional grid-dependent system. Still, it has slashed his utility bills dramatically.

Sergneri, an information technologist, is currently renting the house while he works in Switzerland. When he returns stateside, he said he plans to install solar panels to further trim his power costs, because the ground pump and associated machinery, like many renewable systems, requires some electricity to operate.

It’s all part of what he terms a low-cost, eco-friendly “retirement plan.” Sergneri, 58, jokes it will yield a better return than his tattered 401-K.

“My goal is to be as independent as possible,” he said. “I’ve always dreamed of getting as far from the grid as possible.”

Though California isn’t offering rebates for ground heat pumps, a 30-percent federal tax credit is available.

SOLAR HOT WATER

California leads the nation in rooftop solar panels despite the fact that only about 50,000 single-family homes out of an estimated 7.7-million statewide have deployed them. (In the city of Los Angeles, a measly 1,627 homes have solar hookups with the Department of Water and Power.)

A simpler, less expensive path to convert sunrays to electricity is just beginning to catch on with solar water heaters. Officials hope two sets of incentives will pluck them out of obscurity.

Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a $350-million rebate program to coax homeowners to replace their old energy-sucking units with more efficient solar-fired systems. Residential utility customers can get as much as $1,875 for swapping out their natural gas systems and $1,250 for ditching their electrically-heated tanks. The rebates phase out at the end of 2017 — or when the ratepayer-subsidized funds dry up.

Buyers can also qualify for a 30-percent renewable energy tax credit for a new solar water heater from Uncle Sam.

All told, that could amount to as much as a 55-percent subsidy for equipment that normally costs between $6,000 and $8,000, contingent on a home’s size and energy usage.

Here’s the downside: to qualify for a state rebate, homeowners have to be customers of Southern California Edison, the Southern California Gas Co., Pacific Gas & Electric or San Diego Gas & Electric.

Heating water represents the third-largest energy expense for most households, according the Department of Energy. If California’s solar water heater initiative succeeds, 585-million therms of natural gas– the equivalent of 200,000 solar units – and 150-megawatts of electricity will have been replaced with clean power, the utilities commission says.

These systems are already popular in Israel, China, Spain and other countries. Beginning this year, Hawaii is mandating that all new homes be equipped with solar hot water heaters.

“Solar water heaters are the low hanging fruit,” said Katrina Phruksukarn, solar water heating program manager with the California Center for Sustainable Energy. “They may not be as cheap as putting in a high-efficiency light bulb, but they’re about as cost effective as you’re going to get.”

Technologies vary by manufacturer. One common arrangement involves linking a storage tank to a rooftop solar array. Heat collected by those panels is used to warm up copper tubes filled with water contained just beneath dark, heat absorbing collectors. Those collectors raise the temperature of the water, which from there is pumped down and stored in a well-insulated storage tank. Back-up gas or electrical heating kicks in if the temperature falls below a certain threshold.

Steve Glenn, whose company LivingHomes, designs eco-friendly modular dwellings, has a system in his home that employs solar tubes filled with special, low-boiling point oil. When sunrays strike the tubes, they produce steam that rises and transfers some of its heat to water, which is warmed and stored in an ordinary-looking 60-gallon tank. The water is then delivered to showers and sinks. Heat radiating from the system’s piping also keeps the floors toasty.

Glenn said the solar hot water heater, photovoltaic panels and other energy-miserly features in his Santa Montica home have reduced is electric bill to the cost of a nice lunch: about $15 to $20 a month.

“I don’t have to even think about it” Glenn, 45, said. “The hot water feels like hot water. I’m not aware its sun baked, and not natural gas baked.”

BIOMASS

Another home-based renewable is an update to 19th-century prairie life. Furnaces and stoves that burn wood pellets made from sawdust, bark and other industrial byproducts, as well as corn, dried cherry pits and other organic materials are now on the market. Unlike traditional cord wood, these fuels cough out relatively little ash, soot and other harmful emissions.

Depending on the house, the biomass burners can supplement or replace a structure’s conventional heating system.

Like many renewable energy concepts, though, they are not for fence sitters. A stove or furnace, which resembles a stand-alone, glass-enclosed fireplace, can run $5,000 or more with installation. The fuels themselves also aren’t necessarily cheaper than natural gas or oil heat. A typical system eats up to three tons of them yearly.

At Floyd S. Lee Fireplace & BBQ in Pasadena, they’re just starting to sell a small fireplace for $900 that burns a clear-liquid biofuel requiring no venting. Since the unit doesn’t generate bounds of heat, it’s mainly decorative, said salesman Tom Broderick. Actual pellet-burning fireplaces have promise, he added, once retail stores can more easily secure pellets from suppliers.

“But they’re trying new things all the time,” he said. “Nobody is sticking with the old.”

As with ground heat pumps, there is no state rebate available for biofuels burners. There is a $1,500 Energy Star rebate that expires Dec. 31.

Coming down the pike is a household “bio-reactor” just being introduced in England, said NASA scientist Bushnell. It converts kitchen scraps, yard waste and sewage into electrical juice.

“All these (ideas) were possible ten years ago and are now more possible because of the pace of technologies,” said Bushnell, who works out of NASA’s Langley, VA. research-center. “Once people learn about the realities of the energy-price situation, they’ll know they have to consider adjusting how they live, including considering renewables.”

SIDEBAR STORY AND LINKS

Three years ago, the state rolled out its Go Solar California! program to dramatically boost adoption of solar power and fortify an industry devoted to it. The $3.3-billion, ratepayer-financed effort has a goal of adding 3,000 megawatts of grid-connected solar by 2016.

If that objective is met, it could spare California from having to build six new gas-fired power plants, which generate about 500-megawatts per year. The average home consumes about 10,000-kilowatts annually.

The Public Utilities Commission as part of this effort has earmarked $2.2-billlion program in rebates to encourage homeowners, businesses and non-profit agencies to install solar-photovoltaic roof panels and solar water heaters. They’re only available for customers of Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric and San Diego Gas and Electric.

So far, about 257 megawatts of new solar have come on line, the bulk of that in industry. If that doesn’t sound impressive, especially compared to Europe, it represents more than three times what was installed in the 1980s and 1990s combined. And despite the low-consumer usage, California accounts for about two-thirds of the nation’s entire installed-solar.

Officials are hoping that by the time the incentives are exhausted, generating power at home will be considered a cost-savings staple, not an extravagance. Until then, consumers’ bitterness from the 2000-2001 electricity crises and more recent recession may help forge a spirit of productive independence.

“You saw faith being lost,” said Ben Airth, who works with the Center for Sustainable Energy, a non-profit involved in California’s solar campaign. “America has been brought up on the idea of plugging into the grid through a utility and now people are seeing for themselves what they can do about producing their own electricity.”

Links to explore:

* To see federal and state-by-state incentives and rebates for home-based renewable energy, start with this database.

* For more about solar water heaters, visit this site.

* To get a taste of different home-based energy systems, check out this publication online.

* Lastly, if you assumed Los Angeles, with its Prius-driving, recycle-everything culture, is gobbling up solar faster than other regions, think again. Homeowners in San Diego and Santa Clara counties have installed more photovoltaic cells and solar water heaters than denizens of much-larger Los Angeles County. Here’s the proof.