Staying Warm

The core body temperature of cold-blooded animals (such as reptiles, amphibians and fish) is directly dependent on how hot or cold their environment. When the sun is out, their bodies soak up the heat, they warm up, and they become more active. When it’s cold, they tend to be a bit sluggish as their bodies slow down to conserve energy.  I’m jealous that these animals have a reason to sit out in the sun all day.

Collared Lizard by Sarah Waterworth

Keeping a Full Belly

Warm-blooded animals are able to regulate their own body temperature, which requires a great deal of energy. When warm-blooded species get cold, they must generate their own heat by converting food to energy. Maybe that’s why shoveling the snow-covered driveway makes me so hungry! Many animals rely on leaves, fruits and flowers as a primary food source, providing necessary energy. The sun is essential to the lives of those plants, and thus to the survival of plant eating wildlife.

Pika by Danny Nestor

Take Shelter

There are many species that live in trees or use plant material to build homes (such as nests or lodges). Trees and plants derive energy from the sun. Photosynthesis, boom. Therefore, the sun indirectly helps house a number of wildlife species!

Prothonotary Warbler by William Mangun

Follow the Big Yellow Thing

Modern GPS systems haven’t quite caught on with birds. Instead, researchers have found that some birds use their internal clocks in conjunction with the sun in order to navigate migration.

Starlings in Flight by Brad Smith

You Can Be Solar Powered, Too

The sun could be useful to humans as well. In addition to vitamin D that the sun provides, the sun can also be used to provide energy for everything we need in our homes and businesses. The sun provides a clean, renewable energy source that is much healthier for the planet than other fossil fuels.  Learn about NWF’s solar energy partner for the home at www.sungevity.com/nwf.

Today, a bipartisan group of Western representatives and senators introduced the Public Lands and Renewable Energy Development Act of 2013.

I am feeling giddy. Let me tell you why.

Growing up on the East Coast, our town playground and basketball court were the extent of my understanding of public lands. Though our eastern states also have their fair share of state and federal forest land and park systems, my first experience with real public lands came during a cross country bicycle ride. I fell in love with the wide open spaces I didn’t have in my backyard back home.

On a bike it’s easy to see how much use we get out of our federal public lands—like the 285 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Hunting, fishing, hiking, all forms of energy development, ranching, off-road vehicle use, and incredible wildlife habitat to boot. Experiencing our Western public lands in person made me proud to live in America.

I’ve since learned more about the pressures our public lands are feeling, particularly from a rapidly changing climate and energy development decisions. National Wildlife Federation’s recent report, Wildlife in a Warming World, highlighted the impacts of increased drought, wildfire, and invasive species on big game, sagebrush habitat, and other sensitive wildlife

A Framework for Renewable Energy Development on Public Lands

So that gets us back to the bill introduced today by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and others. It creates the framework for more efficient, responsible renewable energy development on public lands and would strategically direct the revenue from development to pay back local communities, fish and wildlife resources, and hunting and angling access potentially impacted by this clean energy development.

It’s a win-win for clean energy and wildlife conservation and you heard it right in the intro—supported by Westerners from both parties. That’s cause for celebration in and of itself!

In 2009, our public lands had zero approved solar energy projects and very few wind energy projects. With a lot of effort, this changed over the last three years, with now over 30 projects and 12GW permitted, enough power for 3-5 million homes per year.

To be frank, our current system for wind and solar development on public lands is woefully inefficient for every interested stakeholder—the clean energy industry and the wildlife advocate. It nearly always results in more conflict than necessary.

This bill helps solve these significant barriers to clean energy development and wildlife conservation. It also ensures some of the revenues from development on public lands goes back to impacted communities, particularly through a conservation fund for cumulative impacts to the landscape and sportsmen’s access.

As we embark on a clean energy future, there is a model to avoid. 140 years ago the U.S. Congress passed a law to promote mining and Western expansion, with provisions that hinder wildlife and habitat conservation to this day. For decades, campaigns have worked to fix that mining law.

Let’s not look back 30 years from now with the realization that we made the same policy mistakes in the rush to stop carbon pollution with wind and solar energy on public lands. Instead, let’s put in place now the right framework for efficient, sustainable development of wind and solar energy and help address its impacts with a conservation fund.

Learn more about NWF’s efforts to advocate for wildlife-friendly renewable energy >>

NWF Applauds New Solar Energy Plan

July 24 – The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management released the final solar programmatic environmental impact statement, which outlines the future of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands and makes responsible solar energy projects part of our national energy policy.

The National Wildlife Federation applauds the BLM and partner agencies who oversaw a four-year development process driven by significant stakeholder input. The landscape-level management approach of the final solar energy program is vastly improved from earlier drafts, with sportsmen playing a particularly key role in identifying and encouraging needed changes in the plan. A key component of the solar energy program is the establishment of an initial set of 17 “solar energy zones” encompassing 285,000 acres covering six Western states.

217 Atlantic Coast Environmental Groups and Other Stakeholders Unite Behind Atlantic Offshore Wind

July 24 – Today, 217 environmentalists, conservationists, clean energy advocates, businesses, and local and state officials from up and down the Atlantic Coast are united in calling for bold action to accelerate the development of offshore wind. The coalition released a letter to the Obama Administration to show strong support for progress made to date and to urge continued leadership to ensure we see several wind farms spinning off our coasts within the next few years.

New Report Details Enbridge’s Costly Failures

July 23 – As demonstrators prepare a national remembrance of the Kalamazoo River tar sands spill tragedy, and the National Academy of Sciences hears testimony on the dangers of tar sands oil, National Wildlife Federation has issued a  report examining the practices of the company behind the spill, Enbridge, Inc. The report details Enbridge’s steady history of large spills in the U.S. and Canada, reckless expansion plans that would lead to more spills, and unseemly marketing tactics used to defuse criticism. The report makes seven recommendations to prevent further tragedies.

While Enbridge recently received a record fine and a scathing condemnation from U.S. agencies for the massive oil spill of two years ago, the NWF report makes clear that the Kalamazoo disaster is but one in a series of spills, and that more will occur due to an inadequate regulatory system.

And here are highlights from NWF in the News:

• Detroit Free Press: Report slams Enbridge Energy’s history of oil spills
• CBS News: Group criticizes Enbridge’s safety record
• Chicago Parent: Wildlife take the gold for true Olympic feats
• Fredericksburg Free Lance Star: Fossil fuels create pollution and global warming (OpEd)
• UPI: Groups get in line behind U.S. wind energy
• The Daily Democrat: Solar power stations put on the fast track

For more, visit www.nwf.org/News

Solar panel installation (flickr | OregonDOT)

About the HELiOS Project

KyotoUSA got its start in 2004 when a group of friends came together and acknowledged that climate change was the most important crisis facing the planet and that we all had a role to play in addressing it. We all worked hard over the next two years, focusing our efforts on getting local cities to formally adopt the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets that are part of the Kyoto Protocol. Our local efforts paid off in a big way when Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels took the idea to the US Conference of Mayors who enlisted over 1,000 cities and their mayors. This signified many cities, counties and states’ move toward meaningful action against climate change.

We recognize that meaningful change isn’t easy—it’s hard work. We have tried to think strategically  in looking for places where large amounts of energy and water are consumed and that when addressed would have other meaningful benefits. It did not take us long to realize that California’s (and by extension  America’s)  public schools were just the place to focus our attention.

Why Schools?

Schools consume significant amounts of energy and water at a cost that has a real impact on the quality of the education our children receive. In the last few years, as school budgets have been cut, districts have been looking much more closely at all their expenditures. Districts have discovered that there is a lot of energy wasted and that their schools can be excellent sources for producing local clean energy from the sun and wind. Enter the HELiOS Project, a way for school districts to build their own renewable energy systems to offset the cost of the electricity they use.

In 2006, KyotoUSA began advocating for the installation of renewable energy systems on Berkeley’s public schools. We identified several key benefits of addressing energy issues in our public schools:

1. Reduce schools’ operating costs – fossil-fuel-generated electricity has been increasing in cost beyond its historic average, putting increasing pressure on the District’s operating budget. Reducing energy consumption and adding solar panels can help make a district more fiscally sound
2. Reduce the amount of greenhouse gases produced to make electricity –electricity from solar panels is virtually free of climate change-causing pollution and other toxic air contaminants
3. Enhance science education – Adding solar panels is a great opportunity to introduce the science of renewable energy to its students, in keeping with Eco-Schools USA’s mission
4. Demonstrate our commitment to our children’s future – there may be no greater threat to our children’s future than climate change. We must begin to invest in visible, effective actions that show our children that we are taking the threat seriously…and remaking the energy footprint of our kids’ schools is a great start.

See Top Ten Tips to Minimize Energy Use at the Eco-Schools USA website

While our focus tends to be the facilities in a given school district, we understand that improving energy efficiency and finding ways to produce on-site renewable energy can also serve as a great educational opportunity. In partnering with NWF’s Eco-Schools USA, we hope to inspire, and be inspired by, students nationwide who deserve to grow up in an environment that is healthy and sustainable.

Stay tuned for more on the partnership between the HELiOS Project and Eco-Schools USA on Wildlife Promise and read more about it here. While you’re at it, check out ten tips for schools to reduce energy use and fast facts on energy use on the Eco-Schools USA website.

“Solar power is an important new source of renewable domestic energy. Done right, we can produce energy, generate jobs and conserve hunting and fishing on our public lands.”

Kate Zimmerman, Senior Policy Advisor for NWF

Photo by Flickr's Living Off Grid

“I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes,” the president declared in the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.

Sounds great in theory, but how does he propose managing the complexity of both promoting such a land-intensive use and conserving vital fish and wildlife habitats?

Finally, a Plan

For the past three years the U.S. Department of Interior and Department of Energy have been developing a solar energy program for public lands in six Western states that can achieve both of those goals. Last year, the agencies unveiled an environmental review of the program and accepted public comments until last Friday. Now, these comments will lead to the implementation of a final solar program later this year – a roadmap for sustainable, environmentally responsible solar energy development.

At the heart of what it is a very complex proposal is a very simple idea – Solar Energy Zones (SEZs). These are areas of public land with high energy potential – accessible to transmission – that have been reviewed and determined to already be degraded or otherwise have low potential for negative impacts to wildlife, habitat, recreation, or other uses.

Sportsmen Speak on Solar

To better understand this planning process for appropriately locating and designing solar energy facilities, NWF helped pulled together sportsmen from across the nation last December near Las Vegas. This event clarified to policy makers the needs and concerns of hunters and anglers in this process, and set the stage for opportunities for sportsmen to engage as Solar Energy Zones are designated, giving them a seat at the table as plans are developed to mitigate the impact solar development on desert wildlife.

NWF Supports …

NWF wholeheartedly endorses the designation of Solar Energy Zones. The SEZs represent a new approach to meeting our clean energy goals in a wildlife-friendly manner – one that will avoid the fragmentation of important wildlife habitats that has occurred as a result of other commercial activities on public lands, such as oil and gas drilling. The best path going forward will guide development to identified public lands, consolidating related infrastructure and resulting in less total land disturbance. Needed clean energy can be built faster, cheaper, with less opposition from other public land users, and in a sustainable manner.

With some additional work to limit development outside the designated zones, exclude vital habitat and movement corridors for Desert bighorn sheep, elk, pronghorn, and Greater sage-grouse from development zones, and provide adequate mitigation for habitat losses, the proposed solar zoning framework represents the kind of initiatives NWF is pursuing in removing barriers from wildlife-friendly renewable energy.

The Greenforce Initiative, a partnership of Jobs for the Future and National Wildlife Federation, sponsored the event, and hosted a workshop on linking campus sustainability to green career pathways. The Greenforce Initiative seeks to advance green career pathways, geared toward lower-skilled adults, and helps make the connection between on-campus sustainability efforts as hands-on training opportunities for students.

While the Greenforce Initiative partners with ten community colleges in Virginia, during the workshop “Linking Campus Sustainability to Hands-On Training,” we highlighted three.

Germanna Community College new LEED building

Germanna Community College highlighted their new LEED Silver building (at their Fredericksburg campus); students will be giving tours of the buildings to educate the community on the green features (including rainwater harvesting, passive solar, etc.). 

Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave featured their sustainable and edible landscaping program engaging local farmers as well as students interested in starting new businesses in the landscaping industry.

Thomas Nelson Community College solar installation

Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton Roads spotlighted their new solar installation project for their motorcycle storage containers. Thomas Nelson students helped design and build the solar panel installation (two panels) that will be placed on the top of two containers that store all equipment, including motorcycles, for their motorcycle safety courses. The panels will power lights as well as a ventilation system.

Other colleges and groups featured are developing green programs as well:
- Virginia Western Community College (VWCC) is hosting three renewable energy showcases this spring featuring consumer information on various aspects including geothermal systems, photovoltaic systems, solar water and space heating systems, and residential wind turbine systems. Showcases will be on April 8, 14 and 21. Learn more about this opportunity.

- The Virginia Weatherization Training Center provides training and certification in both weatherization and residential practices at their 14 partner campuses across Virginia. Course offerings include, but are not limited to, air conditioning & heating pump professional, energy auditor, Lead Safe Weatherization Training, and Energy Star Inspection and Procedures. Learn more about the Center.

Learn more about the Greenforce Initiative in Virginia and our community college partners.

The first solar array, with a capacity of 120 kilowatts, will be installed on a canopy to be constructed over the upper deck of the campus’s parking structure. Lewis Hall, home of the University’s School of Law, will host the second array, a rooftop installation with a capacity of 330 kilowatts. The roof of Lewis Hall will have 1,032 high-efficiency photovoltaic panels manufactured by the SunPower Corp., and the parking-deck canopy will hold 540 photovoltaic panels made by Sanyo. Washington and Lee has entered into a 20-year power-purchase agreement with Secure Futures to buy the solar-generated electricity.

The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year; the two arrays combined will become the largest solar project in Virginia, with enough power to supply the total average annual electricity needs for the equivalent of 44 homes in Lexington.

“This is an important step for Washington and Lee as part of our continuing emphasis on sustainability,” said Kenneth P. Ruscio, W&L’s president. “This is another instance of how we are aligning our institutional practices with what we preach to our students about their duties as responsible citizens and their obligations to future generations.”

According to the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, the largest solar project in the state is currently the 104-kilowatt installation on the roof of the Hartzler Library at Eastern Mennonite University, in Harrisonburg, a project Secure Futures developed in the fall of 2010.

Washington and Lee University has signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment and the international Talloires Declaration. The campus’s sustainability efforts include composting, local and organic foods, energy conservation, purchasing, transportation and more.

Learn more about Washington and Lee’s sustainability efforts

Learn more about other campus solar arrays:

Butte College’s solar panel array, led their way to grid positivity

Harvard’s 500 kW Installation

The Catholic University of America’s 294 kilowatt Installation

Check out National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology Sustainability Case Studies on energy

Reference: August 8, 2011 Washington and Lee University Press Release

Image credit: Washington and Lee University

The college’s announcement recently, covered by Chanel 10 news and local media, that it had become grid positive ahead of schedule, came as a welcome surprise, signaling the first time we are aware of that a campus is generating more electricity through solar photovoltaic panels than they use.

This is significant for the US and world.  As a leading global source of greenhouse gas pollution, the US is in need of models such as Butte’s that provide a path towards a healthy future. This kind of large-scale shift towards cleaner forms of energy not only provides students hands-on opportunities to gain 21st century skills, it also directly boosts local employment providing jobs for displaced workers and newly trained students (e.g. see Butte’s green jobs center).

The impressive solar installation is just one facet of Butte’s sustainability efforts.  They have also diverted a larger percentage of their waste than most campuses, restored a large wildlife habitat area, designed buildings that define new standards for energy efficiency, and operate a transit program that reduces traffic in the community.  They won the national green campus awards-Chill Out- in 2008 (see video) and were also a featured school in the national campus environmental report card detailing trends in higher education management, curriculum and operations for sustainability (both programs of the National Wildlife Federation’s Campus Ecology initiative). They are also a signatory to the prestigious President’s Climate Commitment through which almost 700 US college and university leaders aim to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

On behalf of our Campus Ecology team and all of my colleagues here at National Wildlife Federation (along with our partners in the Greenforce Initiative at Jobs for the Future), congratulations and thanks to President Van Der Ploeg for having the courage to set such a bold goal for human health and ecology and to Mike Miller, Butte’s director of facilities planning and management, for helping define a new path forward and assisting others at schools all across the US and world along the way.

Take the desert southwest.  It’s consistently sunny and close to major population centers.  This would be the perfect place to develop solar energy.  But the southwest is also home to sensitive habitat and several wildlife species that are already suffering population declines.

For example-

• Desert Tortoise ( video)
• Sage grouse (video)
• Flat-tailed horned lizard (video)

Solar energy development in the southwest could hurt these species (and others like pronghorn, Mojave ground squirrel, bighorn sheep, and elk) if it occurs in important wildlife habitat like migration corridors or overwintering grounds.

Can an industry as new and as important to our clean energy future as the solar energy industry afford such a controversial reputation?

Photovoltaic panels used to collect solar energy

Fortunately, President Obama and the Department of the Interior are taking steps to make sure that solar energy projects are built quickly and in a wildlife-friendly way- for example, the recently released draft Solar Energy Program (Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement).

The solar energy program identifies 24 Solar Energy Zones on public land that could be developed. These areas, about 700,000 acres in total, were chosen because they possess all the right ingredients for generating and delivering solar power to the American public, but the Interior Department determined they have minimal potential for negative impacts to important wildlife habitat.

Tell the Department of the Interior to make solar energy wildlife-friendly >>

The Solar Energy Zones are a great first step forward.  They’re a game-changer that will  let us develop solar energy rapidly and responsibly.

However, NWF believes that there is still more that the Department of the Interior must do to make solar energy wildlife-friendly.

First, additional vital wildlife habitat (such as winter ranges for big game) that overlaps with solar energy zones should receive protection.

Secondly, the Department of the Interior might also let developers use an additional 22 million acres of public land (outside of the Solar Energy Zones).

NWF thinks that’s a bad idea because:

1. The additional public lands have not been thoroughly examined for potential wildlife impacts.
2. There’s already more space in the 24 Solar Energy Zones than is needed to reach current or anticipated state renewable energy generation requirements.
3. Rather than open millions of acres to solar development, we should establish a process for identifying more solar energy zones if they’re needed in the future.

Solar Energy Zones are a great idea because the best way to get solar projects built quickly is to plan them responsibly from the start.  By keeping areas outside of the 24  Solar Energy Zones off-limits to development and thoroughly examining the Solar Energy Zones for  sensitive wildlife habitat, the Department of the Interior will set a strong precedent for responsible solar energy development in the United States.

Tell the Department of the Interior to make solar energy wildlife-friendly >>