Tropical Resorts Missing Out On Lucrative Wind+Solar Business Opportunities

A few years ago when I visited Caye Caulker in Belize, I was appalled to learn that the island burns dirty diesel fuel to generate its electricity when the weather is either sunny or windy or both almost all of the time.

I just got back from Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of Baja, Mexico and I'm sorry to report the same type of gripe with this resort community (though I don't know whether they generate electricity specifically via diesel fuel or via Mexico's other mostly dirty or land-altering sources).

In Cabo's hot climate, resorts have air conditioning blasting in virtually every occupied room 24/7.  Yet there is nary a solar panel or wind turbine to be seen (aside from one isolated green housing community that a hotel manager told me about when I asked her why they don't use solar).  What a waste of expensive, dirty fossil fuels that generate huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon pollution.

Could there be a significant missed business opportunity here -- both for Cabo's resorts to cut their long-term energy costs and for major solar companies to secure lucrative qualified sales leads?

One that comes to mind stems from resort owners' aggressive sales of time shares to pretty much all vacationers.  For example, we hadn't even left the lobby after checking in before a time share salesperson stopped us, offering the "all inclusive" meal/drinks plan for $40/day instead of the normal $77.

After talking it over with my wife, we decided to take them up to secure the savings they were offering.  For good measure, I also negotiated in a 50 minute massage for my wife and one for myself, and another $50 in benefits.  All we needed to do to secure these perks was visit another resort (which we wanted to check out anyway) and take the 1.5 hour time share tour with their sales associate, who we knew would offer an aggressive sales pitch to buy in.  We took the tour with a very nice Canadian gentleman, enjoyed our free private taxi rides and Mexican breakfast buffet, declined the timeshare pitch, and walked away with $500+ in perks.  From the standpoint of a conservation scientist, I was more than happy to let a $billionaire real estate developer subsidize our vacation.

That said, what if the sales associate also offered us a major discount on a home solar installation -- one that was almost too good to turn down?  What if in exchange for resorts marketing a solar company's services to vacationers, the solar company would provide them with rooftop and on-site solar electricity and/or hot water installations? This type of arrangement could dramatically cut resorts' huge electricity costs and carbon footprints.  Another way the resort industry could approach this type of clean energy program is to generate qualified sales leads that it could then sell to vacationers' local solar providers in exchange for money or services.  Certainly there are ways to refine this idea, but you get the gist.

What do you think -- why should all these tropical resorts, located in hot, sunny climates in windy coastal locations, NOT be getting their electricity from local solar and/or wind installations?

Carbon Nation: The Surprising (and Common Sense) Benefits of Cutting Heat Trapping Carbon Pollution

Would well-designed legislation to stabilize our increasingly weird climate and free America from our dangerous oil dependence really wreck the economy, as media pundits and GOP policy positions warn?

Fortunately, as America seeks ways to create millions of jobs and revitalize our national morale and qualify of life, the answer is a resounding "no!"  The story of why is told in the new documentary, "Carbon Nation", according to GreenBiz.

The movie's directors paint a wonderfully positive and non-partisan picture of the promise offered by 21st century technologies and practices that are already helping companies thrive.  They tell the story of how:

"We learned that Dow Chemical had spent just under $2 billion on energy-efficient programs since 1994 and had saved nearly $10 billion so far."

In another story, based in Texas, farmers banded together to form a cooperative that allowed them to establish new income streams via wind energy:

Now, farmers who were solely dependent on their hit-or-miss cotton crops had a steady source of income, derived from the turbines: a royalty that ranged from $3,000 to $15,000 per year, per turbine. This changed lives.

Who wouldn't be happy with this kind of financial boost? On top of the money, of course, these good Americans get bragging rights: they're helping lead America's way off of our dependence on dirty energy like oil and coal.  I'm sure their friends are proud of them!

This is the kind of morale boost America reads right now - and a majority of Americans are ready.  As Carbon Nation's director states:

We know, from hundreds of conversations across the nation, that we are not a polarized country. Especially when it comes to energy efficiency, national and energy security, and even clean energy. There is great agreement for healthy solutions in the middle. It’s just that we’re constantly being told we’re a polarized country, mainly because our political leaders are polarized and TV networks make more money selling the idea of a polarized country. And good people are believing this stuff, and acting as if we are polarized. The old self-fulfilling prophecy.

But when you get down to it, listen to people, respect their opinion, and be open-minded, you will find, as I have, that the middle 60% of the U.S. would be on board if they were hearing the right stories. We’ve been lucky enough to find the right stories while making “Carbon Nation.” The folks in our film are heroes. If enough people hear from them, see them in action, then we can achieve our biggest aspirations: to have this movie influence lawmaking, to inspire companies to tie life-cycle costs to all purchases, and to push clean energy so that it simply becomes cheaper than coal. That would be huge.

Cheers to the folks who have brought us Carbon Nation -- the more folks hear these types of stories, the more the movement to revitalize our economy via a job-creating clean energy revolution will gain momentum.

Read more>>
...

This Bodes Well - The Military Discovers Renewables and Efficiency Solutions

OK, here's a more optimistic piece -- about the military's lesson in the strategic importance of renewable energy on the battlefield: 

This was the first time a frontline commander had formally requested renewable energy backup in battle. Without alternative power sources, the memo continued, U.S. forces “will remain unnecessarily exposed” and will “continue to accrue preventable ... serious and grave casualties.” Put in civilian-speak: Too many of Zilmer’s troops were dying in fuel convoys, and the relentless gasoline demands of the diesel generators were partly to blame.

Renewable energy was not an environmental consideration for Zilmer, it was a tactical necessity—a matter of life and death, of victory or defeat.

This development bodes very well for our clean energy future.  Remember, game-changers like The Internet were first developed for military purposes...

Read the full article>>
...

A Lesson From An Encounter With Global Warming Deniers

Sitting in the Richmond, Virginia Airport one morning last week, my conversation with a couple of southern gentlemen turned to rising oil and gas prices and the increasingly precarious global energy situation. The conversation began innocently enough. We all agreed about how important it is that America gain freedom from foreign oil and move to a renewable energy-powered economy as quickly as possible.

I was taken a bit back, however, at their resistance when I casually added the additional benefit that a rapid transition to renewables would provide much-needed solutions to the accelerating problem that is global warming. Both southern gentlemen – a skinny red-headed professional in his 30’s and an executive type in his early 50’s – became visibly agitated at the mere mention of global warming. They put forth many of the typical Limbaughesque points to support their view that global warming doesn't exist, including:

• The jury is still out about how bad it’s going to be, so we can’t spend too much on the problem;
• Climate change is just part of a natural cycle;
  
• Volcanoes put more CO2 into the atmosphere than humans; and
  
• It’s all just related to ocean cycles.

Even when I argued that the jury is far from out -- and pointed to the vast scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming, as declared by the world’s top national academies of sciences -- they just shrugged this powerful pillar of credibility off. How? They (very) strongly believed that scientists (even prestigious National Academies) can’t be believed because their claims just reflect a political agenda.

Now I know there are plenty of Americans out there who share these beliefs, even in the highest levels of the U.S. government (embarrassingly enough). But that doesn't mean I still wasn't dumbstruck by the notion that for these two well-to-do men, it will take a flood from a melting glacier engulfing their Hummers before they are able to accept that global warming is a real threat to our environment, economy, and quality of life alike.

The Good News

There was a bright side to the story: these gentlemen were, both fortunately and interestingly, pro energy independence and pro renewable energy. They were also very anti our continued reliance on foreign oil, which they believed helps fuel the terrorists.

The So What

This conversation provided yet another indication that if many solutions to climate change and peak oil are one and the same (a rapid transition to clean renewable sources of energy), then to gain the broad societal support needed to solve both problems, we're a lot better off focusing on the goal of achieving energy independence than on the goal of solving global warming. To the conservative segments of society that these two gentlemen represented, communicating the importance of a transition to a renewable energy-based economy based on its potential to solving global warming flunked horribly. Many folks like this simply don't and won't believe global warming is a real problem that needs to be solved. So why force the matter with them when the patriotic, economic and security appeal for a transition to a renewable energy-based economy worked beautifully? They were all for it!