ook out any window more than a few stories high in Baltimore. Can you spot a vast untapped energy supply? Those stretches of mostly flat rooftops rolling out before your eyes are fallow ground for wind and solar farms!
Recently we started to bring farming back to the city through programs like School Farm and hundreds of community gardens. Now we can expand from produce to energy! Day after day, year after year, immense idle spaces sit in the sun and wind, squandering opportunities to reduce our energy bills and pollution.
Baltimore is blessed with roofs. Long commercial and industrial buildings, public buildings such as schools and offices, and even our iconic row homes sit waiting, block after block of roofs ready to be tapped.
How much energy could Baltimore city produce? Let’s do rough estimates on harvesting the energy potential of just 10% of the City’s 52,000 acres. These 5,200 acres of roof tops could produce enough energy for about 90,000 homes! Baltimore could be come a major energy supplier for the state.
Baltimore’s roofs can serve as a huge source of alternative energy in Maryland. Let’s take advantage of this resource sitting over our heads to generate cash for neighborhoods, local governments, and businesses. Our rooftop energy supply will reduce or even eliminate energy bills and could actually generate funds through selling extra power back to the energy grid.
How can we make this happen? Communities can use existing tax credits and the benefits of bulk purchasing to make this affordable. The state can redirect existing funds to do a pilot project to develop the community’s tools to make it easier for neighborhoods to harness rooftop potential. Businesses can use the tax credits and take advantage of their expansive spaces, and public buildings can lead by example.
In just a few years Baltimore could replace the holiday song “Up on the roof tops, click, click, click” with “Up on the roof tops, cash, cash, cash.”
Dru, your above ideas seem great. Where (on the internet and/or elsewhere) can one find additional information about the cost and benefits (i.e. expected energy output) of specific solar or wind projects for houses or larger buildings? Matt
Hi Dru–
Your blog post was forwarded to me by Suzanne Sangree of the Baltimore City Solicitor’s Office. She was a classmate of mine in the GBC Leadership Program this year. Your Big Vision for using City rooftops as a platform for solar power generation sounds remarkably similar to my vision statement that was the product of our Leadership Class vision exercise. I have since taken this issue on as a priority policy initiative that I am pushing for the City of Baltimore to create additional streams of revenue, and perhaps more importantly, to serve as a catalyst for new residential and commercial development on abandoned City properties and brownfield sites (i.e., enhanced affordability). I have formed a braintrust of knowledgeable and influential people to further crystalize and promote this policy initiative for the City of Baltimore. I have also undertaken a fair amount of research related to financing and structuring such an initiative. The City of Berkley’s public financing model is definitely worthy of consideration. I would be most interested in speaking with you further about your vision and exploring how we may be able to collaborate towards accelerating this vision into a bold new reality for the City of Baltimore. By all means, it is time to “Let the Sunshine In” in Baltimore! Please contact me at (410) 752-9700 or flee@tydingslaw.com. Best regards,
Franklin M. Lee
This audacious idea has health impact as well. Taking 90,000 homes – and some commercial and industrial properties as well – off our coal-based electricity grid helps to build the market for solar and wind energy and reduce the demand for coal. Energy generated from coal is energy which puts mercury and other pollutants into our air.
And another frame for this effort might be the Transition Town movement. Transition Towns seek to be energy independent. Transition Baltimore!
Residential solar (PV & Thermal) financing options are an innovative frontier. The density of Baltimore City would help to increase the economy of scale of the project from a third-party investor.
NREL put together a strong study of this subject: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy09osti/44853.pdf
Within it are strategies for:
-Third party ownership model
-Tax assessment model
-RECs that increase ROI on initial investment model
Go Green, B’more!
I think this is a great idea. I often think this as I look out from my office window on the boring gray and black – mostly unused – rooftops of downtown office buildings. I visited a great building in Portland, OR a few years ago that had a gorgeous green roof. They reduced their water runoff, cooled the building’s temperature and had a great new ‘party’ space too. Solar is another great idea for the rooftops. I say think bigger than 10%. Imagine 50%! Let’s go!
Thanks for all the great responses building on this idea. Matt – more information can be found many places but for Maryland information I would start with the Maryland Energy Administration. They have a good website.
For residential properties I believe there was a study done a while ago that suggested the rooftops themselves generally couldn’t structurally support a pv or thermal solar system without retrofitting, but that the party walls (which rise above the flat roofs) might be able to.
I’d recommend that some group come up with the funds to experiment on maybe 10 or so contiguous rowhomes, advertise for a block to get signatures from all of their residents to take part, and then test it out so we’ve got a test case to evaluate costs and benefits for different techniques.
Dru, you constantly amaze me with your ideas, vision and energy. Seems most respondents want to jump on this; now, how do we create a movement?
We need leadership, and it appears there is business interest. As a first principal, we must look at the cradle-to-cradle aspects of solar conversion so we don’t solve one problem by creating others.
For example, why do we emphasize individual applications rather than encourage collective actions such as neighborhood energy production? These micro stations could use less space and allow existing wires to be recycled. The latter could replace some mining. The micro facility would be a central point for rebating income from power sales, and the construction would not be as resource intensive as roof top installations.
In short, we need to develop a proposal that is as resource neutral as possible, has a viable means for implementation, is attractive to buyers, and has someone that wants to lead it. Got any ideas?
Bravo! Even painting a significant % of roof tops silver will reduce city temperature dramatically in the summer lowering AC usage and benefiting the harbor direct watershed area the city is.
Lets get some steam behind this idea, other cities are getting involved in urban PV and so should Baltimore. There are websites such as http://www.localcleanenergy.org that have ready information on community actions in the East Bay, CA. I am ready to help with this project, I believe distributed rooftop photovoltaics are the next industrial revolution! why shouldn’t Baltimore lead the way? We can do what we put our minds too.