Leonard Witt: Once far-fetched energy innovations now in reach

To The Daily Sun,

It’s likely that the 90-unit apartment complex in Laconia’s South End will be built. It will be happening at the same time that there is a major sea change in how energy will be generated for electrical and heating needs. Contractors, planning and zoning boards, homeowners, tenants and landlords should be paying attention.

Prices on renewable energy innovations have fallen so drastically that projects which seemed like expensive pipe dreams a decade ago are now cost competitive with fossil fuel-based energy and, in many cases, are now the most cost effective alternative.

That’s especially true when you have economy of scale at hand like with the 90-unit apartment complex. Anyone vested in that project should be pulling out a calculator and running some numbers. How much would it cost, for example, to provide geothermal heating and cooling for the units and what might the long term savings be on buildings’ heating and cooling bills. If the contractors could ally themselves with other nearby homeowners, everyone might prosper with a geo thermal project that could not be feasible without the 90 apartments. Policy changes, like New Hampshire lawmakers passing Community Power legislation in 2019, allow towns, counties and regions to work with the private sector to change how power is generated locally and regionally.

Some cutting edge apartment developments have rooftop solar panels and each apartment comes with a battery capable of storing energy that can be sold back to the grid or used when the power from the grid goes down, as often happens in the North Country. If enough homes, apartments, commercial and governmental interests join together you can have “virtual power plants” which supplement the massive power plants.

In the 90-apartment construction plan, every tenant should have a place to plug in their electric vehicles which, within the next 10 years, many of the tenants will be driving. The era of the combustion energy is quickly coming to an end.

With the Biden administration looking to improve infrastructure, attack global warming and putting more people to work, money will be available to help underwrite some of these ideas. Nationally, increased renewable production will mean even lower prices and more technology advances. Embracing the renewable energy revolution will help tenants and homeowners live better lives, ensure contractors higher profits and allow our towns, cities and state to become less reliant on power companies that control our destiny from afar.

Leonard Witt

Sandwich Climate Action Coalition Steering Committee