EPA Article Highlights U.S. Communities That Are Setting Working Examples in Renewable Energy Generation

From using solar and wind energy, to pursuing carbon footprint reduction goals, several communities throughout the U.S. are implementing measures to operate more sustainably.

From communities to countries, an increasing number of stakeholders are taking note of the benefits of renewable energy. In the process of adopting more technologies that enable sustainability, industry growth will provide improved outcomes at increasingly lower cost to end-users.

“EPA Green Power Communities both large and small are proving they can have a big impact by using green power. For instance in Evanston, Illinois, the residents and businesses and the local government collectively use more than 228 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually, making up more than 30 percent of Evanston’s total electricity usage. The local government runs on 100 percent green power and generates power from the Evanston Water Treatment Facility’s rooftop solar energy system. Washington, D.C., is the largest EPA Green Power Community in terms of total green power usage, with more than one billion kilowatt-hours of green power being used by District residents, businesses, institutions and government entities. Collectively, green power now supplies more than 12 percent of total electricity use in the District.”

Energy generation, however, is just one of many components that drive sustainable communities. Whether it concerns healthy living or an improved bottom line for businesses, factors like waste management, sustainable agriculture, and water treatment become elements of working models. After all, problems of pollution, wasted resources, and resource scarcity go beyond energy generation. Yet they still impact whether communities can be sustainable or not.

Team Gemini approaches projects with efforts to tie as many sustainability components together as efficiently and economically-viable as possible. This is to maximize operational savings and resource generation, but also to make the model work for the long term. Operational and maintenance costs are directly impacted by how a sustainability project is designed, and resource generation contributes to how soon it becomes profitable. A project that involves only solar PV panels or wind farms may constitute a more simple operational and economic design, but when it comes to more complex solutions for things like anaerobic digestion and waste recovery, all manner of details need to be considered, from the feedstock recipe, water quality and treatment, existing infrastructure, and outputs like electricity, heat, compost, fertilizer, and other resources.

Ultimately, the right solution implements a balance between cost effectiveness, value generation, and implementing the proper set of technologies that won’t short-change the returns on investment for the Triple Bottom Line.

To learn more about Team Gemini’s diverse technology solutions, visit http://teamgemini.us/technologies/.

For the original article on the EPA blog, you can check out http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2015/04/communities-are-leading-the-way-on-renewable-energy/.