Green Year

Aww, shucks. On message and everthang:

Burning Man goes green

Local gearheads turned reluctant environmentalists?

By Steven T. Jones

Burning Man founder Larry Harvey chooses the theme for each year’s event — such as 2002’s the Floating World and last year’s Hope and Fear — but it usually doesn’t have much impact on the basic character of the event. This year’s theme, Green Man, is different. More after the jump

Today, prepping the board members individually on the solar project for Gerlach and Lovelock, in advance of the board meeting tomorrow, at which time I hope to get formal sign off.

It’s pretty incredible and somewhat complex, so I should probably capture the players and parts:

1. Using rebates and tax incentives, a burner friendly CEO of the world’s only renewable energy VC firm (Renewable Ventures) will bankroll purchase/installation of 150+/-KW of solar power in Gerlach, and perhaps the same in Lovelock. The town will see the power bill on the school, fire station, senior center etc drop 90%+ percent.
2. BRAF could/will work as a fiscal part of the puzzle, delivering non-profit status to the project, and recouping perhaps a steady stream of revenue in return.

3. BWB provides low cost labor/social engineering, and gets a hella cool volunteer project.
4. Sierra Power’s Solar Generations project ( ably led by Scott Gerz ) does a big conservation/efficiency push in Gerlach on Earth Day, dropping the towns usage of energy 20-40% in a weekend. Cost to residents? Zero.  They’ll also do the tech specs for the racks, making them elevated for safety on the playa and easily converted to shaded parking in Gerlach. They’ll use the exercise as a training ground for their engineers, and hopefully help get a few DPW folks certified as installers. Waaay better than being a barrista in the off season.
5. Coolingman donors ( and all other participants ) will drive through town to the event and be able to see their dollars in action, perhaps enjoying a bit of shade from the panels–some will go in before the event, the rest after.

6. Burning Man gets to help gift Gerlach/Lovelock with low cost juice, and gets a very accessible story about taking our gifting values off the playa.

7. Renewable Ventures gets a story about large scale application of their work.

8. Sierra Power gets a wonderful showcase of renewable energy.

9. Gerlach ( fingers crossed ) gets to be, if we scale it enough, the first town in the world to generate more energy than they use.

10. We reduce or eliminate 2,000,000 watt hours of fossil fuel based global warming gasses from the atmosphere. By the end of the year. At no cash cost to anyone.

A gift, given, gives, and moves on to repeat itself. I really hope we can make this work. There must be a thousand snags; time to sharpen my machete.