Solar in Jersey City - Here and Now

The time is right for Solar in New Jersey, and in Jersey City we have a lot of opportunity.  Whether you are a condo owner, home owner, or have a small or large business, if you own a rooftop or parking lot with unobstructed sunlight, you have a money making machine.  Add to that the local jobs you create, and the environmental benefits...what's not to like?

Cruise around Jersey City from above with Google Maps and you’ll see dozens of solar installations, from the 30 panels on my rooftop on Wayne Street to the giant installations atop Macy’s and ShopRite.  We can expand this to hundreds of installations and make a significant dent in the city’s Carbon Footprint, reduce the Urban Heat Island Effect, and create hundreds of local jobs in the process.

If you want to go solar, first make sure your roof is in good shape.  Panels last 30 years, and so will a good commercial roof.  A typical residential roof needs resurfacing every 15 years, so you’ll need to replace your roof once during that time, but why do it twice?  And consider combining with a green roof, which can last 50-100 years, provide much needed insulation, and reduce storm water overflow.

Second, decide whether you want to own the system, or simply rent your roof.  This second option, called a PPA (Power Purchase Agreement), lets a company install panels on your roof, and sell you the power at a specified price over the next 20 years.  You’ll generally save 20-30% on your electric bill now, and even more in the future.

On Tuesday, November 4th, 7pm at City Hall, we’ll have three presentations giving an overview of solar installation and financing, how community solar can accelerate installations in your neighborhood, and advocacy opportunities for legislation to encourage and streamline solar in Jersey City.  Event details:  SJC Eat Meet and Talk

There’s more information on Solar in our Resources page in the Energy section.

Don’t own a roof?  Don’t have time for advocacy?  Still want to lower your carbon footprint and support Clean, Renewable energy?  You can choose an Energy Supplier that uses Wind and Solar Farms to power your apartment and only pay a few extra dollars per month.  Track down your PSEG account number and you can make the switch online in just a few minutes.  Learn about the NJ Clean Power Choice program here:  Clean Energy Providers.

A Sustainable Network of Community Gardens in Jersey City

Sustainable JC is launching a new project, under the generous and collaborative umbrella of the Good Food Now! initiative, involving Jersey City's community gardens. A first step encourages existing community garden stewards to create a free account on Farming Concrete and use their BARN tool for logging garden data. Most of the city's community gardens are already listed - check it out. The use of the tool was made possible through Sustainable JC's relationship with Farming Concrete, developers of the tool, which is being deployed primarily in New York, through the Design Trust's Five Boro Farms project. Sustainable JC is initiating the use of this tool in New Jersey through the Jersey City pilot.

This is what the current distribution of community gardens look like, after listing them on Farming Concrete - not bad but we need more of them !

Why is it important to monitor and keep accurate track of community garden parameters? Just like in any successful enterprise, measurable indicators make it much easier to manage and improve the gardens' efficiency and impact, increasing their benefits to the community. We all know that there are not nearly enough community gardens in Jersey City, helping to address affordable community access to fresh and healty food for all ("food security"). Thus, it becomes increasingly important to sustainably MAXIMIZE the benefits of the existing ones.

A more detailed explanation of why community garden data collection is important can be found here and by watching the following video:

[embed]https://vimeo.com/69500654[/embed]

One of the goals of SJC's Good Food Now! inititiative is to connect a comprehensive community garden network for Jersey City, initiate exchanges (know-how, seeds, success stories etc.) and hopefully make available a "quantitative platform" compelling enough to attract funding to support a city-wide community garden / sustainable landscape design improvement project.  The team working on this aims to provide technical assistance to gardeners to help maximize productivity and sustainability of garden sites, while mitigating and reducing urban contamination. A website for this aspect of the project is currently under construction.

To participate in this project, please follow these steps:

• STEP ONE: Use the form provided below to contact the project coordinator with the name and location of your community garden, to make sure your garden is listed. A rough estimation of the area surface of the garden would be greatly appreciated, along with a description of the physical limits of the garden.
• STEP TWO: Go to farmingconcrete.org and register for a user account. Do not worry about the Five Borough reference, Jersey City has its own community garden circle already setup inside the tool.

If you have any questions about this project or the online tool, please feel free to contact the project leader using the form provided below.

[contact-form to='alina.tarmu@yahoo.com' subject='Farming Concret'][contact-field label='Name' type='name' required='1'/][contact-field label='Email' type='email' required='1'/][contact-field label='Website' type='url'/][contact-field label='Comment' type='textarea' required='1'/][/contact-form]

Lastly,

Sustainable community gardens can integrate no / low cost solutions like rainwater collection for irrigation and composting for enriching and treating the soil. This project is connected to two other SJC Projects: 1) Green Infrastructure / Rain Gardens +ART Campaign / Rain Barrels and 2) Community Composting. We are avid supporters of Bokashi, a fermentation approach to food waste recycling, which provides multiple benefits for urban landscapes and which can be a stand alone approach or be integrated into traditional backyard and community garden composting systems

Totally Solar Powered Community in Annandale NJ

Richard Meurer believes that the United States should end our dependence on foreign oil. In a solar powered community in Annandale, NJ, he's done just that.  Everything, even HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), is powered by a 322kW solar farm right on the property. Renters benefit from well insulated homes with high efficiency electric heating and cooling, and 10% discount from the utility electric rate.

The public ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 5-7 p.m. at the Village Green at Annandale, and includes a random drawing for a residential solar package.  In the press release, Meurer reports that the residential units are more than 50% occupied.

The development also includes retail and commercial units, and is walking distance from a NJ Transit stop on the Raritan Valley line, which makes this the kind of walkable neighborhood with public transit that we see happening more and more in Jersey City.

Meurer, in addition to owning Meurer Development, also founded Green Power Energy, a solar firm that handles residential, commercial and solar farm installations.  Their installations span New Jersey, right down to the Jersey Shore, where he built zero utility units that run on a combination of geothermal heat pumps and rooftop solar.

When asked if renters in Annandale are receptive to energy efficiency and solar power, Meurer says, "I was surprised, the younger generation really believes in renewable energy.  Everyone is excited about it."  But at times it can be a struggle:  some buyers of his Jersey Shore homes listened to his explanation of the utility savings of his properties compared to others in the neighborhood.   Even though the purchase price was the same, they remarked, "Can I get one built the regular way?".

The Annandale site was an old lumbermill.  Meurer reduced the energy cost of construction by reusing foundations and building materials.  By owning both the development firm, and the solar farm, he was able to take advantage of federal investment incentives and keep his total construction costs level with standard construction, but the long term savings are enormous.  This is another example of real estate development that both greatly reduces ecological impact and makes a profit.

Can we do this in Jersey City?  Open land is scarce, but rooftops and parking lots aren't.  Wall mounted panels and solar windows for high rises are a little more cutting edge but already financially viable.  Higher density development makes being 100% solar a challenge, but every watt generated by solar means one less watt needed from nuclear or fossil fuels.  Advances and price cuts in insulation, HVAC systems, solar electric and solar hot water have made solar, geothermal, and energy efficiency both possible and profitable, with just one caveat:  buyers and renters need to include utility costs in their decision making.

Like Rich Meurer, we all have the power to take our beliefs and make them real through big plans or small daily choices.  There are plenty of solar success stories in Jersey City already, and more being planned:  from single homes, to big box retail, to community collaborations in Eco-Districts.  Tell us your story in the comments below.

For further reading:

• Solar powered community opens (Meurer Development press release)
• New Jersey historic community goes solar - solarpowerworldonline.com
• Solar Powered Transit Village - nj.com
• Brooklyn Passive House - zeroenergy.com

And keep checking our Resources page in the Energy section.

Spotlight on East Coast Greenway Cleanup

Great news for JC bicyclists and pedestrians – the section of the East Coast Greenway connecting Jersey City and Newark is now clear of trash, weeds, and other debris thanks to the work of NJDOT! Local citizens and advocacy groups successfully brought attention to the neglected path along Truck Rt 1&9 a few weeks ago, even earning some air time on NJTV. As you can see, the path had become nearly impassable with overgrown weeds and garbage.

After some attention from NJDOT, it’s now smooth sailing on the approach to the Hackensack River Bridge. With beautiful fall weather just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to check out this newly spruced up path.

We at SJC think this path is a really great first step towards improving and greening the gateway to Jersey City. Imagine if the next iteration of this trail was capable of collecting stormwater runoff from the highway? A rain garden strip like the one pictured below would help filter pollutants and beautify the path, adding some much-needed green space to Jersey City!

In the meantime, go ahead and take a jog or bike ride across the Hackensack and Passaic Rivers along the East Coast Greenway. The path is accessible from the west side of Lincoln Park. Just take the loop until you reach the track field, where you’ll see a small bridge with a marked bike lane. You’ll cross over this and find your way onto some trails that will lead you to the entrance. It can get a little confusing, but don’t give up!

Now take a right and continue on as far as you’d like. Be aware that there are a few dicey crossings and sections if going all the way to Newark, but if you’re alert and prepared, you’ll make it just fine. For a map of this route and the rest of the ECG (which stretches all the way from Florida to Maine!), check out their website: http://www.greenway.org/

As a new project leader with SJC, I'm excited to start working with you to improve Jersey City. To learn more about what SJC is doing around Green Infrastructure in Jersey City, visit our Project page, and get involved by filling out our Volunteer Welcome Survey. After you fill out the survey, send a quick email to info@sustainablejc.org with Lyndsey-GI in the subject line.

Greener Buildings For Jersey City - What Will It Take ?

SJC is deepening it's focus on Greener Buildings this season, both residential and commercial buildings, in an effort to share actionable information and help JC stakeholders connect-the-dots to transform our built environment toward a more climate resilient city.  The opportunity to retrofit existing buildings and set new standards for new construction, will not only provide substantial ROI for owners and occupants, but avoid continued negative impacts to our environment. It can also be a fabulous way to ignite an economic boon for local green economy construction and building professionals, if Jersey City takes on a plan to retrofit our urban landscape with advanced technologies now available, being implemented all around us.  There are already substantial training and apprenticeship programs that have been underway by trade unions, who have recognized this market imperative for some time - why not put a stake in the ground here and now as we endeavor to make Jersey City one of the best mid-size cities in America ?

Quick Context -

• While global warming and greenhouse gas emissions are terms that are generally associated with industry and transportation, the BUILDINGS where we work, shop, eat, go to school and live, significantly compromise the integrity of our natural resources by the effects of daily heating, cooling, ventilation and water use, all of which require the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.  BUILDINGS account for 39 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions.
• BUILDINGS in the United States also account for 40 percent of total energy use, 12 percent of total water consumption and 68 percent of total electricity consumption.  Am fond of saying you can't manage what you don't measure, so in my view these are useful benchmarks.  Now what ?  While these metrics (which are growing in the wrong direction) and the behavior that drives them, cannot be reversed overnight, it seems to me that GREENER MORE ENERGY EFFICIENT BUILDINGS, is a no brainer - not to be disrespectful.  (some references to these stats - US EPA, US Energy Information Administration, NRDC, US Green Building Council)

In partnership with Councilwoman At Large Joyce Watterman, SJC supported a June Public Forum on Enhancing JC's Construction Division.  There will be a follow-up to this discussion scheduled for some time in September.  That meeting was very positive and the HEDC is working very hard to enhance the process of getting good building projects done, but we have to go further.  We must  begin to address the policies, ordinances and municipal recommendations that are all on record here; some are either not current or allow lowest end of standards range to persist, and some need implementation or amendments to close gaps - frankly, these guideposts are sometimes even at odds with one another.  We must institutionalize a Jersey City best practices framework for a sustainable and climate resilient built environment, and it must include changes to our building code.

I would say Jersey City is in the 'somewhat camp' - we have thought about this SOMEWHAT, but . . . THERE ARE NO INCENTIVES OR MANDATES IN PLACE WHICH WILL MAKE GREENER BUILDINGS IN JERSEY CITY A SIGNIFICANT REALITY ANYTIME SOON.  Fact is, this can change dramatically if folks worked together.

While those following our work know where we are headed on this - amped up education, new partnerships and working groups to help develop supportive policy proposals - this is a big conversation and would be great to know more of you who care about this topic.

Consider attending our next EAT, MEET, TALK! event on September 2nd, which is SJC's Monthly Meeting held at City Hall in Caucus Room #204.  Here's the link for more details -

http://sustainablejc.org/wordpress/ai1ec_event/sjc-monthly-meeting-eat-meet-talk/

Please consider digging in with us and joining this effort - it takes a great amount of collaboration and collective action to have something like this actually track successfully. Your engagement is very much appreciated, and everyone has something to offer that can help move this agenda forward.