North Carolina—A Case Study in Grass Roots

North Carolina is providing a positive lesson in how grass roots activism can affect energy policy and business opportunities at the state level. Clean energy businesses are being attracted to the Tar Heel State in part because of imaginative energy policy there, and numerous citizens’ groups have had a role in steering that policy in the right direction.

Some of the milestones in the state’s road to renewables include:

• 12.5% Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard (2007/2008)
• 35% State renewable energy tax credits
• Improvements to State interconnection standards (2008)
• Solar access law (2007)
• State Green Business Fund

It’s this kind of legislative and regulatory climate that has helped make North Carolina attractive to clean energy businesses. Last month Sencera International Corporation of Charlotte announced it would construct a $36 million facility in Mecklenburg County for production of solar cells and assembly of PV modules. The State’s forward-looking energy policy, as well as a $62,000 One North Carolina Fund grant and other incentives, were instrumental in the company’s decision.

“We considered several different states and foreign countries,” said Britt Weaver, COO of Sencera. “We’re grateful that our state and local public officials recognize the potential of both our company and what the solar industry brings to the city of Charlotte and North Carolina. We wanted to be the first company to produce large-scale modules in what is now the progressive state in the region.”

In another development, the utility Duke Energy signed a Power Purchase Agreement earlier this year with SunEdison, in which it agreed to purchase all the energy produced by the Davidson County solar company. When completed, the SunEdison facility will be the largest PV farm in the U.S. at 21 megawatts. Carolina Solar Energy has installed large PV systems to help rural electric membership cooperatives, and Southern Energy Management and others are doing brisk business in residential solar.

What’s the connection with grass roots activism? It’s a positive form of domino theory. Companies are loath to locate to, or expand in, a state viewed as unhelpful or even hostile to their business. (A relevant comparison would be that of Colorado and Massachusetts; when the Danish company Vestas was searching for a home for its U.S. wind turbine blade facility, it took note of the ongoing 7-year battle between a developer and local moneyed opposition groups over the nation’s first proposed offshore wind farm off the coast of the Bay State, and plumped for the more welcoming midwestern state). So states with enlightened energy policies and regulations can attract the new wave of clean energy companies and their investment dollars. But state governments tend not to rely solely on economic analyses and policy studies, no matter how positive, to make needed changes; only when such analyses are supported by strong demand from their constituents do elected officials typically feel confident enough to actually implement sweeping policy improvements.

It was, for example, a combination of a two-year effort by the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA) to educate key leaders and a growing chorus of demands for clean energy support from the grass roots that persuaded the State to act. Ivan Urlaub is Executive Director of NCSEA, an organization that bridges the gap between the people, the providers and the pols. He believes that the most valuable contribution the people can make is to demand that long-standing barriers to solar be removed, and when they are, to make the move to solar themselves.

“One of the most important things grass roots solar supporters have done in North Carolina is to practice what they preach,” says Ivan, “by installing solar PV, solar thermal and energy efficiency solutions at home and at work. Beginning in 2006, North Carolinians supportive of solar power from the environmental, faith, justice and low-income communities turned out in record numbers at Utilities Commission public hearings, and sent e-mails and placed calls to their state legislators. Without their voice, North Carolina would not have passed its RPS law and would not be considering energy efficiency…

“It started with the people asking our government why we use so little solar and no energy saving solutions. Now that our Utilities Commission and General Assembly have shown leadership in beginning to answer these questions with aggressive policies, it must now continue with the people choosing to use these solutions to reaffirm that our leaders made the right decisions. From what we have learned through our industry surveys, people are doing so in droves.”

Ivan has learned for himself the relative value of negative and positive advocacy. “Opposing coal power plants, nuclear power plants and offshore drilling does not create a market for sustainable energy solutions,” he says. “North Carolina sustainable energy advocates have developed a strong understanding of the link between becoming a sustainable energy consumer and the political power they can derive from a healthy, rapidly growing sustainable energy industry.”

So to judge by the North Carolina example, citizens making concerted noises and demanding action from government can make their state a healthier place for clean energy businesses—and for themselves.