Appalachian Institute for Renewable Energy
Pioneering community-owned renewable energy
The solar installation was completed on Monday, August 10th. Now we await only Duke Energy to connect the system to the grid. The advocacy community uses the term “slow walking” to describe how long that may take. Only Duke knows, but hopefully soon. The garden is producing healthy food, ideas, healing vibes, and is ready
This guiding question borrows from the title of a collection of essays, “WHAT ARE people FOR” by agrarian writer, Wendell Berry. It is provocative because it calls our values into question and challenges assumptions. Our conversations and activities at AIRE have recently asked a similar question out of the same vein– What is solar for?
With an enrollment of 550 students, Ancilla College may just have more solar per student than any other college. I haven’t actually verified that because my point isn’t quantitative. Rather, it’s qualitative. It’s about doing what is necessary and what is urgent. DOING. It’s about doing what our youth know that we must and that’s
Think your electric utility knows what’s best for you and the public interest? Your utility is probably not looking out for you nearly as much as it’s looking out for its profits and executives. Can we imagination a better way? Could these big utilities be equitably transformed to “public utilities?” (1) We’re at a real
I’ve just drafted a wide-ranging paper dealing critically with our present incumbent energy system, its undemocratic characteristics and ecologically dangerous methods, and on the other hand an energy transition that “ought to be.” I’m putting forth the argument that energy transition, in addition to being the more obviously technical project, is also a social project.
Because it’s cold outside, but mostly for other reasons, I’ve been thinking about quilts, so I wanted to write about them as a reflection on the past year and in contemplation of the new one upon us. My family made one of those “barn quilts” that we see so much of in rural country for
Friday, December 21st, 2018 at 5:23 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. That’s the moment the sun stands still way down south at the Tropic of Capricorn, about 26 degrees south latitude. Our star gives its majority light to the southern hemisphere and us our darkness in which to rest and reflect. The solar system is big
We’ve posted previously (here, here and here) on our admiration for the leadership of Poor Handmaid’s Center at Donaldson, up in Indiana as they took action to walk their talk on renewable energy and creation care. Adam Thada, the Director of Ecological Relations just issued the first Provincial report on the financial and ecological returns
AIRE has spent a solid decade now experimenting with ways to develop community-based renewable energy projects. We consider honesty to be a virtue and if we walk that talk we’d have to say that we haven’t made a much of a dent in the dominant, dirty, deadly energy system we set out to help change.
Nowadays most folks can’t get from point A to point B without their GPS. There’s no sense of geography or direction. Who can intuitively point to north let alone describe the difference between “true north” and “magnetic north?” Add to that the likely fact that many folks can’t name the 50 states or identify them