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Promoting Renewable Energy and Sustainability
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To become a sustainable community, New Castle County must rethink the way energy is used, distributed, and generated. The County must also look more closely at the opportunities to promote renewable energy.
As an early adopter of solar energy, my wife and I have been generating about 90 percent of the energy our home uses since 2008. Support for more distributed renewable energy on homes, on formerly contaminated sites, on public buildings, in county parks, and in other areas of higher energy demand in New Castle County is needed. Distributed renewable energy works best when located where the energy load occurs. Siting renewable generation where energy load is highest provides significant efficiency advantages over more remote sites (such as Ag Land in the SR Zoning district) that require transmission of power over long distances and it helps balance the grid demand in high energy use areas (potentially reducing the need for rolling blackouts during excessively high energy consumption periods). New Castle County can continue to review its code to promote the development of renewable energy and ensure this code is effectively implemented. For example, while state code prohibits newer maintenance corporations from prohibiting solar, many older communities were grandfathered and can still prohibit solar. The county should work to educate these older homeowners and urge them to remove any restrictions as part of the maintenance corporation assistance program. To achieve this goal of sustainability, I propose that New Castle County develop a comprehensive community renewable energy plan as part of their land use planning efforts and their operation of county facilities. This plan would be an important part of a push toward sustainable NCC communities. The purpose of a Community Energy Plan is to: define the renewable energy goals countywide; describe the energy policies needed to keep NCC economically competitive and environmentally committed; and to help ensure secure, clean energy sources for the future. Goals include:
This plan will be developed to leverage Delaware’s Sustainable Energy Utility and other grant opportunities along with private investment to implement improvements at County facilities, in new developments, and for retrofits in established communities, businesses, or on properties of nonprofit entities |
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Your voice matters, please feel free to contact me at:
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Send a contribution to Friends of Dave Carter
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Friends of Dave Carter
P.O. Box 591 Middletown, DE 19709 Email: Info@CarterforNCC.org |
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