Energy / Long Beach, California: 2010 Smarter City - Energy

These efforts, among others, have earned Long Beach a place among the NRDC’s 2010 Smarter Cities. Particularly noteworthy are the city’s creative solar initiatives, which are slated to bring Long Beach closer to its goal of 10 megawatts of local solar capacity by 2020.

Aggressively Seeking Solar

“2006 was our first dabble into solar,” says Meredith Reynolds, the city’s Sustainability Coordinator, when the city invested in a 750 kilowatt roof installation on the city’s convention center. Generating more than a million kilowatt hours each year, it was “one of the largest public facility solar projects on the West Coast at the time,” says Reynolds. Beginning in 2008, the city’s solar installations moved beyond rooftops to harness energy from unexpected surfaces including parking lots, trash cans and even a local dog park.

Already in need of an upgrade to replace outdated cash-only parking lot “honor boxes”, in 2008 the city’s Redevelopment Agency installed pay stations at three downtown Long Beach pay stations that use the power of the sun to process cash, coins, and credit/debit cards. Trash cans around the city got an update as well in 2008, when the city installed new side-by-side recycling and trash containers in the high traffic areas of Downtown, Bixby Knolls and Belmont Shore. When the trash containers are full, they use solar energy to compress the contents, 150 gallons worth, into a 32-gallon bin, reducing trash collection energy and costs.

In 2009, the city worked with the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency to turn a vacant lot on Pacific Avenue into the “K-9 Corner Dog Park,” which generates 100 percent of its energy needs from six photovoltaic panels on the roof of an overhead trellis. The panels collect up to 540 kilowatts that power lights in the park at night.

Possibly providing the biggest bang for their buck, in 2008 the city also installed six “Solar Trees” at the Long Beach Airport. The “trees” are each about the height of a telephone pole, says Reynolds, and have two or three PV panels that tilt up and down along with the movement of the sun to maximize energy collection. The system generates 15,000 kilowatt hours annually, saving $5,000 in energy costs, and will offset nearly half a million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions over its 25 year life, says Reynolds.

A Great City for Solar

To help make projects like these possible, the city of Long Beach has implemented a Solar and Sustainability Task Force, which has succeeded in reducing wait time for permit approval and lowered permit fees by 22 percent. In addition to a host of rebates for energy upgrades that are available to businesses and residents, Task Force efforts helped Long Beach earn the ranking of number 13 out of 131 cities in a Sierra Club study looking at solar fees in Northern California. To date, at least 145 completed solar installations in the city that have been cashed in for rebates.

In case rebates and reduced permit fees don’t do the trick, the city is ramping up its efforts to encourage solar projects atop the 270 million square feet of private roof space in Long Beach, starting with a drawing for a free home energy makeover sponsored through Southern California Edison. To be eligible, homeowners will complete an energy audit through the utility in the Fall of 2010. “We will choose one by random in every council district,” says Reynolds. If selected, Reynolds explains, the lucky homeowners just have to “find a contractor, get the work done, and send the bills to Southern California Edison.” Not bad.