The story behind Grays Harbor Paper is truly amazing. It reads like that all-American story of a community rallying to overcome great odds, except it gets an update for the green revolution. Grays Harbor is a testament to the validity of the triple-bottom line; in this paper company’s case, that translates to people, paper, planet.

Does everybody remember the spotted owl? Well, in 1991 this creature was officially named a threatened species by the U.S. government, and quickly became a controversial symbol for the environmental movement. That pressed harder on the brakes for an already slow logging industry in Washington State, in whose old-growth forests the spotted owl makes its home. (more…)

Some cities are just so big that it’s hard to make a noticeable dent in their capacity for pollution and fossil-fueled energy. But it’s not for lack of trying. A city like San Francisco can have nearly 2,000 solar power installations and still only get a small percentage of its electricity from solar. San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general, are like a Mecca for solar power, from Silicon Valley to Berkeley to Alcatraz Island. But it’s in the tiny town of Nipton, California that we see a true solar makeover today.

Nipton announced on Thursday that it had installed enough solar power to supply a staggering 85 percent of the town’s demand for electricity. Okay, so this little town on the edge of the Mojave National Preserve has a population of 38 people, but it still may be the nation’s most solar-powered city per capita. And they’re doing it with some cutting-edge technology.

The town installed an 85-kilowatt concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system in which rows of mirrors collect and focus solar energy onto solar cells. This increases the productivity from each solar cell by maximizing the amount of solar irradiance each receives. The mirrors and PV cells are ground-mounted and use a tracking system to follow the sun as it traverses the sky each day. (more…)

Your Guide to Sustainable Community Development: Following Tracy to the Emerald City

The city of Tracy sets a fine example of how direct action at the state level can have a noticeable impact on building sustainability, conservation, energy efficiency and a better environment in a community.

Tracy began as a small city along the Pacific Railroad Line between Stockton and Sacramento. Over the years, the rapid population growth of San Francisco and other Bay Area cities spilled over into Tracy. More than 80,000 people now call Tracy their home, and that increasingly dense population makes building a clean and green city tantamount to maintaining Tracy’s long tradition of lush, fertile landscape and productive agriculture.

That’s where California’s Emerald Cities Program comes in. Developed to provide comprehensive green support to municipalities, Emerald Cities essentially creates a road map to sustainability. Tracy has joined Riverside as one of two cities participating in the pilot phase of the program. 2008 saw the inauguration of the Citywide Sustainability Efforts movement, leading in 2009 to the start of the Emerald Tracy program. (more…)