More offices aim for the sun

By CHRIS BAGLEY - Staff Writer | Saturday, April 5, 2008 10:08 PM PDT ∞

Prompted by tax incentives, rapidly rising energy costs, new legal restrictions and public pressure, more businesses are taking steps to limit their use of electricity and natural resources.

A key factor has been pressure from environmental advocates and increasingly sensitive consumers, who say that the burning of fossil fuels may be accelerating global warming, advocates and some business leaders say.

That is changing cost-benefit analyses because "going green" doubles as a selling point to customers and even vendors, said Bernadette Del Chiaro, a renewable-energy advocate with Environment California, which is backing an Assembly bill that would provide incentives for rooftop solar panels.

"The public really sees that and really embraces that," Del Chiaro said.

At least two North County business organizations are taking larger steps to encourage their members to conserve energy in ways big and small. The San Diego North Economic Development Corp. and the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce are compiling lists of local companies that recycle large quantities of material, use renewable resources, and meet certain thresholds for energy efficiency.

Some of the companies make products, such as solar panels, that save energy for customers. A growing number are in unrelated industries but have "greened" their own operations or facilities.

Out of the sky

They include the Martin Corp., which replaced some of its electric lighting with specialized skylights at its Escondido office in November; Aqua Lung in Vista, where several employees began telecommuting last year; and Macy's, which recently installed solar panels on the roof of its store at The Promenade in Temecula.

Another is the Lund Team, a real estate brokerage based in Carlsbad since 1980. Broker Carlton Lund "greened" the business when he bought and moved into an office condominium in the Bressi Ranch development, off Palomar Airport Road in eastern Carlsbad, earlier this year.

In most respects, Lund's condo is similar to the others in the surrounding office park. It incorporates recycled materials such as synthetic fibers in carpets, faux-suede upholstery and other furnishings, material that otherwise could've ended up in landfills.

The bathroom in the 1,770-square-foot office has what's known as a "dual-flush" commode or ---- as Lund quips ---- a "pee-poop" toilet. One of the two modes uses 1.8 gallons of water per flush, enough to sweep away solid feces; the other uses just 1.1 gallons, enough for tissue or liquid waste. The flush handle can be flipped upward or downward, depending on which is needed.

And solar panels mounted atop several of the condos feed electricity into Southern California's power grid, limiting the amount of natural gas that large generating stations have to burn.

But Lund took an extra step that limits the amount of electricity that's involved by installing a natural lighting system in the roof of the building, and uses electric lighting mainly during the rare evening it's needed.

Made by Vista-based SolaTube Inc., each of the 11 units includes a southward-facing parabolic mirror that funnels light down through glass tubes and then through the ceiling. Lund estimates that it will pay for itself after about eight years, based on 50 percent reductions in his electricity use over the last few months and an initial cost of about $11,000 after tax incentives.

"It's not inexpensive to do these, but once they're put in, the sun is paying dividends for us," Lund said, standing in a pool of the light on an overcast afternoon last month. "All of us have to do our part for the green machine."

Rebates

Only about 10 percent of office space in San Diego County is owner-occupied, said Vince Mudd, owner of San Diego Office Interiors, which helps client businesses convert to efficient and renewable energy. As a result, most businesses aren't able to take control of their energy use as fully as Lund has.

Still, growing numbers of offices, factories and warehouses are taking advantage of rebates provided under the two-year-old California Solar Initiative, according to Del Chiaro and data from the Public Utilities Commission. Homeowners applied for rebates on about 32 megawatts of planned solar generating capacity, enough to fully power about 20,000 average homes. Schools, businesses and other buildings applied for rebates on 177 megawatts of planned capacity, according to the utilities agency.

Those numbers, which include about 18 megawatts of capacity for nonresidential buildings in San Diego County, are larger than the combined totals of all solar-power systems installed since the mid-1990s, when the state began to offer incentives, Del Chiaro said.

Businesses would have to continue to install solar power at that increasing rate for solar to grow from the tiny niche it occupies today. Solar energy generated just 0.3 percent of the state's electricity supply in 2006, according to the California Energy Commission.

Meanwhile, the state government has mandated that the state's utilities produce 20 percent of their electricity from solar and other renewable sources by 2010, up from just 6.2 percent in 2006, according to the energy agency's annual report released in February. The state is also encouraging them to meet voluntary targets of 33 percent by 2017.

A handful of giant production facilities, as large as those that produce electricity from natural gas, could probably play a major role in that transformation. A collection of solar panels proposed for warehouse rooftops in Fontana, for example, could alone produce 250 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 160,000 households.

Greasing the wheels

But a few huge projects like that may not be enough to meet the 2010 and 2017 goals. The state's solar initiative aims to get solar panels onto 1 million rooftops of homes, government offices and businesses.

Specialized financing has begun to facilitate that transition for schools, government agencies and businesses. In one such arrangement, a power-purchase agreement, the finance company covers the entire cost of an installation and ongoing maintenance and charges the customer for the energy the panels produce.

It ends up being 15 to 20 cents a kilowatt-hour, usually a couple of pennies cheaper than the customer usually pays for power, said Alexander von Welczeck, a Marin County financier whose company, Solar Power Partners, is funding installations this year for the Valley Center Municipal Water District and UC San Diego. What's more, von Welczeck said, the agreements usually call for rates to increase for 20 years by a predetermined annual percentage, typically between 3.5 percent and 6 percent, a contrast to utility rates that may rise by 1 percent one year and by 10 percent the next.

Power-purchase agreements are particularly helpful for midsized companies that want to use solar energy but don't want to tie up $1 million or more of their own capital on top of their rooftop or parking garage, said Peter Duchon, an Oceanside-based installer of solar panels.

"I think that's accelerated the ... commercial market," Duchon said.

Contact staff writer Chris Bagley at (760) 740-5444 or cbagley@nctimes.com. Comment at www.nctimes.com.