Green Makes The Pie Bigger In Spain

Spain's Answer to Unemployment: Go Greener Leader in Renewable Energy Considers Subsidies, Mandates to Build Industry By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, September 24, 2009 MADRID -- As world leaders converge in Pittsburgh for a major economic summit this week, one of the biggest questions they face is this: How do you begin to replace the millions of jobs destroyed by the Great Recession, now that the worst of the crisis has potentially passed? Here on the sun-drenched and windy Iberian Peninsula, Spain thinks it has an answer: create new jobs and save the Earth at the same time. Green jobs have become a mantra for many governments, including that of the United States. But few nations are better positioned -- or motivated -- to fuse the fight against recession and global warming than Spain. The country is already a leader in renewable fuels through $30 billion in public support and has been cited by the Obama administration as a model for the creation of a green economy. Spain generates about 24.5 percent of its electricity through renewable sources, compared with about 7 percent in the United States. But with unemployment at 18.5 percent, the government here is preparing to take a dramatic next step. Through a combination of new laws and public and private investment, officials estimate that they can generate a million green jobs over the next decade. The plan would increase domestic demand for alternative energy by having the government help pay the bill -- but also by compelling millions of Spaniards to go green, whether they like it or not. In the long term, the government envisions a new army of engineers and technicians nurturing windmills and solar farms amid the orange orchards and carnation fields of Andalusia and Galicia. In the short term, officials say, the renewable-energy projects and refurbishing of buildings and homes for energy efficiency could redeploy up to 80 percent of the million construction workers here who lost their jobs in 2008. Spain's ambitious effort is being closely watched by the Obama administration and other governments forming their own green-job plans. The U.S. stimulus bill is dedicating billions in grants and loans to renewable-energy projects, marking a shift away from Washington's more passive approach to green growth, which relied largely on tax incentives. But the bid for governments to take an ever larger role in creating jobs in the private sector -- which many leaders gathering in Pittsburgh see as their mission -- is also fraught with risks. Though the Spanish government estimates that the alternative-energy sector generates about 200,000 jobs here, about double the number in 2000, critics contend they have cost taxpayers too much money. In some instances, the government's good intentions have distorted the energy market. Take, for example, the recent Spanish solar bubble. Though wind power remains the dominant alternative energy here, the government introduced even more generous inducements in recent years to help develop photovoltaic solar power -- a technology that uses sun-heated cells to generate energy. Lured by the promise of vast new subsidies, energy companies erected the silvery silicone panels in record numbers. As a result, government subsides to the sector jumped from $321 million in 2007 to $1.6 billion in 2008. When the government moved to curb excess production and scale back subsidies late last year, the solar bubble burst, sending panel prices dropping and sparking the loss of thousands of jobs, at least temporarily. "What they're talking about now -- creating a new sustainable economic model through alternative energy -- is going to be exactly the opposite of sustainable," said Gabriel Calzada, a Spanish economist and critic of the government's alternative-energy policy. "You're only going to create more distortion, more bubbles. It isn't going to work." Like Building the Internet In 2007, only one in 20 working-age residents of advanced economies was without a job. By next year -- when the International Monetary Fund expects global unemployment to peak -- that number will have jumped to one in 10. The job market is often the last to recover after a recession. But some economists predict a years-long stagnation in job creation and wages in developed countries, including the United States, Britain, Ireland and Spain. At the same time, governments are trying to hash out a deal by December that would establish new cuts in emissions by 2020 in an effort to stem global warming. One of the most obvious ways for nations to meet their goals, experts say, is through alternative-energy projects. "This is going to be like the building of the Internet," said Carlos Mulas-Granados, director general of the Ideas Foundation, a Spanish think tank associated with Prime Minister Jos? Luis Rodr?guez Zapatero's ruling Socialist Party. "We're going to use this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild the economy with clean, green growth." The multibillion-dollar investment is a gamble Spain is willing to take because, more than any other nation hit by the crisis, it is desperate for jobs. The unemployment rate here is now one of the highest in the developed world. The streets of Madrid and other cities are being dug up and repaved in a short-term government effort to offer temporary work to the unemployed. For most, the work will last only a few months. "And what do we do when the roadwork runs out?" Jos? Luis Salazar Garc?a, 32, said as he installed terra-cotta tiles on a Madrid sidewalk in a government-funded job. "There are no other jobs in Spain." The country's answer is to go greener. Spain now exports more windmills and solar panels than wine. An armada of Spanish companies has invested heavily in the United States, with one buying up an old steel mill a few dozen miles from Pittsburgh and turning it into a wind turbine plant. Though still undergoing final touches before being presented to parliament next month, Spain's new Economic Sustainability Law would effectively create more demand for renewable fuels. All new homes and commercial buildings would require higher levels of energy efficiency, including solar power sources, leaving their owners no choice but to adopt green habits. Government-backed loans to green companies would allow them to offer generous terms to homeowners and corporations for the installation of solar and other alternative energies. A Jump in Energy Costs? A new $300 million thermo-solar plant in the arid mining town of Puertollano, about 100 miles south of Madrid in the Don Quixote country of Castile-La Mancha, offers a glimpse into Spanish hopes. The partnership between the large corporate utility Iberdrola and a national energy agency employed as many 650 workers to build the plant over the past two years. The huge plant was like manna from heaven for a host of companies stung by the recession. A maker of car mirrors retrofitted its assembly lines to produce the plant's massive reflective panels, for example. But Calzada's recent study -- which has come under fire by green advocates here and abroad -- suggests that the government's cost to create one job in leading alternative-energy sectors has averaged $855,000. It notes that although hundreds may be temporarily employed to build plants, a far smaller number gain permanent positions. Because alternative-energy plants are more expensive than traditional power plants that burn fossil fuels, the government here has made green generation profitable by promising big subsidies for years to come. Though most Spaniards have so far seen only modest increases in their electricity bills, even government officials are warning that prices might suddenly jump in the coming years as more of the real costs are passed on to consumers. In the meantime, some power distributors in Spain have converted their government guarantees for higher-than-market energy prices into complex financial instruments, then sold them off to the highest bidders in a manner similar to the repackaging of subprime mortgages in the United States. If the government doesn't make good on those guarantees, critics fear, the securities could suddenly devalue, soaking the investors who hold them. "There are going to be people who say we're doing this wrong or that wrong," said ?ngel Torres, Spain's secretary general of economic policy. "But the reality is that government needs to help create a critical mass in alternative energy to make it sustainable in the long run, and that's what Spain is doing." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092302152.html?hpid=artslot

Cuba By Bike

Cuba Wheeling west from Havana, two Americans find that while the embargo remains, bicycles own the road. By Emma Brown and Jacob Fenston Washington Post Staff Writer and Special to The Washington Post Sunday, September 20, 2009 We were coated in a slick of sweat, diesel exhaust and sunscreen when we coasted up to a man wearing just-shined shoes and drinking rum from a plastic cup. He squinted at our crinkled map, nodded, told us we wanted to go south to the beach at San Luis and walked off as we tried to explain that we were headed north. Next we tried an older woman, who donned her huge reading glasses to examine the map. She held it upside down and agreed that San Luis was probably where we were headed. Her nephew chimed in: Nothing up that other road but mountains and rivers. "Do what you want," he said, exasperated. "But you won't get there before dark." It was Day 3 of our self-guided biking tour of Cuba. We were lost, and everyone -- including a baseball team playing by the side of the road -- was trying to help. We had arrived in Cuba on a late-night flight from San Jose, Costa Rica, staying that first night in the home of a friendly, fast-talking couple who rented us a room in their bright blue Havana apartment and kindly stored our bicycle boxes until our return seven days later. Pedaling west out of the city, along its famed seaside promenade, we had passed apartment buildings hung with laundry, crumbling grand hotels and nationalist slogans ("¡Viva Castro! ¡Patria o muerte!") scrawled on pieces of wood and nailed to telephone poles. Now we were somewhere in Pinar del Rio province, the country's tobacco capital. We'd taken a wrong turn and were trying to find a shortcut back to our route, where our guidebook said we'd find a small guesthouse that had a tendency to fill up fast. We didn't have reservations or a phone number, but we crossed our fingers, turning down a dirt road that didn't appear on the map. The sky, which had been darkening all day, cracked open, unleashing bolts of lightning and sheets of rain. We hunched our shoulders, pedaled faster and -- what else could we do? -- laughed. Traveling on two wheels in Cuba, we were discovering, means being exposed to the weather. But it also means being exposed to the country -- its hidden valleys, its roadside fried-chicken vendors, its tucked-away-in-a-courtyard music -- in a way we might not otherwise be. Soaked and shivering late that rainy afternoon, we finally rolled up to Finca la Guabina, a horse ranch that doubles as an eco-hotel. A young woman who seemed to operate the place by herself offered us a luckily vacant room in the high-ceilinged converted farmhouse, where a flier beside the bed boasted such attractions as horseback riding, cockfighting and crocodile-breeding. We opted instead for hot showers and cold mojitos and fell into bed exhausted, listening to the occasional shriek of a peacock that made its night home on a trellis outside our window. * * * When the Soviet Union fell nearly two decades ago, Cuba scrambled to make up for lost subsidies, and tourism became one of the country's most reliable sources of hard currency. President Fidel Castro legalized the U.S. dollar and eased restrictions on foreign investment; hotels mushroomed and Cubans started renting out rooms in their homes. Now, despite the U.S. embargo that prohibits most Americans from spending money here, Cuba is the Caribbean's second most popular destination (after the Dominican Republic), with picturesque spots flooded with vacationing Europeans and Canadians. Cubans we met were curious about these two Americans on bikes, and they had lots of friendly questions about baseball, Barack Obama, the economic crisis and hip-hop. ("Wow, I never met an American guy," said a man with dreadlocks whom we met in a Havana cafe. "Do you like Tupac?") With a license from the Treasury Department, it's possible to travel to the island legally for journalism, academic research or professional meetings. Otherwise, going to Cuba requires patience with the layers of inconvenience that come with skirting the embargo. We saw no other Americans during our week-long trip. We traveled for a full day, flying from Washington to Houston to Costa Rica -- where we spent a seven-hour layover -- and finally to Havana. Bringing bikes in cardboard boxes made the journey even more of a hassle. But we thought it would be worth it: Touring the island by bike would give us a measure of independence. And it would give us a sort of behind-the-scenes look at this country, where cars are a rare luxury and workers commute by foot, horse-drawn wagon, bus, bici-taxi or bike. Cuba's embrace of non-motorized transit is no accident, and it's fairly new. At the same time that Castro was building hotels in the early '90s, he was also buying bikes: Fuel imports had crashed with the Communist bloc, buses had stopped running, and people needed a way to get around. The country imported 2 million bikes from China and sold them at subsidized prices. Local factories churned out 150,000 bikes a year, and bike lanes appeared in cities and towns across the country. But as tourism has grown and the economy has rebounded, cars and buses have begun edging out bicycles again. And already, President Obama has signaled that he is open to reestablishing diplomatic ties, loosening travel restrictions for Cuban Americans and allowing them to send more money to family. Should the embargo be lifted, the number of tourists visiting the country would double, according to the International Monetary Fund. This might be the perfect time to go biking in Cuba, before cars take back the streets. * * * The next morning, our lonely-seeming hotelier served us a hefty plate of fresh mango and pineapple for breakfast and told us not to worry about the chunks of dried mud our bikes had shed in her lobby. We pedaled away from the ranch in the slanting light of sunrise, flanked by galloping horses (and perhaps, slithering just out of view, breeding crocodiles). A long day lay ahead: Our circuitous, took-a-wrong-turn route meant that we had covered a mere 12 miles the day before. That left us with nearly 100 miles to our next destination, Maria la Gorda, a white-sand beach at the island's western tip. We rolled through valleys past mountainous rock formations called mogotes, and through tiny towns in the hills where we snacked on eight-cent strawberry ice cream. In a tiny, cramped store selling an assortment of imported goods -- shampoo, juice, one bicycle tire -- we waited to buy bottled water in a slow-moving line that snaked toward a counter manned by a sole cashier. The line was full of women who seemed at first not to notice the sweaty, spandex-clad foreigners impatient to get back on the road. But then an older woman with kind eyes turned toward us. "It's boring for us, too," she said.. A younger woman near the front of the line took pity on us and pushed us up to the counter ahead of her, where we scored our cold water. Cuba is a cyclist's paradise: Many roads are empty, and even on the busiest highways, drivers are used to sharing with bikes, pedestrians, horses, mules and anything else that can roll or walk. After lunch it felt more like a cyclist's hell: hot, flat and unending, with not a spot of shade for miles. The monotony of the parched western end of the island was finally broken when we entered Guanahacabibes National Park, a UNESCO biosphere reserve where a dense, humid forest surrounds the narrow road. Land crabs scuttled in leaves at the pavement's edge, and we dodged thousands that had bravely ventured out onto asphalt -- shrieking, we admit, when they raised their little claws as if to grab our tires, wrangle us to the ground and pluck out our eyeballs. The forest broke suddenly into beach, and we caught our first glimpse of the Caribbean Sea, as gloriously blue as postcards promise. We rode another hour, tracing the coast until the road ended at a sleepy, palm-studded resort. Inside the thatch-roofed lobby, a clerk greeted us in perfect British English, gave us our room key and told us that the all-you-can-eat buffet was already open for dinner. There's something undeniably lovely about sleeping late and lounging in the sand and giving saddle sores a chance to heal; we had been looking forward to it for days. But in what is perhaps an unhealthy reaction to the chance to relax, we grew antsy. Surrounded by pink Germans and Dutch marooned on white plastic beach chairs, we realized that there's a fine line between lounging and languishing. After a day of sun, sea and sand, we headed back toward Havana. We didn't have time to ride, so we bungeed our bikes to the roof of a taxi. As we sped past homesteads carved out of the tropical forest, with pigs and goats tied in front, we asked the driver whether Cubans resent Americans for the hardships caused by the 49-year-old embargo. "No, no, not at all," he answered. "It's a thing between two governments -- it's not the people's fault." In fact, he said, Cubans want more Americans to visit. "Why?" "Because they bring a lot of money." He earned the equivalent of $12 a month working for the state-run taxi company, he said. With salaries like that, everyone in Cuba has to hustle to get by. Traveling by bus or taxi is different from biking. You're protected from the elements -- the rain and the mud, and also the small-time entrepreneurs trying to sell you a cigar or a pineapple -- but missing those things seems to be missing Cuba itself. Back in Havana, our hosts Humberto and Kary pulled out our bike boxes, and we disassembled the filthy machines. We asked Humberto where we could buy more packing tape. He said it's hard to find; in Cuba, you can't just go out and buy something when you need it. But he insisted on getting it for us. Hours later, there was a new roll of tape in our room. He'd spent much of the afternoon hunting it down. For our last night, we thought we might splurge on dinner and followed our guidebook to a restaurant described as "one of the most romantic settings on planet earth," in a plaza next to a baroque cathedral. It was pretty and overpriced, with chewy fish and a waitress who seemed tired of tourists. We thought back to our nights after biking -- our huge appetites, and the home-cooked meals provided by people from whom we'd rented rooms. Our best dinner -- and best room -- was in a town called Cabanas, which has no government-sanctioned (i.e., tax-paying) place to stay. The only way to find one is to show up and wait. We sat on a cement bench in the town plaza for three minutes before a man in a baseball cap and tank top approached. He led us up the hill to an idyllic little place where a couple and their young daughter gave us food they'd grown on their neighboring farm. In the morning, our taxi to the airport honked, and Humberto held the door open as we lugged our bike boxes down two flights of stairs. He shook our hands and wished us a good trip home. "And may you have 40 more years of cycling," he added, making cranking motions with his hands. Emma Brown is a Washington Post intern. Jacob Fenston is a freelance journalist based in Oakland, Calif. Where to Go, What to Do: Biking in Cuba Sunday, September 20, 2009 GETTING THERE Although there are exceptions (for those with family in Cuba, researchers, journalists, etc.), U.S. citizens and residents are generally prohibited from traveling to the island. For more information on the U.S. travel restrictions: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1097.html. Americans can, however, travel there, as we did, by flying through a third country, such as Costa Rica, Mexico or Canada, although you could face civil penalties or prosecution for doing so. For $565 each round trip, we flew Continental from Dulles to San Jose, Costa Rica, then transferred to Taca for the leg to Havana. Continental charged an additional $115 each way for each boxed bike, while Taca takes bikes (and surfboards) for free. In addition to Taca, Cubana and Mexicana airlines fly to Havana. GETTING AROUND Viazul (http://www.viazul.cu) offers air-conditioned coaches between major tourist hubs in Cuba. Traveling with bikes is no problem: You can simply roll them, panniers and all, into the bus's luggage compartment and retrieve them when you get where you're going. WHERE TO STAY Most Cuban towns have private houses licensed to rent rooms to tourists. These "casas particulares" are cheaper than hotels and are a great way to meet Cubans. Kary and Humberto's, Refugio No. 108, second floor, corner of Prado and Morro, Old Havana, 011-53-7-860-0122. Very friendly and helpful hosts in the middle of Old Havana a block from the Museo de Revolucion. $30 a night for two. Casa Aquilina Rodriguez Martinez, 31 Orlando Nodarse St.., corner of Sergio Dopico and Adela Azcuy streets, Vinales, Pinar del Rio, 011-53-48-69-5402. Private bathroom and air conditioning. In a popular tourist town known for its scenery: red-soil tobacco fields rimmed by steep-sided limestone rock formations known as mogotes. $20 a night for two. Villa Maria la Gorda Hotel and International Diving Center, Guanahacabibes Peninsula, Sandino, Pinar del Rio, 011-53-48-77-1306, http://www.villamarialagorda.com. Hotel rooms and beach cabins at Cuba's western tip. $63 a night for two, including breakfast, plus $15 each for buffet dinner. $7 a day for snorkel gear rental and introductory dive lessons from $45, plus $15 per day scuba gear rental. WHERE TO EAT Casas particulares often include breakfast with lodging and offer dinner for $6 to $8 more. These hearty home-cooked meals are perfect after a day of biking. Ham-and-cheese sandwiches are available at fast-food-style Rapido restaurants in larger towns, and cheap street food (50-cent pizza, fried chicken) is available in most towns for a quick lunch. MONEY There is a dual economy in Cuba, with one currency for foreigners and another for Cubans. Convertible pesos (CUC) are roughly equivalent to U.S. dollars and are needed to pay for hotels, restaurants, tours and imported items. Cubans pay in -- and are paid in -- pesos (MN, or moneda nacional), which are worth about five U.S. cents apiece. American credit cards and travelers' checks will do you no good in Cuba because of the embargo. Use cards and checks from a European or Canadian bank, or bring the cash you'll need. FOR MORE INFORMATION "Bicycling Cuba," by Wally and Barbara Smith, is an excellent cyclist's guide, with accurate ride descriptions and insights on what to bring and what to see from two experienced riders. -- E.B. and J.F.

Solar Co-ops -Together We Can Do It Ourselves

To Go Solar, Start Local Co-Ops Can Help You Jump Through Hoops and Start Saving Energy By Elizabeth D. Festa Special to The Washington Post Saturday, September 19, 2009 One March day in 2008, Ketch Ryan, a long-time environmentalist, sent a message to her neighborhood group e-mail list in the town of Chevy Chase, inviting neighbors to see the modest two-kilowatt solar-panel array she had just installed on her south-facing roof to convert sunlight into household electricity. "Loads of people came," Ryan said. They asked questions about the process and how to do it themselves. The Common Cents Solar Co-op was born then and there, founded by Ryan and neighbor Kirk Renaud, who runs BioBrite, a light-therapy business in Bethesda. "People said: 'I don't know if I could do this. I don't have the time.' I said we could all do it together; we could all go solar," said Ryan, a former policy analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency who now teaches art at Sidwell Friends School. Common Cents negotiates discounts from installers, fills out paperwork, applies for rebates, bundles solar credits, helps with scheduling and even arranges to get house keys to let in contractors. Homeowners sign contracts with and make payments to Common Cents, which then pays the contractors. The co-op helped Helen Price, a resident of the town of Chevy Chase, install an array of Sunslates, which resemble regular slate shingles but actually function like solar panels. "I am not sure how all the finances work," she said. "All I know is I saved money and they really facilitated things, and it is a community thing." Solar energy co-ops like Common Cents are forming across the region as neighbors band together to save money, take a stand on greener living and chaperone one another through the installation process, from roof assessments to a final hookup to the local utility's power grid. Each co-op has its own approach, finance arrangements and challenges. Although there are a cornucopia of financial incentives, rebates, tax credits, renewable energy credits and, lately, falling prices, homeowners are often flummoxed by the pages of paperwork involved, vendor selection, regulatory approvals, permitting, inspections, utility hookups and historic preservation issues. "At the end of last summer, I said, 'it's time; I want to do this.' " said Lisa Heaton of Bethesda. "So I Googled 'Maryland solar' and contacted a couple of those companies. But it was just Greek. I had some phone conversations. It was still too big and scary. It was intimidating. And I am not easily intimidated. My background is science," she said. Heaton's 1940s center-hall colonial ended up with a 4.6-kilowatt system consisting of two solar arrays -- one set facing south, the other facing west, to make the most of the sun's rays. Renaud said, "Members get substantial solar-system discounts and access to related discounted services like solar renewable-energy credit sale proceeds, energy audits, solar attic fans, solar computer systems, maintenance plans." There are no membership fees to join the co-op; one joins by signing a contract for a solar system. In the District, the idea for the Mount Pleasant Solar Cooperative was sparked three years ago after the 12-year-old sons of neighbors Anya Schoolman and Jefferson Morley watched Al Gore's global-warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," and wanted to take action, their parents said. Fliers were distributed, neighbors talked, and Schoolman, now the co-op president, began researching every aspect of providing solar electricity for homes in her historic neighborhood. In July, Schoolman, a consultant to foundations and nonprofit groups on environmental strategy and program design, became the first member of the co-op to install a special thin-film solar technology that adheres to flat roofs. About 10 more solar installations were completed earlier this month. Schoolman and Morley expect nearly 50 homeowners to install rooftop solar pieces this fall. The co-op claims that its 50 solar-powered homes will cut carbon emissions by 6.7 million pounds over the panels' expected 25-year life span. Unlike with Common Cents, the Mount Pleasant co-op doesn't handle the process from top to bottom. Instead, there is a lot of discussion, and informed homeowners are proactive in finding what's right for them, Schoolman said. "We do try to get discounts for our members. We do a lot of the work of educating our members, and present to contractors a group of people that have adequate sunny roof space and have a good sense of the costs," Schoolman said. "We have four main partners working with us. What we did was give our members a choice," Schoolman notes. "Even in a neighborhood as homogeneous architecturally as Mount Pleasant, there is not one single solution that fits all homes," Schoolman said. The Mount Pleasant co-op did negotiate with an aggregator of solar renewable energy credits [SRECs] to pay homeowners who choose to install solar photovoltaic systems. These systems generate revenue streams for homeowners where a SREC is equivalent to 1,000 kilowatt-hours, said Josh Goldberg, co-founder of solar photovoltaic installer and SREC broker Astrum Solar in Annapolis Junction. A 3-kilowatt solar array will produce an estimated 3,600 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, as Maryland and D.C. software calculate it, so you would get 3.6 renewable-energy credits, Goldberg explained. The amount per credit get is 70 to 75 percent of the penalty Pepco has to pay for not using renewable energy, or about $250 to $300 per credit annually, he said. The amount will decline over time because the penalty rate for Pepco will, also. Goldberg estimates that a 3-kilowatt system would pay a homeowner almost $9,000 in SRECs over 15 years. The Capitol Hill neighborhood will also be facing historic-preservation, as well as flat-roof or aged-roof issues when members of the Capitol Hill Energy Co-Op's solar roof project undertake their installations next spring. The group is schooling itself on financial, regulatory and structural issues and is reviewing the lessons of other co-ops, especially Mount Pleasant, which has acted as a mentor. Mike Barrette, who leads the project, estimated that "between 20 and 30 households will come through in the first wave of installations in the spring." The co-op is leaning toward the Mount Pleasant model of screening installers and having members decide which ones to go with, said Barrette, who works in the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement division. "Because of falling prices, we want to have our estimates as close to the install as possible rather than pre-negotiating a rate six to eight months before the installation happens," he said. "You need about 10 households in order to get enough interest from installers where you might be able to get a price advantage," said Fred Ugast, who heads the SREC broker U.S. Photovoltaics in Frederick. "There is not a lot of room now for discounts. A glut of panels has reduced hardware pricing." Lisa Heaton and her family were looking at a $45,000 install job for their total 4.6-kilowatt systems, but they got a $40,000 quote and signed a contract for it through Common Cents in November 2008. "Then because of the power of the co-op," the price dipped to the $35,000 she paid in April, Heaton said. Fliers from a solar installation company now promise that system for less than $32,000. The total cost of solar photovoltaic for a residence is also slashed by a 30 percent federal tax rebate for any photovoltaic system; hefty state grants -- Heaton got a check for more than $10,000 from Maryland -- and rebates tied to the size of the system, property tax credits and future value of SRECs. The credits are tied to the public utility's requirement to buy renewable energy, and they have declining value over time. Chesapeake Solar estimated a $16,710 future value of SRECs for a 4.86-kilowatt system. A $31,600 system in the District would cost $10,300 after rebates, not counting the SRECs, according to one company's pitch. A smaller array, under 3 kilowatts, which is more suitable for the city's rowhouses, would cost less than $7,000. A Virginia co-op that never really got off the ground, Solar Mount Vernon, said it was serious about bringing solar power to its Northern Virginia community, but president Eleanor Whitaker said that the logistics proved daunting. "Making it happen can very nearly be a full-time job," she said. Goldberg said Virginia is a tough sell for financial incentives for solar power. Virginia offers only the federal incentives, not the substantial state rebates offered by other states like New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the District. Also, there is no market for SRECs in Virginia, Goldberg said, because Dominion Power is not required to buy them.