Minnesota’s Solar Garden Program Helps Small Businesses
by Jan Lee
Solar and wind installations were on the rise last year, thanks in part to the gradual introduction of the federal Clean Energy Plan, which was formally unveiled last year. Areas like the Pacific region and the New England states saw the greatest gain in new construction in 2014, according to the 2015 Sustainable Energy Business Factbook (Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy), which points out that while utility-grade construction has helped to create this uptick, the value of small-scale solar construction is now being realized as well.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Minnesota, which has set one of the highest renewable energy goals in the country. By 2050 it aims to garner more than 16 percent of its renewable energy from an ambitious mix of solar energy (photovoltaic, residential rooftop, commercial/government rooftop and concentrated solar) installations.
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Jan Lee splits her time residence between the rural lands of Idaho and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her articles on business, eco-travel, history and culture have been published in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.
