Green Options

What does it look like when a school goes solar? Students in Gerlach, NV, found out firsthand yesterday when they celebrated the installation of 90-kilowatt PV system at their campus in northern Nevada. The system will supply almost all of the energy needs of the three-building campus that serves 83 K-12 students.

“The solar panels will give our students good insight into the different ways we can address global warming issues with renewable energy,” said Gerlach Principal Carol Kaufmann. The system is the result of a collaboration between the Washoe County School District, MMA Renewable Ventures, SCHOTT Solar, Sierra Pacific Power, and the infamous Burning Man festival. The ground-mounted system will save the district approximately $20,000 per year.

We’d been waiting for what seemed like hours, uncomfortably seated, shoulder-to-shoulder on a gritty lake-bed. Tense anticipation was rapidly dissolving into indifference, while the never-ending stream of deafening electronic music assailed us from every direction. The Man stood impassively in the midst of this: a giant, neon-green effigy looming over a half-mile ring of what must have been every fire dancer in North America. It was the only time at Burning Man

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Last week, 46,000 revelers finally broke camp and split the scene of this year’s Burning Man festival, The Green Man. You could call it the "biggest party in the world," though it defies categorization and convention: part art, music, rave, pyrotechnics show, and costume orgy, it’s probably the only place in America you’d see a 1,000-foot-tall mushroom cloud intended for politically-minded artistic expression.

Yep, that’s right - a 1,000 ft. mushroom cloud, and no,

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I have yet to find my way out to Burning Man, but I have a bunch of friends how are hardcore burners. A few of my friends from Renewable Choice have even built an art car for the playa- look for a giant bus sized piece of burning sage driving around and say hi to the guys for me.

This year is the dawning of the Green Man- Burning Man’s attempt to take things in a more eco direction. They are encouraging burners to offset their carbon emissions, use biofuels and renewable energy, compost their foodscrapes, and all the other greenie things you should do like recycle.

My favorite snarky blog Valleywag has a more cynical look at things (they wouldn’t be Valleywag if they didn’t)…