The fifth week of my summer
internship at Sustainable Princeton began with signing up for the
2017 New Jersey Sustainability Summit by Sustainable Jersey and figuring
out which two breakout sessions I would attend. Before attending any of the
breakout sessions there was an interesting presentation for all attendees on something
called the State
of the State report. This report goes over where New Jersey is with regards
to sustainability and how New Jersey has improved or worsened in terms of each
aspect of sustainability.
Out of the six sessions available in the morning I chose to attend the
one called “Protecting our Natural Resources: Local Action, Regional Impact.” This
breakout session was about how local efforts are critical to guaranteeing the
protection of natural resources and what one can do to help. For example, a
presenter from Jersey Water Works discussed how to plan out and develop green
infrastructure on the local level to minimize storm water runoff via
impermeable surfaces. Another example was the presentation by a member of
Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions (ANJEC) on the value of
setting aside open spaces within towns so that there are habitats for animals
like bees, birds, and butterflies to name a few. Overall this breakout session
was a great experience for me as I not only learned a lot about open spaces and
green infrastructure but I learned about the procedures for gathering support
for such things and planning out their implementation.
Out of the six sessions available
in the afternoon I chose to attend the one called “Shining the Light on Solar.”
This break out session was all about solar energy and how to both promote and
implement solar energy within your local community. This session discussed what
steps your community could take to become a nationally designated SolSmart community. SolSmart is a national
designation program funded by the United States Department of Energy’s Sun Shot
initiative that helps members of communities applying for designation to reduce
the soft costs of solar panel installation such as the installation itself,
local government administrative and bureaucratic application processes and so
on. They do this by assigning a member of the Solar Foundation to the community
so that they can get six months of technical assistance to help local
governments reduce the soft costs of solar installation on their side by
streamlining and simplifying the local laws with regards to solar energy. This
breakout session was very informative not only in terms what steps one can take
to simplify the local laws to make it cheaper and easier to install solar
panels safely but it also taught me about the ways in which you can convince a
local community to get involved in an initiative such as this.
All in all,
I would say this was quite the eventful week and I am excited to see what next
week will bring!
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