City of Lancaster, located northeast of Los Angeles on the edge of Mojave Desert, is not a tourist destination. No movie stars live here and there isn’t much around other than the nearby Edwards Air Force Base, which is closed to visitors.
But that may change as builders, urban planners, and city officials from the rest of the country and overseas come to learn from a local ordinance first passed in 2011 to promote energy efficiency and distributed solar power.
The city’s so-called solar ordinance was further strengthened in in 2014 requiring builders to include solar panels on virtually all new homes built within the city limit.
“The Zero Net Energy Home Ordinance expands upon Lancaster’s residential solar ordinance so that new homes built in Lancaster now will not only be environmentally friendly, but have a zero net impact on our environment, while reducing energy costs for the homeowners.”
The new ordinance takes effect following a feasibility study, expected in April 2017, followed by an official approval from the California Energy Commission (CEC) – which is keen to see such initiatives succeed everywhere in sunny California. The rule is expected to take effect by the end of 2017. Already, home builders in the bedroom community are proceeding as if the new ordinance were in effect.
Fereidoon Sioshansi is president of Menlo Energy Economics, a consultancy based in San Francisco, CA and editor/publisher of EEnergy Informer, a monthly newsletter with international circulation. He can be reached at fpsioshansi@aol.com
This post was published on April 20, 2017 11:17 am
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What a fantastic approach to supporting the change to renewable energy and the diminishing of GHG emissions. I fear many Australian citizens will find many councils are not sufficiently open to this idea (especially here on Eyre peninsula) so we will have to wait until a large number of councils throughout other parts of Australia following the above example. Then and only then can WE pressure our council to make the change.