Attention all you Bayfield "greenies," and even the climate change naysayers in our midst.

Those of you that have strongly supported local pressure being exerted on LPEA to utilize more renewable energy in their electrical mix should now put your money where your mouth has been. Many of you have been pushing for development of additional solar and wind energy projects to increase further generation of renewable energy sources, thus reducing dependency upon dirty energy sources such as coal, oil, and nuclear resources.

Local solar installers have been busy during the past several years encouraging the "greenies" among us to purchase their solar projects to reduce your long range electrical bills. This is a great way to go as long as you have a roof to put it on and a "fat wallet;" no one wants to discourage that effort because solar is coming, but most of us don't meet the qualifications to do so...until now.

You don't have to be a producer of solar energy in order to be a consumer of it, and there is a brilliant new device on Kickstarter.com that makes solar energy accessible to all. A small company called SunPort recently launched a project on Kickstarter which converts your electrical demand via a "smart outlet adapter" to take advantage of the power grid's solar renewable energy certificates (SRECs). Once you plug it in, the device measures the electricity you take from your wall outlet, automatically upgrading it to solar power by purchasing small fractions of the available solar energy certificates available in the electrical energy market. Upon doing that you are officially a solar consumer and are doing your part in pushing the nation's power producers to provide for more renewable energy sources for our use. The more SRECs purchased, the more solar energy the power industry is encouraged to provide to meet federal EPA and state regulations.

Obviously this will not reduce your electrical bill, but it certainly is a way for all of us without solar panels on our roof or those people living in an apartment or college dorm room, to do their part in pushing the power industry to utilize more renewable power sources in the electrical mix of the nation's power grid.

The advantages of that are improvements to our natural environment, resulting in reduced health costs, a cleaner human environment, improvements in wildlife habitats, etc. For further information and to participate in this endeavor, search for Kickstarter solar projects/SunPort.com.

Edmund J Tucker

Bayfield