RODMAN: In this episode of Urban Conversion... Hey Rodman, come here!

Gina has the renewable energy on her mind.

Perfect place to put solar panels.

And me... Well gas is cheap right now, why would I want alternative energy that might costs us more?

I'm open to it, I'll be learning what's on the line.

We need to reduce our CO2 emissions.

Seeing how we can win out with wind power...

It's really gonna be an important part as we move forward.

Sorting out the benefits of solar.

Half a million solar homes, which is a good start.

All, in this Urban Conversion.

GINA: My husband Rodman is passionate about creating new businesses and opportunities, but let's just say he's not too eco-friendly.

RODMAN: My wife Gina, she's amazing, but she can be a little over the top when it comes to going green.

GINA: The sustainability movement is not just a trend.

It's a concept that will impact the future.

RODMAN: I'm not against sustainability.

I just need to understand it first.

Yeah, now we're talking!

So I'm taking myself out of my comfort zone... sometimes to extremes.

Wow.

GINA: And we're making it part of our lives.

(horn honking) RODMAN: Yeah, well, most of it.

GINA: Who knows where it will take us?

Welcome to Michigan, welcome to Detroit, Rodman.

RODMAN: It's all part of making our own "Urban Conversion."

♪ RODMAN: Doing a little bit of work out in the chicken coop today.

I had to get the chickens watered.

We have about seven chickens.

The rabbit was pretty lonely, we put it in with the chickens and now he's just one of the gang.

Chickens are dirty.

They're fun, but they're dirty.

Rodman, come here for a second.

Alright, hold on.

What's up, babe?

It's so sunny here in Colorado.

And we have this barn that has nothing on it.

Seems like it would be a perfect place to put solar panels.

Alternative energy is definitely something that we don't even scratch the surface on in our life.

She's a little bit serious about this whole solar thing.

Well, gas is cheap right now.

I mean, why would I want to go to some kind of alternative energy that might cost us more?

It's not just about the pennies, it's about climate change.

You hear climate change this, climate change that.

I don't think it's debatable anymore.

It's been debated.

It will continue to impact our world and I think it's more about the future.

I don't know exactly all the facts and such behind the science, so it's hard for me to say who I agree with or who I disagree with.

It's definitely a real thing in our world and we can make a difference.

I like the idea of solar panels and I like the idea of wind energy.

There's a lot of things that are good ideas, but do they make financial sense?

Maybe I can learn a little bit more about climate change, learn a little bit more about alternative energy, solar, wind.

So I'm going to go visit the National Center for Atmospheric Research to figure out if I can really understand what's happening with climate change.

I think it'll pay off not only for our family, but I think for generations to come.

Hugs?

Let's do it.

Alright, done.

Okay.

Love you.

Climate change, what we are referring to is the human-induced changes that are happening to global climate.

When we started to burn coal, oil, gas, all these fossil fuels that have stored carbons and are storing with that energy in a very dense way, when we burn it, we can gain this energy back to allow us to do all what we are doing like heating houses, transportation, flying, you name it.

Production for big industry, you're dependent on this energy.

This energy you get carbon dioxide out.

It has the biggest effect on the climate system.

If we keep going in the way we have been releasing these greenhouse gases, suddenly these changes are so big that we actually decide to take an alternative route.

I came out here today at NCAR to learn a little bit about what's happening with global warming.

In the 1960s, the National Science Foundation got this place here.

And we sit in meetings, but then we take a half hour walk and sometimes the best discussions happen when you get a little bit of fresh air.

I got mixed feelings on global warming.

You hear a lot of the science that says yes, it's true, but you've got a lot of the skeptics.

If I got up tomorrow and I knew that I was a part of the problem, of course I'm gonna look for solutions.

But I'm gonna want to know what are the big causes, how can we have the greatest impact, and how can we make the biggest amount of change.

That's what I'm gonna want to know.

The scientists are saying well, this is science.

Or, a portion of the scientists.

And the other ones are saying this theory is fictional, it's made up, it's this thing that's being used to propagate fear... What kind of real hard evidence is there that global warming is happening, it's not just natural changes in the Earth's temperature?

We have station measurements, real instruments that observe the full planet, complete coverage.

We can track, how over time, the temperature has increased, but it's not only that.

We see many other changes.

If it were just a fluke and somebody says, well, temperatures are going up, then why are all the other elements fitting into that puzzle?

Anybody who opens their eyes, it's absolutely obvious that we're going through changes.

How much of it is just a natural occurrence?

I mean, we've had ice ages, we've had heat waves.

Suddenly, these, the news stories that come from all around the planet start to fit in and they fill out that picture of a planet that is really changing.

It seems to me like we're always changing temperature.

Temperatures are rising on Earth, but are we doing it?

One driver that has changed, that we have changed is the composition of the atmosphere.

By thinking you would add on another jacket here, you know something is going to happen to how you feel.

We are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the physical properties of the greenhouse gases is they let the light through, but the heat that wants to get away, does not as easily back out.

And so it's like adding a jacket in a simple sense.

It traps heat close to the surface and that's what then leads to the effect of global warming.

While all our ways of expressing and describing how climate has been changing, they perfectly work, up to about 1960, 1970.

But the rise of temperature since then fits no longer to these natural processes, but we need to add the information of that added jacket, these added greenhouse gases.

And we know we put them in because the carbon that is here in the air around us that we are breathing has the fingerprint of carbon that has been stored away from the atmosphere for a long time.

And what we are seeing in the air is getting older and older carbons.

So we are pumping it out, we have added that jacket.

RODMAN: That makes a lot of sense to me.

We're bringing these carbon emissions out and then we're putting them into our atmosphere.

It's getting buried.

It was getting covered with more and more sediments, deeper down into the soil, where then the carbon has been transformed either into coal, it has been squeezed out into oil Okay.

for gas formations, these shales that you hear about.

This is a natural geologic process.

It was pushed down, we got cooler and cooler and cooler and now we're bringing it out and we're heating because of that?

Yes.

Is it that simple?

It is at the end of the day, it is that simple.

We knew it 150 years ago.

Where it gets more tricky is, what do we do about it?

We need to reduce our CO2 emissions.

The carbon dioxide is the most important one because, A: it's the biggest contributor, but the second thing is what makes it really hard.

It has an enormous lifetime in the atmosphere.

It's like if you have a bag full of cats and you open that bag, you can't get those back in and unfortunately with our greenhouse gases, the CO2, it is pretty much the same.

When we release that CO2 into the atmosphere, we cannot get it back.

Aren't the ice caps actually starting to expand again right now?

No, they're not.

They're not.

We can measure this very precisely from satellites.

Even though the center might accumulate a little more, but at the edges where it gets in contact with the oceans, and the oceans are warming, it's melting really fast.

Well, what does this mean for our children?

What's it mean for their future if we keep going down this path?

We are changing the environment, where we can grow food, where the natural resources come from that we need for everything, the water that we drink, that we use for food production.

All of this is going to change in a magnitude that is so big that I can tell you exactly right now what this will look like.

From a number of perspectives, we have increased about 1 degree Celsius, about 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 150 years.

If what we have done so far is already doing 2 degrees and the projections are 4 to 8 degrees and maybe 10 degrees Fahrenheit in just this century, we are talking about big changes.

Alternative sources for energy that don't produce CO2, if we can ramp these up, that sets us on a much better path.

The question is, are they sufficient for really making that turnaround?

And at the moment, probably, we can't completely replace what we use in terms of the fossil fuel base energy production, but we can get going in the direction of replacing it.

And what are those?

Well, one is solar.

That is always there, the sunlight is driving all of our planet and if we can capture that energy, and turn it over into electricity, that's very useful.

But the other thing is wind power and there's a lot of farms that have come up and there's research going on.

We have NREL that is studying how we can build networks of alternative sources and they have a research facility just down here on the ridge.

It's framing the horizon right there with Denver in the background.

Right down there you see the very large turbines going.

Fantastic.

Well, I'm going to go check that out.

Wind energy is a process by which we extract the power in the wind that blows by us every day and turn it into electricity to power your homes and businesses.

They take the aerodynamic power and turn it into mechanical power.

Then we have to take that mechanical power and using a generator, turn it into electricity.

The wind plants are becoming significant contributors to the United States' electricity supply.

We're approaching five percent of the nation's energy from wind power.

We're adding about one percent or so of the nation's electricity just about every year.

RODMAN: You know as you're driving down and you're seeing these big wind turbines and I'm always curious, how do those work, what's that about?

I came out to NREL today to see their National Wind Technology Center.

FORT: We do a wide range of research here.

What's really visible and easy to see is the field testing and quite a bit of work on developing innovations for the next generation of technology.

Fort, it is windy out here.

You guys selected this obviously for the wind turbines.

Yeah, it's one of the windiest spots to test wind turbines in the United States.

The wind is 'blow you over' windy.

FORT: It's not only a strong wind, it's a very rough wind.

It makes it a great place for developing new technology.

People generally don't realize how much power these systems make.

Sometimes when you're at a distance, you don't realize the size of the machines.

The rotor diameter is typically 100 meters, would cover an entire footfall field.

It looks slow because the rotational speed RPM is low, but the tips are moving almost 200 miles an hour.

You're kidding me!

They have this illusion of being such stately machines it makes you not realize how much power they're making.

A typical machine might power a thousand homes.

Wow.

One machine.

One thousand homes.

When you view them from a distance, just a slowly turning rotor, but behind that is a tremendous amount of machinery and electronics that makes this system reliable and compatible with our nation's electricity grid.

Is it feasible?

There's been a tremendous success story on wind energy costs.

It's come down by a factor of ten over the last 30 years or so.

I think the most important misconception about wind energy right now is that it's widely believed to be too expensive.

And that's just simply not the case.

The Unites States is blessed with what's frequently called the Saudi Arabia of wind.

The Midwest has so much wind, there's enough energy there to power the whole nation ten times over.

35 percent of our nation's electricity comes from coal.

Wind is providing about 5 percent.

What are the downsides?

Sometimes wind powered generation doesn't match the demand.

It might be, for example, more windy at night than it would be during the day when you have a higher demand for the power on a hot summer day.

Say it's nighttime, and all of a sudden we're generating a lot of wind power.

Does that store into the grid or is that something that immediately needs to go out?

Right now there's no storage in the United States' grid system, the electricity has to be used the instant that it's consumed.

Oh, I didn't know that.

So, it's a very delicate balancing act that the people who operate our grid have to do.

But we have learned a three-bladed machine rotating in the wind on a tall tower is really, provides the highest reliability and the lowest cost.

So in terms of the environment, what is the carbon impact of these wind turbines?

Well they're probably the lowest carbon emitting source of electricity that you can have.

They emit of course no carbon whatsoever when they're operating.

We've saving hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year from our wind power systems.

Fort, obviously I'm not gonna put one of these in my backyard, but I would love to have something on a smaller scale.

Are a lot of people doing that here in Colorado?

Absolutely.

There are people who are enthusiastic about generating their own wind energy.

People who want to be off the grid.

I've seen plenty of turbines right here in Colorado.

Oh, fantastic, I better find some of these guys Okay.

and check it out.

I think the message about wind energy is that it's an important contributor to changing our nation's power system from the dirty system we've had in the past to a clean and sustainable system in the future.

It's affordable, it's compatible with the environment, it doeoesn't use any water whatsoever, and it's really gonna be an important part as we move forward.

RODMAN: They suggested I come to Golden, Colorado to see one of the original backyard wind turbines in action.

We've got the first generation, a residential wind turbine.

We have not had a single complaint about it.

It's been nice for the city and nice for the state, because it's the first one in the state of Colorado.

It looks good.

It's got those curved blades.

Very aerodynamic, very sleek.

Somewhat almost handsome or pretty, you know?

So I walk into the backyard and I see the turbine.

I was kind of expecting it to be a little bit more of a, maybe an eyesore.

Back here, it's not so bad.

How in the world did you get a wind turbine in your backyard?

Well, all the codes said that it couldn't be done.

All the wind turbines before that were too noisy.

Is that a wind turbine or a little fan to keep you cool?

It's a little fan but we like to think of it as a turbine.

Chuck seems like one of those guys who is doing things before it was cool to be doing 'em.

He's generating a lot of the electricity for his own home right in his backyard.

So you need at least eight mile per hour winds...

Okay.

in order for it to start up.

To start going.

It can produce between 20 and 60 percent depending on how, what the size of your house is.

And, so it's a beautiful thing because all in one unit you've got a system.

You've got a renewable energy system.

Your blades are hooked to a hub on the outside, and that electricity goes right to an inverter.

You could connect it to the wiring that goes through your home where it hits a net meter, and that net meter spins backwards so you don't pay for the electricity.

Based on your calculations, based on the cost of this, how long did it take to pay back?

Within, probably three and a half years.

Okay.

And then after that it's just free energy.

It's all, it's free.

It's free.

Free energy.

I mean you have to pay upfront to get to a point, but when you're there, it's all gravy.

Well, Chuck, I appreciate you having me out today.

You're obviously an innovator before your time.

Well, not before our time.

This is our time.

I just like the idea that I can generate power for my home, just using this thing right here.

Having worked in the oil industry, I don't have anything against oil and fossil fuels, but I do have a problem with how dependent we are on them.

There are two types of solar energy.

Solar thermal involves piping water or some other fluid through a solar panel using the sun's energy to heat it up, and then it can preheat your water before it goes into your hot water heater.

The second type of solar energy is solar photovoltaic, PV for short.

The vast majority of solar panels use silicon, which is one of the most abundant elements on the planet.

When the photons strike that semiconductor material, it dislodges electrons and creates an electricity flow.

This is same technology that was first used by NASA in the 1950s on satellites.

Technology that's been around for a long time, but now the prices have gone from literally, astronomical heights, down to prices that the average homeowner can afford.

I came out to a construction site outside of Boulder today where they're gonna teach me how to install solar panels.

So, Blake, tell me a little bit about what we're gonna be doing here today.

We're gonna install some solar electric panels.

Most solar panels are installed on rooftops, but the ones we're gonna install today are gonna be on the ground.

RODMAN: First thing that we did was 'Safety First.'

We got our hard hat, we're all geared up and ready to go.

Yeah.

These look pretty simple to me, actually.

I thought these would be a little bit more complex.

This is a typical size for a solar electric panel.

This produces 327 watts.

A lower efficiency panel might be the exact same size, but it would only produce 280 watts.

We like the angle to be between 30 and 40 degrees for where we are here in Colorado.

That's the best way to produce the most solar electricity with the path that the sun takes in the sky throughout the year.

For most residential systems, we just do a fixed tilt angle.

It optimizes it for annual solar production.

Most people can lease, or they can get a loan for a solar system.

With no money down, and they can begin saving money on their electricity bill from day one.

The solar panels generate electricity, and that electricity is electricity you don't have to purchase from the utility company.

Seems reasonable, I mean, for what you're gonna get back in return.

Well, let's start throwing a few of these up.

Sounds good.

And we're gonna get some help from one of my fellow co-owners, Wade Andrews.

How you doing, Wade?

Good.

How are you?

I'm doing pretty good so far.

Great.

We'll see how this panel install goes and I'll let you know.

I don't know, Wade, this seems pretty easy to me.

We're not here for the glamorous pose.

RODMAN: So we've got 'em pretty even up here, and I suppose that's what you want.

Yep.

What percentage right now is solar power?

The solar market has more than quadrupled, but still, we're only producing less than one percent of our nation's electricity needs from solar.

I'm amazed that there's only one percent usage in the United States right now.

I think that that's gonna increase dramatically.

We've got half a million solar homes in the United States, which is a good start, but we've got a long way to go.

There are thousands of schools, hospitals, businesses, that've gone solar as well.

What's the breakeven point on these?

Depends on where you are.

Okay.

But typically, breakeven is around 8 to 12 years.

And the IRR can often be 7, 8, 9, percent.

Lift with your legs, he says.

Ready?

Alright, those aren't bad at all.

I thought there'd be more parts, more components.

Installing the panels is really a lot more simple than I thought it would ever be.

What is that under the glass that brings in the electric?

Each of these are individual photovoltaic cells, producing a certain amount of voltage, a certain amount of current, and they're all wired together.

These PV cells are wafer thin and they're put on a laminate, and then they've got this tempered glass on top of them so that no dust, no water, no moisture, nothing's getting in.

Now I've seen how the sun converts into energy, but now I want to know how the energy goes to the house.

So you've trenched the wire from the panels, and it's going right up into the house, right?

That's correct.

Just like every other house would have a standard electrical line coming into a standard meter that feeds the house if this was not operating.

Okay.

That's exactly right, this would be your metering.

So, because we have the solar system from the solar panels, which are all wired together, all that solar electricity gets run into this, this is called an inverter.

This converts the solar electricity into utility grade electricity.

And from the inverter, it goes through another meter.

This meter just measures how much electricity the solar system is producing.

It goes through the disconnects for safety, so if we need to shut the system off, we can.

And then from here, the solar electricity gets fed into the house's electrical system the exact same way that the utility lines get fed into the electrical system.

So they essentially have two power sources coming into the house.

When the house needs electricity, it'll use the solar electricity first, before it uses the electricity from the utility company.

These systems are smart, man.

They know how to pull from the panels first, and then when the panels aren't generating, say at night, they can pull from the utility company.

And when you send that electricity from your home back into the utility grid, it spins your meter backwards, and gives you retail credit for all the solar electricity that you're sending back onto the grid.

When the sun goes down, you start turning lights on, your meter spins forwards.

So day by day, your meter's spinning backwards and forwards, and at the end of the month, you're billed for the net result.

You've got a great, long term, low risk investment.

It's also good for the environment, and it's good for energy independence, it's good for public health.

It's pollution free electricity.

It seems to be kind of a no-brainer.

Thanks for bringing me out today.

I think this is something I definitely want to put into my life.

We're always gonna need energy, and we just don't have the sustainable resources with what's coming out of the ground.

We don't.

We're gonna use it, we're gonna burn it.

It's not gonna come back.

Why aren't we pulling the energy from, say, the sun or the wind?

Sun's always gonna be there.

Fossil fuels may not be.

The more people that are getting involved with these technologies, these things are becoming more and more feasible.

The costs are coming down, they're becoming more mainstream.

So solar and wind is gonna be a little problematic at the house we're at.

We're in a transition period where we're looking for a place to build a sustainable home, so we're renting, but I did a little bit of research.

I'm excited to have Gina with me.

We're gonna take a look at a solar garden.

GINA: There is such a thing as a solar garden.

That's like a community garden, and you know me, I can totally get my hands around that.

The difference between a solar garden and a solar farm is really the size or the scale.

It's now an opportunity for everybody to go solar.

If you've been living in an older neighborhood with lots of trees and shade, or you're a renter, traditionally you were locked out of solar.

Now, with community solar, you have an opportunity to join a garden.

Consumers can buy capacity of the electricity, or the actual panels from here.

The power from this facility goes straight to the grid.

We're able to credit each customer with the proportion of the garden that is theirs.

We're working in 11 states right now, and we're expanding across the country.

This is becoming a national opportunity.

GINA: Everything about this solar garden is amazing.

I love the idea that because we don't have solar panels on our roof, that we can still buy into clean energy.

For me, using clean energy is the responsible thing to do.

It's not just offsetting our utility usage, but thinking of the future and thinking of my children and grandchildren having a clean world to live in.

One that is not filled with pollution, but one that's healthy and growing.

Clean energy starts now.

It starts with us.

I am so happy that Rodman went out and did his own investigation on clean energy.

I think he went from dud to stud throughout this episode.

Learning how to make my own urban conversion has me all over the map.

Cars that run on hydrogen gas or veggie oil?

Making things at home that you can just buy at the store?

Chickens, goats, and bees in your backyard?

It all sounded pretty crazy at first, but the more I explore the sustainability movement, the more fun I have.

Come along with me as my family and I figure out what will work in our household.

It's all a part of making our own Urban Conversion.

♪ ♪ Sustainability is a huge topic.

On urbanconversion.com we cover it all.

We bring you news, how-to, the quick tips for going green and much more.

My education may start on the show, but it continues at urbanconversion.com.

Full seasons of Urban Conversion are available on DVD for 20 dollars.

Follow Rodman and Gina as they explore the sustainability movement through unscripted fun with education as the goal.

To order, please visit urbanconversion.com.