When Mayor Wharton first announced his Clean and Green Initiative, I was excited that our community was taking a common sense approach to economic development through environmental projects, something the Sierra Club wholeheartedly supports.
At a January press conference at the Central Library announcing the initiative, the Mayor spoke about one such project where the City would be placing solar energy systems on a number of city owned buildings–a wonderful example of our community investing in cleaner, greener technologies, providing locally generated power not sourced from other states and/or regions.
Learn more about the project at:
http://ioby.org/blog/awesome-project-memphis-civic-solar
The Sierra Club fully supports this initiative, and along with many other residents made a sizable contribution to project. The City’s commitment was never in question and the applications for interconnection with the Tennessee Valley Authority grid were successfully made in February.
Concerned that I had not heard any updates on the project since February, I decided to check in to see what the status of this project was. What I learned is that this project was about to fall victim to politics as usual at the City of Memphis, where common sense is replaced with temperamental wrangling.
Through conversations with different City officials and a number of City councilmen, I discovered that the City is about to let the project fall apart—a project that would bring millions of dollars of private investment to Memphis and an enormous amount of good publicity. Even though private investors are covering all the upfront costs to make these installations happen, it appears that the City is squandering the economic development value of this project by now demanding a share of the revenues. It’s my understanding that the deal may fall through this week if nothing is done.
So why is nothing being done to fix this problem? If this is a priority for the Mayor, why has he not stepped in an asserted his support and leadership on this issue? It is time for the Mayor to take a stand. We can’t afford to let another project that would have economic development impact and bring great publicity to our City fall apart because of the City’s ineptitude, not when this City needs all the wins it can get.
CALL OR EMAIL MAYOR WHARTON AND LET HIM KNOW THAT YOU SUPPORT THIS PROJECT AND WANT IT TO MOVE FORWARD!
Mayor AC Wharton (901) 636-6000 or mayor@memphistn.gov
Thanks, Tom!
Scott, this characterization is not accurate. The City is committed to Clean and Green. The Civic Solar proposal is a 20 year lease to install equipment on 20 city buildings or property, including park land, libraires, and community centers. I don’t think revenue sharing is even the main concern. The City is doing due diligence on liability, maintenance, and ensuring we – the tax payers – are not exposed to risk or any downside. City staff and project reps are talking nearly everyday, but we are not ready to proceed to Council with a proposal June 3rd. There are a lot of “what ifs” we need to figure out.
Thank you for responding, Maria. It’s difficult to to be entirely accurate when the parties involved in negotiations can’t or won’t share details due to confidentiality. I’m not questioning the Mayor’s commitment to Clean and Green, just the City’s commitment to this particular project.
Whatever the City’s concerns are, they should have been addressed before applications were made to the Tennessee Valley Authority and MLGW approved many of the individual projects that TVA accepted. Mandatory completion deadlines have been triggered and further delays in signing the contract may make meeting those deadlines difficult if not impossible. It’s unfortunate that this is the case, but it’s an inherent flaw in the process by which TVA allows a limited amount of solar interconnections each year–a problem that the Sierra Club has been trying to get fixed for years.
I hope that revenue sharing is not the main sticking point here, as the private investors who will be putting up 100% of the installation costs have already seen a huge decrease in their payoff with TVA having reduced the premium paid for solar power from 9 cents/kWh to 4 cents/kWh. Any further reduction in revenues may make the project unworkable.