On May 16th, Southeastern PA Sierra Club hosted Jeremy Scharfenberg, Energy Manager at Columbia Association, Columbia, MD as our mini-program guest speaker.
Columbia, MD is a planned community – meaning, the residential, business, shopping, recreational spaces as well as the infrastructure were all planned out before the first road was paved. And planning continues, especially in the area of energy use and sustainability.
In 2015, Columbia, which is home to approximately 100,000 people and several thousand businesses, came through on their commitment to reach 100% renewable energy use and power moving forward.
Prior to 2015, Columbia had already derived 75% of their power from wind; but now through a 20 year power purchase agreement (PPA) with SunEdison, Columbia has completed that final 25% using solar energy which now makes their community 100% powered by renewable resources.
The energy itself comes from the recently completed 2 megawatt Nixon Farm Solar Project in West Friendship, Maryland. Bithenergy is the solar developer who, along with the Columbia Association completed the permitting, the site work, and the pre-construction services for the project. SunEdison provided the high performance solar panels and financed the construction of the project contracting SolAmerica to build the solar power plant to SunEdison’s specifications.
The Columbia Association is responsible for operations of much of the community’s amenities, like the art center, athletic club, dog park, ice rink, golf club, indoor and outdoor pools, teen centers, economic development board and more. The Columbia Association is now running its operations on 100% renewable energy and encourages residents to reduce their power usage and convert what they are using to renewables through a solar program for Columbia residents where CA has secured a discounted rate on the installation of solar PV and also provide energy advocate support to help homeowners through the solar installation process.
The goal for the solar farm is to power more than 250 homes in Columbia and to prevent the production of 2 million pounds of carbon dioxide or the equivalent of taking 220 cars off the road.
Steve Raeder, SunEdison’s general manager of the Eastern US stated, “With the completion of the Nixon Farm solar power plant, the people of Columbia now enjoy the environmental and cost benefits of getting 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources.”
The Columbia Association’s energy manager, Jeremy Scharfenberg said that, “By supplementing Nixon Farm’s solar energy with wind-based renewable energy certificates, we’ve been able to achieve our sustainability goals and reduce our carbon footprint by more than half.”