The rainstorm that rocked Vermont on Halloween last Thursday knocked out power for 115,000 people—more than one-sixth of the state’s population!

For the 1100 folks with a Tesla Powerwall, however, stored energy kept their appliances running and lights lit during the blackout. For a time, these homes were electricity islands.

Thanks to incentives and in-state utility programs, energy storage is accessible to more Vermonters than ever. Large batteries like the Powerwall allow people to store energy to use later, so that when big storms hit they can keep all the essentials running seamlessly. 

Powerwall means you don’t need to schlep out to the garage to turn on the generator when the weather disconnects you from the grid. The battery, sensing an interruption, automatically starts filling in. Until the utility turns the power back on, you’re essentially running on your own personal microgrid!

Batteries mean greener power for all

During sweltering summer days, when the entire region is cranking the AC, electricity prices soar. Utilities need to buy power from expensive and dirty “peaker plants,” power plants that get turned on to meet extraordinary electricity demand. 

On the hottest day of 2019, Vermont’s Green Mountain Power saved $900,000 in a single hour by abstaining from that power, drawing it instead from the hundreds of Powerwalls enrolled in its distributed energy storage program. That means lower electricity prices for everybody, fewer fossil fuels burned, and less stress on the connecting wires. 

Nicole is a SunCommon employee who just went solar. This is her story.

Plus, working with a company for my solar installation that is committed to being socially and environmentally responsible, was important to me.

As a Benefit Corporation and Certified B Corp, SunCommon aligns with my personal values and in ways that I want to move through the world.

I’m actually looking forward to winter this year, knowing my car will be more protected from the elements.

Being a community solar member was great, but producing clean energy right at home feels even better! More importantly, my daughter loves it too, given the context of climate change. She is used to me talking—okay, maybe preaching—about how important it is that we follow our values through with real actions.

We are both thrilled now to be doing even more, right here at home.

Here at SunCommon, I found the journey to be tricky too.

We tried to create a reusable shopping bag for our customers. Our first thought was a cute cotton tote bag, but turns out that cotton is incredibly resource hungry!

A study in Denmark looked at the overall resources necessary and the carbon footprint impact of common bag choices. An organic cotton tote bag requires enormous resources to produce. In theory, you use it a lot, so you can spread out that impact to multiple uses. But it takes so much energy to create a bag, that you have to reuse that bag 20,000 times to spread out the cumulative carbon impact of all those resources. Only then is the cotton tote bag’s carbon footprint less than a single-use plastic bag’s. That means you’d have to use your cotton tote bag every day for almost 55 years!

Recycling to the rescue

The bag we ultimately decided on is made of recycled materials by a fellow B Corp, Chico Bags. The materials they use don’t contribute to micro plastics in the ocean and they help turn a material that would have just been trash into something usable.

The more we dig into this issue, the more we find that re-using existing materials is a key part of the solution. So as you think about ditching plastic in July, think about what you can re-use or do without instead of buying something new. Instead of buying a brand new cotton tote bag, consider turning a worn out pair of jeans into a bag instead (there’s heaps of tutorials on how to do this!). Instead of replacing your plastic straw with a metal straw, forego a straw altogether. 

These are small individual actions you can take in your own life. How can you help increase your impact? Consider reaching out to your favourite companies and asking them what they are doing to reduce plastic pollution or host a jeans-to-bag workshop in your own community.

Learn more about Plastic Free July

3. Beeswax Wrap 

Our Creative Design Manager has been using Beeswrap for six or seven years. Eli writes, “It feels like such a natural part of life now. I love the versatility of it—from covering leftovers in the fridge to keeping bread fresh on the counter—and love that it lets me use way less plastic. Plus, it’s super easy to clean and very packable.”

4. Silicone Covers

Speaking of baking bread, our digital team has been baking up a storm this year and keeping things plastic-free! When Patrick proofs his dough, he likes to keep a lid on things with silicone covers by Charles Viancin instead of using traditional plastic wrap. 

“Keeping consistent temps while keeping out excess air is essential with dough, and I assumed plastic wrap was the right move for proofing. We had a few of these silicone covers for leftovers and found it to be a perfect substitute! Best of all, the excess dough that sticks to the top is easy to scrape off — not nearly as easy with wasteful plastic wrap.”

5. Travel-Ready Bamboo Utensils

Carrie from the Commercial Team never leaves the house without her handy-dandy bamboo utensil kit. She writes, “Even if I’m out to lunch with a friend, one of us takes the chopsticks and the other gets the fork. I’ve gotten way more use outta these than I ever expected, and they fit perfectly in my laptop bag!”

Our actions really do add up. Positive climate action starts individually and builds collectively. Get started. Share your progress. Be empowered to make a difference.

(Curious about Plastic-free July? Learn about it here.)

On May 7, SunCommoners left our desks and job sites around the state, to spend the afternoon planting trees along the banks of the Winooski River. Why do that?

Sometimes when a fellow Vermonter asks us to install rooftop solar, we have to tell them: “To make solar work at your home, you’re going to have to cut down that tree shading your roof.” And over time, these trees add up. Even though the average solar system offsets about 50 times more carbon than a single tree would in its lifetime, we still miss those trees. So we decided to give back.

We worked with the Friends of the Winooski River (FWR) to plant native species along vulnerable riverbanks in Waterbury and Stowe. Due to deforestation in some places, there are no roots to hold the soil along the river in place, causing several feet of erosion per year!

It was a perfect partnership: The FWR needed help shoring up the riverbanks as quickly as possible and we needed to plant some trees.

Read their Open Letter below to learn more about the ecological benefits of planting trees.

Native Trees planted:

Shrub Willow, Silky Dogwood, Cottonwood, Nannyberry, Box Elder, Chokecherry, Tamarack, White Pine, Balsam Poplar, Staghorn Sumac, Elderberry, Balsam Fir, Red Maple, Sugar Maple

It seems like we did a good job!

We always support the involvement of volunteers for education and community engagement, but historically we have found them to reduce the pace of work instead of the other way around. From what our crew has said, the [SunCommon] volunteers were a different breed! If we didn’t already have a solar array, we’d be calling SunCommon.   

Did you know planting trees helps fish too?

Will Eldridge, aquatic habitat biologist at the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, explains:

It’s super important for the fish to have a forested riparian area. The trees around the stream provide a number of benefits: The roots help stabilize the bank; they help slow down erosion; keep sediment out of the rivers. They also, when they grow big, help shade the river, which is important for cold-water species like trout. They also can filter water and nutrients flowing over the land, like fertilizer and whatnot from the farm field, they can prevent that from entering the river. They also, when the trees fall in, they can provide habitat for fish and wildlife. So the trees actually become structures that fish will hide under. The leaves also provide food for bugs which the fish end up eating. So basically, as we like to say in the fisheries department, “fish grow on trees.”