Climate Change: Local Answers for Green Energy

Indivisible Santa Barbara presents the second of its ongoing series of public education events on Climate Change. ISB will present two speakers who are experts on the local use of solar energy coupled with energy storage solutions to provide clean, affordable carbon-free energy while enhancing the resiliency of the local power infrastructure.

Stephen Honikman, Co-Founder of Emergent Microgrid, will discuss how home and small business owners can achieve energy independence and sustainability by installing their own microgrid that will provide near term returns on the investment. Stephen was born and raised in a solar home in Santa Barbara and has spent the past decade developing and financing commercial-scale distributed solar projects. With the rapid advancement in energy storage providing the “killer app” to further accelerate sustainable energy adoption and seamless grid integration, Stephen shifted his focus to energy storage and started Emergent to make it easy for people to install their own microgrids.

Craig Lewis will introduce the Clean Coalition’s Goleta Load Pocket Community Microgrid (GLPCM) Initiative, which will deliver an unparalleled combination of economic and environmental benefits to the transmission-vulnerable, disaster-prone Santa Barbara region. The Goleta Load Pocket (GLP) spans 70 miles of California’s coastline and is named after the Goleta Substation, which serves as the GLP’s only connection to California’s transmission system. The initial building blocks of the GLPCM will provide indefinite renewables-driven backup power for critical community facilities, such as fire stations, emergency shelters, water infrastructure and communications facilities. Prior to Clean Coalition, Craig was VP of Government Relations at GreenVolts, where he was the first to successfully navigate a solar project through California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard solicitation process. Craig received a BSEE from the University of California, Berkeley and a MBA and MSEE from the University of Southern California.