Archive for January, 2022

A Fight Over Rooftop Solar Threatens California’s Climate Goals

Courtesy of The New York Times, commentary on a fight over rooftop solar that threatens California’s climate goals: California has led the nation in setting ambitious climate change goals and policies. But the state’s progress is threatened by a nasty fight between rival camps in the energy industry that both consider themselves proponents of renewable energy. The […]

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Superstores Can Meet Half Their Electricity Needs With Rooftop Solar

Courtesy of The Washington Post, an article on how rooftops of big-box stores offer enough solar potential to power the equivalent of 8 million American homes: Expansive, flat and abundant, the rooftops of big-box stores in the United States could produce enough solar energy to meet half their electricity needs, according to a report released Thursday. Walmart […]

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Google’s ‘Dragonscale’ Solar-Powered Roof

Via The Guardian, an article on Google’s ‘dragonscale’ solar-powered roof: Around 40 miles south of San Francisco, three futuristic structures rise from the earth. With sloping roofs clad in thousands of overlapping tiles, the buildings could be mistaken for the world’s most architecturally advanced circus tent. They are, in fact, part of Google’s new Bay View […]

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Solar Roofs Meet Solar Shingles

Via The Verge, an article on how the solar roof could finally become a reality thanks to GAF Energy’s nailable solar shingles: In 2016, Tesla tried to reinvent the humble roof as a beautiful array of glass tiles brimming with solar energy — a vision it’s been struggling to deliver ever since. But San Jose, California-based […]

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About This Blog And Its Author
As potential uses for building and parking lot roofspace continue to grow, unique opportunities to understand and profit from this trend will emerge. Roof Options is committed to tracking the evolving uses of roof estate – spanning solar power, rainwater harvesting, wind power, gardens & farms, “cooling” sites, advertising, apiculture, and telecom transmission platforms – to help unlock the nascent, complex, and expanding roofspace asset class.

Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has held a lifelong interest in environmental and conservation issues, primarily as they relate to freshwater scarcity, renewable energy, and national park policy. Working from a water-scarce base in Las Vegas with his wife and son, he is the founder of Water Politics, an organization dedicated to the identification and analysis of geopolitical water issues arising from the world’s growing and vast water deficits, and is also a co-founder of SmartMarkets, an eco-preneurial venture that applies web 2.0 technology and online social networking innovations to motivate energy & water conservation. He previously worked for an independent power producer in Central Asia; co-authored an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, titled: “The Water Ethic: The Inexorable Birth Of A Certain Alienable Right”; and authored an article appearing in the inaugural issue of Johns Hopkins University's Global Water Magazine in July 2010 titled: “H2Own: The Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits.”