Archive for November, 2023

How Australia Got Solar Panels Onto One in Every Three Houses

Via The Guardian, a look at Australian efforts to scale use of solar panels quickly: For a brief period over several weekends this spring, the state of South Australia, which has a population of 1.8 million, did something no other place of a similar size can claim: generate enough energy from solar panels on the […]

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The Ultra-Efficient Farm of the Future Is in the Sky

Via Wired, a look at a rooftop laboratory where scientists show how growing crops under solar panels can produce both food and clean energy: Five stories off the ground at Colorado State University, a highly unlikely garden grows under a long row of rooftop solar panels. It’s late October at 9 am, when the temperature is […]

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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.”