If you were around Friday at the Local Clean Energy Alliance's conference "Clean Power, Healthy Communities," you would be convinced that the only way out of our fossil fuel dependent, planet destroying energy habits is to build small renewable energy generation facilities right in our communities.

Wind power harnessed on high rise office buildings, solar on parking garages and school buildings, biomass generation using restaurant waste - it's all possible and doable. All it needs - the consensus was at the all-day event attended by about 200 people - is will … political will to advocate for policies that foster renewable energy development, individual will to innovate and business will to invest.

As Al Weinrub, coordinator of the Local Clean Energy Alliance, said, electricity generation is currently responsible for 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, so to replace those generation facilities spewing carbon with generating facilities using clean renewable sources of energy like wind and sun could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 40 percent. The Alliance is a project of Bay Localize.

California set a goal five years ago, in passing the California Global Warming Solutions Act, to receive 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by last year and 33 percent by the year 2020.  We made some progress, then the recession got in the way and the momentum slowed down as fear took over about the economy.

"There has been almost no progress toward getting to that goal" in the past couple years, Weinrub said.  Renewable sources currently provide about 18 percent of California's electric energy, according to Renewables 100.

But, according to most speakers at Friday's meeting, there are ways - despite recession - to build renewable energy power systems, create jobs and add to the tax base.

What would it look like?

It would look like Community Choice Energy, in which communities have a choice of purchasing their energy from independent renewable energy suppliers, not just from the regional utility. The Marin Energy Authority is an example of a community choice energy; the authority oversees Marin Clean Energy power generators, which use renewable sources to produce energy that is than distributed through the electrig grid operated by Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

It would look like the forward thinking permitting and incentive system passed in the City of Richmond under Mayor Gayle McLaughlin. Richmond has no permit fees for solar installation and has the nation's first incentive program for solar thermal systems, which are used for water heaters.

It would look like the innovations developed by three three local small businesses, which have found ways to make various renewable technologies more affordable or more practical.

Nanosolar Inc., a San Jose based start-up, developed and manufactures solar panels using a thin film processing - which is almost like roll to roll printing press, according to its founder.  The roll deposits a chemical print containing copper, indium, gallium and selenium in precise amounts on an aluminum substrate. The resulting product is something that looks like a decorated piece of tin foil, but founder Brian Sager said it is as efficient as a solar photovoltaic panel yet much cheaper to produce and install.

"Our goal is to drive down the cost per kilowatt hour of solar so that solar is competitive with other sources of power," Sager said. Holding up a 12-inch by 14 inch floppy aluminum sheet, he said that by using roll-to-roll print press methods, Nanosolar is able to squeeze out much of the cost of manufacturing  and installing solar.

Meanwhile, Berkeley-based California Energy Storage Alliance has been working to integrate storage technologies with renewable energy technologies - and policies. If storage was part of the equation in developing a system, then energy distribution could be optimized and made more consistent, without concerns about the peaks and valleys of sun and wind availability.

Synergy International Inc. is developing architectural models that bring renewable power generation into the design of buildings. It designed a building under construction in San Francisco, for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, that will provide its own electricity through wind power generated on site. The design involves a wind tunnel that was created by building a stand-alone wall parallel to the side of the building, and thus causing a wind shaft up the side of the building.

In another of its projects, Synergy designed a building in Oklahoma City with wind turbines encased into its top floor. The turbines on the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation are not wind mill style, but cylindrical pinwheels, with a beautiful architectural effect.

Clean power and their resulting healthy communities can be fostered, organizers said, by policies.

The Local Clean Energy Alliance is working on three campaigns to bring laws favorable to clean energy onto the books in California or foster a change in regulatory practices. The "Claim Our Cash" is about making cities and counties who are developing alternative energy eligible to receive the renewable surcharges that ratepayers of Pacific Gas & Electric and other large utilities now pay to those utilities for their development of renewable energy.  For Oakland alone, those surcharges are about $3 million a year, according to an estimate by Kirsten Shwind of Bay Localize and the Alliance.

A second campaign is called "Solutions in Our Back Yard" and is about encouraging decentralized community-based renewable power by urging city councils to pass resolutions asking the California Public Utilities Commission to favor local decentralized power in its rule-making.

The "Supporting Community Choice Energy" campaign is a continuation of the Alliance's successful effort to defeat Proposition 16 on last November's ballot by defending the rights of small independent renewable energy suppliers to sell their electricity to homeowners and building owners in a community.