If you're reading this right now you're consuming energy and that energy has to come from somewhere. Typically, "we’re killing people in foreign lands in order to extract 200-million-year-old sunlight. Then we burn it... in order to boil water to create steam to drive a turbine to generate electricity. We frack our own backyards and pollute our rivers, or we blow up our mountaintops just miles from our nation’s capital for an hour of electricity, when we could just take what’s falling free from the sky.” Those words from Danny Kennedy, the founder of Sunergy, are the heart of any call for more investment in solar energy. It’s a hot topic and in Kansas City, Missouri were 80 government buildings will soon be leasing solar panels and getting cheaper energy as a result. In light of that we take a look at our regions solar options with Chuck Caisleym, vice president of Marketing & Public affairs at KCP&L and Susan Brown, VP of Public Affairs at Brightergy.
Surprisingly Missouri ranks sixth in the nation for solar panel job requests and that demand is growing with over 82,000 homes in the United States now connected to solar. Prices for solar instillation and equipment have come down dramatically in the last decade and tax credits from both Missouri and the Federal Government make it even more affordable. However, there are still expensive initial investments and the payoff is not immediate.
