After reading this article, I was pleased to have finally read more of an optimistic article, as the previous student lead article, rather then an “expert” bashing something about human activity and interaction with the environment and how we are exponentially ruining our ecosystem.
The list of things that were lacking in the preliminary stages of the pilot program were interesting to point out because what I concluded from reading those was that this is essentially a problem with any new technology. Having humans adapt to a new thing is very difficult for the exact reasons listed, lack of funding, awareness, and incentives.
However, when they started to implement these in demo programs and provided results that were positive to say the least, it begins to prove more and more promising for the future. On page eight, where they break down the benefits of implementing a large scale solar system in the city, it seems very enticing to myself and I’m sure whoever else reads them. The benefits such as energy cost savings and job creation are the backbone of fixing the US Economy, saving money and creating jobs. On page 8 it says that implementing it on .5% of the buildings would create roughly 1,200 new jobs. So ideally there is staggering potential job growth of 240,000. There seems to be no reason for this not to become a real life endeavor for the city of New York to implement these panels into a majority of the buildings.
