ELLENVILLE – Opportunities for renewable power sources are popping up everywhere, in the most likely, and visible, of places. Consider, if you will, next week's 'Taking Control of our Energy Supply' forum at SUNY Ulster, put together by Rosendale councilwoman Jen Metzger, co-director of Citizens for Local Power, a grassroots citizen's group interested in promoting a locally-based clean energy economy.

As Metzger explained, the September 29 forum is a way for municipal officials and local residents to gauge the opportunities inherent in developing a Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), a new means of purchasing and utilizing energy that's resulted from the state Public Service Commission's revamping of New York's energy system. CCAs, she added, make it possible for municipalities here to come up with their own energy systems without the legislation that other states, such as Massachusetts and California, currently require.

"It gives opportunities for all kinds of actors — municipal officials, developers and residents — to have a greater say in where their energy comes from," Metzger said.

Establishing a CCA allows municipalities to purchase cheaper, cleaner energy by aggregating the electric load of residents, businesses and institutions into one, then negotiate the energy source and rates on their behalf. According to Metzger, having that kind of leverage helps to lower the bottom line, bill wise; but a CCA offers so much more.

"It's not just about contracting for a better price," she said, it's about bolstering the going green process, as well as the contribution of local green supply companies and the jobs that come along with them.

"Do you know how far the electricity has to come to get here?" Metzger said.

It's a long way, and for many utility companies, she explained, it's not through a green, renewable source.

In our area, Central Hudson holds rein as electrical provider. If Ulster County was to host a CCA, that wouldn't necessarily change; Central Hudson could still distribute power to residences — they will continue ownership of the lines and poles. But the municipality originating the CCA would outsource for an energy provider, one that would meet renewable resource recommendations as well as provide a better rate.

Unlike fossil fuels, Metzger said, renewable resources such as solar are not volatile. A benefit of adopting a CCA, she explained, would be for a community as a whole to decrease their vulnerability to the volatility of electricity prices.

"It can be incredibly costly," she said, noting that many of the residents in Rosendale experienced electricity bill spikes last winter that were nearly unmanageable.

It's all about keeping one's energy more local.

"We want it here," Metzger said.

If a local municipality established a CCA, and established a plan for a renewable source component, Metzger believes the benefits would be limitless. "We would keep the capital local, the jobs local," she said. "And our energy would stem locally and be used as such."

But, it's also not a program anyone is forced to join. Residents can opt out of a CCA and remain solely a Central Hudson, or other utility company, customer. From her research, though, Metzger has found that very few choose such a path.

The renewable options are not limited to solar, either.

"I don't want to presume what Ulster County can do," the councilwoman and energy activist added. "The forum is just an informational meeting. There's no particular model to promote."

And, in fact, there are many possibilities available.

After considering solar, geothermal and wind energy alternatives— all options in use or being considered in our immediate area — there is also bioenergy and hydropower to contemplate.

Most are familiar with ethanol, an organic material added to gasoline to reduce toxins emitted by vehicles and to increase octane; and similarly, bio-diesel. But there is also biopower, the overall ability to produce electricity or heat from biomass resources.

Funding from the Catskill Watershed Cooperation, which overseas city-community relationships and efforts throughout the massive West-of-Hudson NYC watershed area, has partnered with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Delaware County to study the effectiveness of grass-pellet burning stoves and furnaces, as well as whether the processing of such materials would provide a significant revenue for local landowners and business operators.

While bioenergy on this level may not be appropriate for CCA consideration, it may spark the use of such stoves for more local residential and commercial use, as well as a gateway for other bioenergy processes — the burning of organic material to create steam to spin turbines to produce electricity, for example — and is being tried out for several school districts around the greater Catskills region.

And the wave of renewable options doesn't end there.

Currently, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection is set to build a 14-megawatt hydroelectric facility at the Cannonsville Reservoir, with construction slated to being 2016 at a cost of $72 million. The electricity garnered from the facility is projected to power 6,000 homes and avoid the emission of 25,620 metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, the equivalent of removing 5,400 automobiles from the road. The facility will be made up of four hydroelectric turbines inside a 9,000 square foot power house; as billions of gallons of water are released from the reservoir each year, electricity will be produced.

Could a similar project be instituted closer to home? And could the same gravitational methods used in the DEP's reservoir system tunnels also be used, eventually, in sewer systems?

As more consideration is turning toward hydro-power, the harnessing of tidal and wave energy, and advances in bioenergy, solar, wind and geothermal, it will be interesting to see whether the old fossil fuel market keeps trying to adapt, or pretend it's not finite.

We wait to see what this all means in our own homes and lives... as well as our children's.