ASHEVILLE - Fifteen-year-old Harmony Kunst was overcome with emotion at the thought of growing up in a community powered by the sun instead of coal.

And one in which a group of tenacious teenagers can have a say in shaping government policies.

Kunst was one of 17 students with the Youth for Environmental Stewardship group that amassed more than 1,800 signatures on a petition asking the county to commit to transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy on a super tight time frame.

The signatures represented all nine Buncombe County public high schools and UNC Asheville.

After shooting it down at past meetings, the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners voted 4-3 in favor of the resolution at its Dec. 5 meeting, putting the county on the fast track to moving away from the burning of fossil fuels for its electricity and its vehicle fleet, and committing to only using clean and renewable energy for all county operations by 2030 and to all county homes and businesses by 2042. That is, in 25 years.

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The ambitious goal places Buncombe as the third county out of the 100 in North Carolina to pass such a resolution, but the vote is historic in its aggressive timeline. Watauga County, which passed a resolution in January, and Orange County in September, both set 2050 as a target for going completely clean.

“I feel like it’s our planet, and the more we wait, the worse it’s going to get. If we don’t take action, there’s not going to be much left to rescue,” said Kunst, a sophomore at Nesbitt Discovery Academy, the first Buncombe County STEM school (science, technology, engineering and math).

The resolution was supported by the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 Campaign in Asheville, and other community members and environmental groups, as an important tool for moving away from burning coal and gas, which release carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that leads to climate change.

It is also hailed as an energy cost-saving measure for government, businesses and residents.

County Commission Chair Brownie Newman, who praised the students’ efforts, and Commissioners Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, Ellen Frost and Al Whitesides voted in favor of the resolution.

Critics said the plan was is unrealistic, not feasible in its deadline and with no money attached, has no teeth.

“I am a supporter of clean energy and renewable energy,” said Commissioner Joe Belcher, who along with Mike Fryar and Robert Pressley voted against the resolution.

“The addition of the timeline I was uncomfortable with. And it did not take into consideration the fact that there are times you’re not going to have the storage capacity to meet the needs of Buncombe County.”

Belcher said he is opposed to using farmland for solar or wind farms, noting that producing solar energy in the mountains is a different beast than in counties such as Rutherford or Cleveland, which have greater stretches of flat, open land suitable for renewable energy production.

North Carolina is the No. 2 state in solar production in the country, behind California.

“As a state we’re doing a good job and moving forward in a positive way. People just wanted a goal for the sake of a goal, something to check off the list. I’m not going to support anything as a county we don’t think through or calculate the cost versus advantages.”

Fryar dismissed the student signatures and hundreds of emails he received as “copy and paste.”

“You’ve got to tell us how much is it going to cost? No one has brought that forward to me,” Fryar said at the meeting. He said the county should stick to its original goal of 80 percent renewable energy.

The cost of solar energy is rapidly declining while the cost of electricity produced by Duke Energy's coal-burning Asheville power plant at Lake Julian is on the rise, said Ken Brame, political chair of the North Carolina Sierra Club.

The plant is set to replace coal with natural gas by 2020.

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Duke Energy is petitioning for a 17 percent rate hike, which it says will help cover the cost of transitioning to natural gas, as well as pay for coal ash cleanup and

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, over the last five years, the price of solar energy has declined 64 percent.

“By transitioning to renewable energy, we can save taxpayers and other energy users money while protecting our environment. We think it’s doable,” Brame said.

Why the clean energy hurry?

If Asheville and Buncombe County want to join the worldwide movement to stall the effects of climate change, they have to start moving now, Newman said.

Climate change, which he called the greatest threat to society, is a warming of the Earth from the burning of fossil fuels that leads to melting polar caps, rising sea levels, flooding, disruptions in wildlife migrations, and wildly fluctuating natural disasters including drought, wildfires, hurricanes and other storms.

In 2015, the Paris Climate Accord was signed by every country except Nicaragua and Syria to limit greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising to disastrous levels.

President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris accord earlier this spring. In October, Nicaragua and Syria joined the agreement.

“We’re the only country in the world not recognizing and committing as a country to going in the direction we need to go to avoid the most severe effects of climate change, and that’s unfortunate,” said Newman, whose day job is as owner of a solar energy company.

“It’s still important for communities to be taking action and business owners to be taking leadership, and individuals to do all they can.”

After the U.S. withdrawal from the accord, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer signed on to a commitment by mayors across the country to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement and endorsed the goal of powering all of Asheville with 100 percent clean, renewable energy.

100 percent under way

The city and the county have already been making strides in transitioning to clean and renewable energy for their municipal operations.

The city now has a goal of 80 percent carbon reduction by 2050, and to reduce its carbon footprint by 4 percent every year, which if met, would push the city ahead of its goal, said Asheville sustainability officer Amber Weaver.

“We don’t feel like we have to have every detail worked out right now,” Newman said of the renewable energy resolution. “The county already had a previous goal of 80 percent reduction at 2 percent per year. We’ve been surpassing that goal every year since we set it.”

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The county plans to take a huge bite out of the 100 percent pie with the creation of a solar farm on its closed landfill in Woodfin.

Jeremiah LeRoy, Buncombe County sustainability officer, said approximately 15 percent of county operations will be offset by the solar farm. Earlier this year the county chose the bid by Duke Energy to produce the energy. The lease is now being negotiated and site visits will begin soon, he said.

The farm is expected to produce as much as 5 megawatts of power, enough electricity to power about 750 homes.

The county has also been working to reduce energy use in its 38 buildings and public schools through changing out lighting to the more energy efficient LED lights and upgrading HVAC systems.

“It’s not out of bounds to say we can do this in a cost-effective way. Green Source, for example, is a way for the county to sign a power purchase agreement in a way that is cost-neutral for county. It just makes sense,” LeRoy said.

The Green Source Rider program was created through state legislation this year to allow Duke Energy to purchase a chunk of renewable energy and sell to large-scale energy users such as municipalities, the military and University of North Carolina system. Until now, third-party purchase agreements were not allowed.

Getting every household on renewable energy will be a different beast. But LeRoy said the county’s Community Clean Energy Fund is already allowing the sustainability office to work on community-based energy efficiency projects.

The Competitive Energy Solutions for North Carolina law also allows private residents to lease solar panels on roofs rather than having to buy them.

Olufemi Lewis, community organizer with the Sierra Club’s Ready For 100 Campaign in Asheville, said that despite what some critics say, she believes the clean energy resolution is more than symbolic, it is a tangible document of the county’s goals.

“There’s nothing wrong in setting goals. This is a prime opportunity for us to be creative in achieving 100 percent renewable energy,” Lewis said. “There is no money attached to this resolution, but it will be money-saving. It shows an important commitment to fair and affordable energy prices for all.”

The resolution was one of six goals set out by the commission to strengthen the quality of life in Buncombe County, including stemming opiod addiction, equal opportunity to early childhood education, affordable and safe housing, an equitable justice system and cultivating a diverse workforce.

All measures were passed.

Tallulah Cloos, 17, a senior at Reynolds High, said she felt the young people in the room played an important part in raising the awareness of the importance of renewable energy, although she said she was surprised at the “backlash” from commissioners after YES members presented their petition.

She said the petition is not the end of the student’s involvement.

“We don’t see converting to 100 percent as a burden. We do plan to help any efforts to go 100 percent renewable energy. We’re down for the long haul,” Cloos said.

“This has given me a big boost in motivation. I think that this is amazing and a really great step forward, but we have a lot more work to do,” Kunst said. “We are going to have to keep working with commissioners to make sure we keep our environment and city and county clean.”