Roasting coffee on the
Humboldt coast since 1980

Alternative Energy

Gold Rush Coffee is proud to be a Humboldt County business. Among the many wonderful things about our little corner of northwestern California are the crisp Pacific air, verdant landscapes and innovative people who live here. Ours is a largely rural county that maintains a welcomed sense of separation from the more urban parts of our state.

We value these qualities and are taking steps to reduce our impact on the local environment.

One way that we are doing this is by investing in solar technology to provide electricity and hot water at both our Petrolia home-office and Broadway Avenue coffee shop. Alternative energy sources have been part of daily life for Joe and Karen since they moved to Humboldt County in the 1970s. Early on, while building their own house, they put together an inexpensive solar water heating system to provide water for domestic needs even as they lived without many other amenities. Today their home and Gold Rush Coffee office still use water heated by the sun, but that solar energy is now utilized for radiant floor heating too.

As it turns out, heating water is one of the primary consumptive uses of energy. Research of residential energy usage performed by the California Energy Commission has shown that 38% of natural gas consumed in our state is used for heating water. Solar Energy International reports that the average home with an electric water heater spends 25% of its home energy costs on heating water.

We took our commitment to the community a step further in 2004 with a major installation of solar electric and solar thermal systems. Working with Six Rivers Solar, a local alternative energy business, we were able to supply a significant portion of the energy used at our Broadway Avenue coffee shop. This installation was featured by the Redwood Coast Energy Authority's "Solar Services Guide for Humboldt County: Residential and Commercial Solar Electricity".

We were assisted financially in this endeavor by rebates offered through the local utility company. And in another eight years the system will have paid for itself, leaving us with reduced utility bills and the assurance that our one-time investment will help maintain the quality of life in Humboldt County for years to come.

(From http://www.redwoodenergy.org/uploads/Booklet8-08-05FINALweb.pdf)

Gold Rush Coffee is celebrating 25 years of roasting at our Petrolia, California roasting facility. Since the early days of delivering coffee to just a few local grocery stores we have grown to make our coffees and espresso more available throughout northern California and now nation-wide.

Gold Rush in the news

Gold Rush Feature Article - 1996

Gold Rush Opens on Broadway - 1998