Solar for all. That’s what we were about 45 years ago at the Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, Colorado. While solar thermal panels were getting a lot of attention then, rooftop photovoltaic systems were exceedingly rare, generated tiny electricity output, and were frightfully expensive. A cohort of us were anxious over how long it would take for improved technology to bring the price down to the point where most Americans could afford one. Prices have come way down since then, especially since 2005. But the upfront costs—around $20,000 depending on where you live—remain daunting for a large portion of the population.
To help remedy this, on Earth Day this year, President Biden announced a real Solar for All, a $7 billion grant program overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency to make solar energy available to more than a million low-income and disadvantaged American households, saving them at least 20% on their electricity bills. All 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico are included in the 60 selected programs chosen for grants. States, tribes, municipalities, and non-profit groups will use the grants and low-cost financing to provide solar and energy storage for single-family homes and multi-family dwellings. As Biden could rightly say, this is a BFD.
The money is part of the $27 billion the Inflation Reduction Act includes in what is called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. Early last month, $20 billion was awarded to get a national network of green banks up and running. This is another attempt to lower energy costs.
Of Solar for All, Warren Leon, executive director of the Clean Energy States Alliance, told Alison F. Takemura that “There’s never been an initiative anywhere near as big for expanding solar for the benefit of low- and moderate-income households across the country. This is going to give a tremendous boost to an important share of the solar market that has not received sufficient attention in the past.”
For people in 25 states and territories, this will mark the first time they’ll have access to low-income solar programs. For other states the grants will help grow existing programs. The EPA plans to issue the money over a five-year period, with a goal of adding 4 gigawatts of rooftop and community solar power. To qualify for a grant, a project must cut customer electric bills by at least 20%. That, the administration calculates, will save 900,000 households $8 billion during the estimated 25-year lifespan of the solar installations.
In addition to these grants, the IRA created a new tax credit of 40%-50% to lower the costs of community solar projects if they directly benefit residents of affordable housing (IRA section 13103). Non-taxable entities like cities and non-profit housing companies aren’t usually eligible for tax credits, obviously, but IRA section 13801(d) makes an exception. Additionally community solar interconnection costs are now also included in the federal investment tax credit.
Simply put, community solar allows multiple customers to get some or all their electricity needs from a solar array, but not one installed on their dwellings. Community solar programs can be run by municipalities, utilities, private third parties, or cooperatives. In this way, people who can’t buy or install their own solar panels can still get the clean energy they provide. That doesn’t mean just renters. The National Renewable Electricity Laboratory, the successor to the Solar Energy Research Institute, reports that only 1 in 4 residential properties is suited to rooftop solar for structural and logistical matters.
Community solar offers affordable clean energy to lower-income neighborhoods, apartment buildings, schools, small businesses, and government properties. This expansion of accessibility is one reason NREL so enthusiastically supported community solar back in 2010 with this report, noting that “the on-site solar market comprises only one part of the total market for solar energy … Clearly, community options are needed to expand access to solar power for renters, those with shaded roofs, and those who choose not to install a residential system on their home for financial or other reasons.”
The financial picture is stark. There’s truth to critics’ complaints that it’s mostly the elite who can afford solar installations. And that hasn’t much changed in the 14 years since the NREL report was published.
The disparity is a product of the high up-front cost of a solar installation and the fact that less affluent Americans are less likely to own their home. The federal tax incentive lowers costs, but availability depends on a household’s tax liability, and most lower-income people don’t have enough of that to get full advantage of the credit.
Community solar can go a long way in reducing that inequality. But it matters what kind of community solar. The we’re-all-in-this-together tone of the word “community” is violated in many cases of private third-party ownership of a solar array. Customers in such programs get far fewer benefits than they would if they owned the array. Utilities offering monthly billing credits to customers who subscribe to clean energy generated with community solar installations also get more of the benefits than customers owning or in control of their own systems. This is why it’s heartening to see the Biden administration encouraging cooperative ownership of community solar projects.
Now $7 billion is a lot of moolah. But to actually attain the goal of Solar for All, it will ultimately take a lot more than that. Given the caterwauling from Republicans about the IRA and the Democrats’ “radical green agenda,” it’s obvious—as on so many other issues—that keeping certain people out of office is essential to keeping, much less expanding the program.
Here are three examples of projects that will be receiving funds from Solar for All. You can see all of them here.
New Hampshire:
The New Hampshire Department of Energy (NHDOE), The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, and New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority have jointly designed a comprehensive and complementary approach to bring the benefits of residential-serving community solar to those least able to afford this new technology. The Community Loan Fund will target resident-owned communities through their existing program, which helps the residents of manufactured housing parks buy the park from owners and convert them into cooperatives. NH Housing will use funding to install residential-serving community solar on workforce housing projects. Lastly, the NHDOE, serving as the Coalition lead applicant, will scale up its existing community solar program with these funds, serving as a catch all to those communities or projects that do not neatly fit into any of those programs by the Community Loan Fund and Housing Finance Authority.
Wisconsin:
Through a combination of grants to homeowners, incentives, tax credits, loan offerings, and partnerships, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) will remove barriers to solar energy throughout Wisconsin. The main pathways of the program will assist disadvantaged communities in Wisconsin by installing solar on single-family and multifamily residential properties. Wisconsin SFA will ensure that participants have limited or no up-front costs to participate in solar programs. The overarching goal of the program is to reduce household energy bills. The strength of the Wisconsin Technical College System and other workforce partners will be leveraged as they are already training individuals for clean energy careers, particularly solar installation.
Three Affiliated Tribes (The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation)
The Northern Plains Tribal SFA program (NPT-SFA) will transform energy and economic systems in disadvantaged communities with deep and concentrated investments. Expanding to broader areas over time, NPT-SFA will focus first in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, with additional participation of tribes in Wisconsin, and Wyoming. NFP-SFA's strategy is based on a successful pilot program on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Montana and includes the establishment of Tribally-owned and managed portfolios of solar systems sited at the homes of Tribal members. The high electricity prices, frequent power outages, and inefficient housing stock will be leveraged as opportunities for deep, impactful programs. Innovative apprenticeship programs, education, and training partnerships will also attract industry leaders, building capacity in the region to deliver continuing benefits that will endure long beyond the period of the grant.
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