It’s Time to Develop More Equitable Community Solar
By Sonum Nerurkar and Deborah Behles
Photo Credit: Flickr/US Department of Energy.
In 2017, Shiloh Temple, a majority Black church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, installed a large community solar garden on their spacious rooftop. The solar garden, consisting of over 600 panels, provides enough energy to not only power the church, but also power a nearby mosque and 29 local households – many of which lack sunny rooftops for their own solar panels. The energy provided by the community solar garden is also cheaper and cleaner – aka a win for their wallets, the planet, and our health.
“Solar power should be available to everyone – not just sunny rooftop owners.”
Around the country from Colorado to Washington D.C. to Minnesota, community solar gardens like Shiloh Temple’s are increasing local resilience, providing jobs, and saving households money, especially for low-income families. Best of all, it can give households without sunny rooftops a way to access clean energy. How community solar can allow low-income households that would otherwise not be able to participate in the transition to cleaner energy is its major difference from more traditional solar installations on individual homes or at the utility-scale. As the Institute for Local Self Reliance puts it, “solar power should be available to everyone – not just sunny rooftop owners.”
Yet our current stock of low-income community solar projects is alarmingly low, operational only in a handful of communities. To accelerate an equitable clean energy transition, we need more equitable community solar development in low-income communities – much, much more.
How Community Solar Works
Source: The Equity Fund’s Community Solar: A Critical Tool for Energy Justice, 2023.
A Key Opportunity to Accelerate Community Solar
To increase community solar development, incentives and grants are often necessary. But to do this equitably, federal and state programs need to prioritize community solar projects that benefit low-income households.
“The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund should present a key opportunity to increase low-income community solar development, if its implementation centers equity.”
A promising example is the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, one of the most significant provisions in the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). It includes $7 billion in funding for zero-emissions technologies in low-income and disadvantaged communities. The EPA recently stated that it will prioritize residential and community solar projects, as well as storage and upgrades related to these projects. This funding should present a key opportunity to increase low-income community solar development, if its implementation centers equity.
Other opportunities from the IRA for community solar also exist, including the potential for up to a 50% investment tax credit for qualifying low-income community solar projects.
Designing for Equity
These grant and incentive opportunities are exciting, but safeguards are necessary to ensure that community solar projects are equitable and provide benefits to local communities. In particular, the programs should include: a clear prioritization of low-income and environmental justice communities; ways to ensure that the project is community driven; transparent and accessible outreach and program materials; and meaningful benefits to subscribers and communities. The Equity Fund’s recent policy brief – Community Solar: A Critical Tool for Energy Justice – includes a deeper dive into the policy barriers and solutions and how to design an equitable community solar program.
Given the recent increase in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, the time to start developing new equitable community solar projects is now.
For additional information on how to design an equitable community solar program, please see The Equity Fund and Just Solution Collective’s policy brief, Community Solar: A Critical Tool for Energy Justice.
Sonum Nerurkar is the federal strategist at the Equity Fund. Deborah Behles is a policy consultant to the Equity Fund.
