Community Solar ‘Delivers on Promise’ to Lower-Income Households

Community solar users in the United States are 6.1 times more likely to live in multi-unit buildings, 4.4 times more likely to rent, and take home 23% lower incomes than rooftop solar buyers, concludes a new peer-reviewed study by the U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The study covered more than 100,000 rooftop solar owners and 75,000 community solar participants in 11 U.S. states, with a total of 4.2 gigawatts of community solar installed, Canary Media reports.

The results show that “community solar is delivering on its promise,” said lead author Eric O’Shaughnessy, an LBNL affiliate and renewable energy research analyst at Clean Kilowatts. But the research team still found gaps in delivery: communities of colour are less likely to adopt community solar, possibly because of the way the option is marketed, but also because “vulnerable households have been burned by predatory energy marketers in the past,” Canary Media writes.

The news story points to “community-rooted partnerships” in states like Illinois that can help spread the message that community solar is the real deal, and really reduces energy bills. With savings of 5 to 20%, “it’s not a scam,” O’Shaughnessy said. “It can save you money.”

The study found that community solar access is “proving more equitable than rooftop panels,” the news story states, but still tends to involve households that earn a bit more than the state average. But that wasn’t the case in three states—Illinois, New York, and Oregon—that had targeted programs for low- and moderate-income households.

In those jurisdictions, “the team found that those who participated in the community solar programs not only had lower incomes but also were more likely to rent and to live in multi-family buildings than people who adopted community solar but didn’t participate in those programs. What’s more, program participants in Oregon were more likely to identify as minority households.”