From Vision to Impact: Sol Systems’ Journey Towards a Community-Focused Clean Energy Economy
Community Impact |
By Adaora Ifebigh
In the three years following our inaugural Power Purchase Agreement announcement with Microsoft in 2020, we have significantly expanded our commitment to invest in under-resourced communities and climate change-impacted communities. This groundbreaking strategy started with 5 community organizations in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In 2023, we concluded the year by supporting 15 community impact organizations across the Eastern Seaboard of the United States backed by funding and support from two additional corporate customers, Google, and Gas South.
Leaning into Sol Systems’ focus on a “Pathway to Solarization” especially for under-resourced communities, our partnerships have been instrumental in creating community-centered programs that promote clean energy access, facilitate critical home repairs for energy efficiency, and bolster education and workforce development programs that provide wraparound services for program participants. These initiatives are designed to provide comprehensive support to participants. We shared our journey, lessons learned, and opportunities at various events throughout the year, collaborating closely with our partners, industry experts, and federal agency representatives.
Sol Systems Community Impact Engagement Series
The Sol Systems Community Impact Engagement Series hosted two significant webinars. The first, "From IRA to BIL – Available Funding to Accelerate Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, and Equitable Workforce Development," offered insights into funding opportunities under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The second webinar, "Reducing Energy Burden: Enabling Access to Solar and Resiliency through Pre-Weatherization and Energy Efficiency," showcased our integrated approach to ensuring universal clean energy access.
Industry Partner Events
A key highlight was our participation in the Rural Renaissance Roadshow, organized by Groundswell, Inc., in Northwest Arkansas. This event brought together rural energy practitioners to discuss the future of local clean energy, innovative partnerships, and funding for rural community programs.
Joined by our partners, Appalachian Voices, and Aiken Electric Cooperative, we hosted a session, “The Power of Partnerships: Leveraging Scale for a Successful Community-Centered Clean Energy Development,” which emphasized the importance of collaboration in achieving impactful community-centered clean energy projects.
A Rewarding Journey
Since launching our first-of-its-kind impact initiative, our journey has been filled with learning experiences and achievements, affirming our dedication to making clean energy accessible to all, especially for under-resourced communities. Celebrating the solar installation at the City of Refuge in Baltimore, a faith-based organization that supports families and individuals on their path out of a crisis with Groundswell in October was a memorable and rewarding moment. This event symbolized the tangible impact of our collaborative approach to expanding access to clean energy in communities where it is needed the most.
New Partnerships
While continuing our commitment to nurturing early career exposure to the clean energy industry, we fostered a new partnership to support middle and high schools in Gwinnett County Public Schools, Georgia. To date, over 20 teachers have participated in the KidWind training to implement renewable energy curriculum in their classrooms, and it is estimated that over 64,000 students will be impacted by this curriculum over time. Furthermore, we strengthened our relationship with electric cooperatives, who provide services to 92% of the counties in the United States facing persistent poverty. This was achieved through a targeted initiative in the Carolinas, designed to "close the pre-weatherization gap" by addressing essential health and safety home repairs in over 100 homes across the region producing an estimated 604 MWh of energy savings, $74,000 of electricity cost savings per year, and over 400 MT of CO2 avoided.
Future Possibilities
Inspired by Dr. Seuss's "Oh, the Places You'll Go," we are excited about the future possibilities. Our ongoing and new partnerships, especially around our solar project sites, promise even greater impacts in the years to come. We look forward to the journey ahead, committed to expanding our community impact and fostering an equitable transition to a clean energy economy.
Infrastructure + Impact Spotlight: Q&A with Lynn Heller of Climate Access Fund
Community Impact |
By Adaora Ifebigh
Lynn Heller is a social entrepreneur with extensive experience in the nonprofit sector. Prior to launching the Climate Access Fund, Lynn served as Vice President of the Abell Foundation, where she oversaw the foundation’s operations and managed the Foundation’s environmental grants portfolio. Lynn has worked as a nonprofit strategic planning and management consultant and has launched political and economic development programs in Baltimore, California, and Indonesia. Lynn is Board Chair of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, a past member of the Maryland Climate Change Commission, and a founding member of the Baltimore Sustainability Commission.
I hope you enjoy learning more about expanding low-income community solar through partnerships, innovative financing, and advocacy in the summary of our conversation below.
-Adaora Ifebigh
Lynn Heller - Credit: Climate Access Fund
For those who might not know, what is the Climate Access Fund?
The Climate Access Fund (CAF) is a nonprofit green bank that uses flexible capital to increase community solar development in and for historically disinvested communities in Maryland. As we know, environmental harms and the impact of climate change disproportionately affect historically disinvested communities as well as neighborhoods with greater percentages of low-income people of color. In Maryland alone, there are 400,000+ low-income households, yet only a fraction have participated in Maryland’s Community Solar Pilot Program since the program’s inception six years ago.
Most community solar projects are located on large tracts of land and serve higher income families because these are the projects that tend to provide the most attractive financial returns for investors. Yet smaller (<1 MW) projects located on commercial rooftops and parking lots in underserved communities have the potential to offer a range of community benefits in addition to electricity bill savings. These “co-benefits'' can include, but are not limited to, job training, employment and educational opportunities, and wealth creation through shared ownership of the solar asset itself. CAF’s low-cost financing – raised from a combination of public, private, and corporate sources – makes these projects viable.
What inspired you to start the Climate Access Fund?
I was working at a private foundation that had a history of supporting efforts to tackle and alleviate poverty. The foundation had a focus on Baltimore City and a history of social impact investing. I had long been passionate about environmental sustainability, reducing the impact of climate change, and advancing social justice efforts, and while at the foundation, I was focused on making sure that low-income households would not be left out of the clean energy transition.
After the 2016 election, I felt moved to do more on this issue because I sensed there would be less motivation at the federal level in the coming years. The more I learned about low-income household access to solar, the more I discovered: (a) the real potential of community solar to reach low-income households at scale; and (b) a clear financing gap was preventing private solar development from benefitting low-income households. CAF was launched to plug that financing gap using social impact capital.
Through a community impact partnership with Sol Systems and Microsoft, Climate Access Fund is implementing a community solar project “Solar4Us @ Henderson-Hopkins” in Baltimore, MD. Can you share the history and details of this project?
Elmer A. Henderson: A Johns Hopkins Partnership School (or as most people refer to it, Henderson-Hopkins) is a Title I, K-8 school in the heart of East Baltimore. It is a few blocks away from Johns Hopkins Facilities – the hospital, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Medicine. Henderson-Hopkins is a contract school (like a charter school) that serves a school community that is over 95% Black/African American, with 100% of its students eligible for free and reduced lunch. The K-8 school is part of a state-of-the-art school campus that also includes the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Early Childhood Center, a local pioneer serving families eligible for Head Start alongside families paying market rate.
Henderson-Hopkins operates as a community school, which is a school that places focus on supporting and building partnerships with residents in addition to academics and student outcomes. During the height of the pandemic, I went to Henderson-Hopkins as a volunteer, and I delivered food to residents who were lining up in their cars. Impressed by the ethos of the school and their community school approach, I reached out to school leadership to introduce the concept of a rooftop solar array that would benefit the families in their school community as well as other neighborhood residents. Henderson-Hopkins was enthusiastic about this idea and agreed to be our demonstration site, and Solar4Us @ Henderson-Hopkins was born. Henderson-Hopkins agreed to use 100% of all power generated for the benefit of the school community as opposed to drawing energy for the benefit of the school campus. The project anticipates serving ~150 - 175 low-income households. Each household that enrolls will experience a 25% savings on their electricity bills.
Our approach also emphasizes the necessity of other co-benefits, such as workforce and education-related opportunities. The construction of the system will create solar-related jobs in the neighborhood, and we prioritize local hiring. We are also working with a local nonprofit, CivicWorks, to offer paid apprenticeships to graduates of their solar installation job training program. Furthermore, we are sponsoring an after-school club for Henderson-Hopkins middle school students that focuses on environmental sustainability and clean energy, and with the solar panels being an on-site, provide an experiential learning tool. Ultimately, our target is to offset 27,000 metric tons of C02, the equivalent of ~3.04 M gallons of gas consumed and generate $1.1 M in household savings over the projected 35-year lifespan of the solar panels.
Why is this project important for the area where it is located?
The opening of the Henderson-Hopkins campus in 2014 represented progress toward the fulfillment of a commitment made by Johns Hopkins University to families in the Old Town/Middle East neighborhoods of East Baltimore. In these neighborhoods, the median income is less than $25,000, and over 50% of children live below the poverty line. It is a predominantly Black neighborhood, and 90.8% of residents identify as Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC). Over 50% of the adult population is unemployed. For participating families, the 25% discount on monthly electricity bills could very well be the difference between a paid bill and cut off electricity, which negatively impacts children and families from financial, health, and well-being standpoints.
What would you say are the benefits of partnerships when trying to address challenges facing our communities today?
At the fundamental level the only reason CAF is doing this is because of our partnership with the school. We are so fortunate to have such an enthusiastic and values-aligned partner like Henderson-Hopkins for our first demonstration of this community solar approach. We recently filled our last fundraising gap through a crowdfunding effort and should begin construction in Fall 2023.
Funding from Sol Systems has been critically important in the financing of this project because it has allowed us to do things like create a working capital fund, which every solar project needs. It also allowed us to establish necessary reserves, which we wouldn’t otherwise have. We also appreciate Sol Systems sharing their significant expertise with CAF, as well as sending us relevant funding opportunities as they learn of them to help us leverage additional funding.
We are intentional about cultivating mutually beneficial partnerships at every level. This includes large national coalitions, peers in the green banking and solar development fields, elected officials, and quasi-public agencies at all levels of government; community-based organizations and resident leaders, renewable energy and environmental justice advocates, and other mission-aligned organizations. Partnership development is an area of work for which we care deeply about, and as we grow, we look forward to having more internal capacity to expand our reach.
In short, our work has really taken a village. Solar4Us @ Henderson-Hopkins would not be possible without partnerships with the public and private sectors, other nonprofit groups, and philanthropy. Many stakeholders have come to the table to make this happen, which is especially important since we are doing something new– new because it is renewable energy with community solar, new to Baltimore City, and new because of the innovative ways to finance this project. This project is a first of its kind in almost every respect, and when you are attempting to implement a project of that nature, a multitude of committed partners is necessary.
Do you see your approach to community solar as a new way of bringing economic fairness to under-resourced areas? What makes your approach unique in addressing urban disinvestment?
Absolutely. I see this as a unique approach. Most community solar projects are built on large tracts of open, arable land. That’s where the economies of scale tend to be more beneficial. Bigger projects yield a greater return on investment. The revenue-to-cost ratio is higher, and naturally, the market gravitates towards those larger projects. This is great from a renewable energy perspective, but these projects typically do not prioritize enrolling low-income households, and the household savings rate tends to be lower.
However, rarely do private developers approach community solar as a broader economic development tool in low-income communities. It is often the case that it is out-of-state investors who own the projects and reap the long-term economic benefits in Maryland, and there are no co-benefits like community education and job training and apprenticeships. Local hiring is not usually a priority unless it is a public project. Private solar developers are not trying to figure out how to share the benefits of long-term asset ownership with the community members themselves. All these kinds of co-benefits tend to not exist in other types of larger scale solar development, and even community solar development generally.
Complementing our work as a green bank, CAF also has an advocacy angle that has been instrumental in paving the way for this holistic way of approaching community solar. In 2022, CAF originated HB 1039, which exempts community solar projects on rooftops, parking lots, and landfills that are at least 50% low and moderate income (LMI) from personal property taxes. In 2023, CAF was at the table to strengthen and advocate for HB 908, which made permanent the statewide community solar pilot program, eliminated the pilot program’s arbitrary cap on community solar projects at 580 MW, required that every project reserve at least 40% of its power for low-income households, and made bill consolidation mandatory for utilities.
Infrastructure + Impact Spotlight: Welcome Our New Impact Partners!
Insights |
By Adaora Ifebigh
This article is part of the March 2023 edition of our publication The Sol SOURCE. Click here to read the full publication.
In 2020, we announced our first power purchase and community investment agreement. The agreement was a milestone in our “Infrastructure + Impact” mission, representing a groundbreaking strategy to leverage clean power generation to invest in under-resourced communities and communities disproportionately harmed by climate change. Under that agreement, Sol Systems is charged to craft community-focused clean energy solutions and support local workforce development by partnering with local organizations that are working to address challenges in their communities.
Today, our initiative has grown from five organizations based in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. to 10 organizations serving a variety of rural and urban communities. Like their predecessors in the program, our newest partners are focused on renewable energy, environmental justice, and job creation and training. These partnerships also bring new support to our “Pathway to Solarization” objective, which recognizes the importance of home repairs and energy efficiency upgrades to expanding access to solar, as well as educating and growing the clean energy workforce. Below are a few of the organizations that we have worked with closely over the last year and will continue to work with in the year to come.
Based in Boone, North Carolina, Appalachian Voices envisions an Appalachia with healthy ecosystems and resilient local economies that allow communities to thrive. They work to increase energy efficiency and end harmful fossil-fuel practices (such as mountaintop-removal coal mining), and strive to shift to clean energy sources, including solar and wind power. Sol Systems’ partnership will establish a solar readiness fund. This fund will expand the work of Appalachian Voices’ established solar finance fund, which provides catalytic support to unlock solar investments in coal communities. Specifically, the solar readiness fund targets facilities whose key barrier to solar is poor roof conditions.
Based in Christiansburg, Virginia, Community Housing Partners was founded to perform home repairs for low-income families living in unsafe or unhealthy conditions. As the complexity of home repairs grew, the organization incorporated, received a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) designation and became Virginia’s first provider of federal Weatherization Assistance Program services. Sol Systems’ partnership will support energy efficiency and safety upgrades, improving residents’ quality of life and reducing the energy burden in a low-income apartment community in Pembroke, Virginia.
Based in Washington, D.C., Rebuilding Together DC Alexandria is part of a national network of affiliates working to preserve affordable homeownership, revitalize neighborhoods, and provide critical home-repair services that eliminate health and safety hazards free of charge to those in need. Sol Systems’ partnership will be used to make energy-efficient upgrades to two facilities: an affordable housing facility for homeless veterans and a housing unit for low-income households owned by So Others Might Eat (SOME). SOME is a Washington, D.C. organization and existing partner of Sol Systems working to help break the cycle of poverty and homelessness in the city. SOME is the current beneficiary of a 915 kW community solar installation recently completed for FedEx at a facility in Washington, D.C. FedEx is allotting part of the electricity bill credits generated by the solar installation to offset the yearly electricity costs of two SOME facilities.
Based in Baltimore, Maryland, Climate Access Fund is a green bank whose mission is to reduce the energy burden and carbon footprint of Maryland’s low- and moderate-income (LMI) households by facilitating access to clean community solar projects. Sol Systems’ partnership will support the financing and implementation of a community solar project at the Henderson Hopkins School in East Baltimore, which will reserve 100% of the solar power generated for LMI households in the community. Other community benefits will include solar workforce training and an after-school club for middle school students.
Based in Petersburg, Virginia, Virginia Environmental Justice Collaborative was created when four organizations (the Southeast CARE Coalition, Appalachian Voices, the Federal Policy Office of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and New Virginia Majority) saw the need for statewide coordination to support Virginia organizations addressing environmental justice issues. Sol Systems’ partnership will support the organization’s efforts to establish a solar-plus-storage resilience hub and launch workforce development initiatives in Petersburg, a historically under-resourced community in Virginia.
In the year ahead, we will continue to foster relationships with our current community partners while expanding our impact with new ones. Our continuing partnerships deepen the impact we have in D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia, while our new partners will allow us to expand our work into new geographical areas, specifically rural Appalachia in Virginia and North Carolina.
Small Organization Tackles a Big Problem: Building Capacity to Strengthen Community Impact
Community Impact |
By Adaora Ifebigh
A challenge often seen across grassroots community impact work is building capacity[1] within community organizations. As the clean energy transition grows, an immediate priority is ensuring that small community organizations, especially those serving low-income, coal-reliant, and BIPOC communities, as well as communities that have been affected by environmental challenges, can increase the capacity needed to continue serving their communities.
Over the past year, Sol Systems’ impact team engaged with over 150 community impact organizations across the United States to introduce ourselves and learn about their work. We shared our Infrastructure + Impact™ mission with the organizations, building the trust that is key to working with low-income and historically marginalized communities.
The organizations we met varied in their size and scope - from workforce development, environmental conservation and remediation, energy efficiency and weatherization, to clean energy generation and resiliency hub development. Each of the organizations is doing its part to embed equity and inclusion in its work so that no individual or community is left behind in the transition to a clean energy economy. During our conversations, it became obvious that these organizations share a common challenge: raising the funding needed to grow their programs and widen the scope of their impact.
Case Study: Huneebee Project
Huneebee Project (Huneebee) is one organization meeting the capacity challenge head-on. Headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut, Huneebee is a nonprofit social enterprise that brings beehives to community gardens and equitable employment to local youth. Its founder and Executive Director, Sarah Taylor, is a licensed clinical social worker and beekeeper with a history of serving youth in New Haven. Drawing from her experience working with youth who would one day participate in her organization’s programs, Sarah developed the idea that youth development and local environmental conservation are goals that complement each other. Founded on this belief, Huneebee teaches transferable job skills to young individuals to prepare them for work in other environments.
The training program also includes “wraparound” support for trainees such as resume building workshops and other activities designed to help them succeed in the workplace. Primarily, this program and the team at Huneebee provide stability and structure for young people that often miss it in their everyday lives. At the end of the training program, the trainees are invited to apply for jobs with Huneebee as garden site managers, operations assistants, bee apprentices, and junior bee instructors.
In the four years since inception, 25 trainees have graduated from the Beekeepers in Residence program, Huneebee’s premier job skills training program, which has one cohort per year. When I asked Sarah why the program was limited to only one cohort of about six trainees per year, the response could be summarized into one word – capacity. Huneebee’s supervisory staff and instructors are all volunteers, and all its funding is spent on the bees, the hives, stipends for the youth trainees, and decent wages for the youth employees. This is the first year that Sarah will not need a second job to support herself while she focuses on developing the organization’s programming and raising funds to support its expansion. Like any other young organization, Huneebee has challenges to meet before it can scale its impact in the community. These needs range from hiring a full-time beekeeper to responsibly care for its hives, maximize honey production, host more hives, increase the bee-keeping workshops, and move into a permanent space. Most importantly, Huneebee knows that the best way to deepen their impact is to increase their cohort size. Huneebee recently secured two multi-year grants and completed a successful fundraiser which will allow them to increase the number of hours they can offer their youth, run up to three cohorts next year, and deepen its impact. Recently, they have finally hired a full-time beekeeper!
Sarah Taylor is justifiably proud of the organization she founded, especially the youth who have come through its doors to date. For her, there is a sense of responsibility to support workforce pathways for youth in the community. Non-profit community impact organizations like Huneebee Project are important in their communities. Often these groups provide needed social services such as education and job skills training, which many of the residents depend on, that help enhance the welfare of the community. But the need for these services is usually much greater than the non-profits’ capacity to provide them.
Building capacity does not happen instantly, but its benefits to non-profits and community organizations such as Huneebee Project cannot be overstated.
Other Organizations
For more information about community organizations embracing the challenges of capacity-building to deepen impact in their communities and how you can help, check out these other organizations in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area. These are a few of the organizations that we engaged with in the past year:
Computer CORE is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to prepare underserved adults in Virginia to achieve their career goals by teaching foundational digital and professional skills. Computer CORE has a long history of helping Virginians from over 100 countries to “build confidence in the computer skills needed to participate in today’s economy.”
South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT) is a community-led non-profit organization working to build affordable housing, ensure development without displacement, and zero waste. SBCLT was founded after years of research and action by high school students and residents in South Baltimore. SBCLT believes that “people directly impacted by environmental, economic and racial injustice must be in the lead to create development that regenerates our communities and our planet.”
[1] In this article, capacity focuses on an organization’s ability to raise or obtain the funding needed to grow its programs and serve more members of the community.
In the June edition of the Sol SOURCE we introduced our Infrastructure + Impact Spotlight Series, an opportunity for our staff, partners, and customers to get to know the community-based organizations we work with, other notable organizations that are doing their part to ensure a just and sustainable future, and to learn more about Sol’s role in facilitating the journey towards a more just energy future.
This quarter we highlight our partnership with GRID Alternatives Mid-Atlantic (GRID), a non-profit based in Washington D.C. that provides no-cost solar installations and solar job training. GRID Alternatives is a community partner in our partnership with Microsoft to combine a 500-megawatt (MW) framework power purchase agreement (PPA), one of the country’s largest, with a groundbreaking strategy to invest in under-resourced communities and communities disproportionately impacted by climate change.
GRID’s mission is building community-powered solutions to advance economic and environmental justice through renewable energy. Through their Solar Works DC[1] and Solar Futures programs, GRID provides hands-on, group-based installation training and soft skills development for DC residents. This workforce development program is crucial in making the solar industry more inclusive for people of color. Additionally, GRID works extensively with low- to moderate-income residents in DC—including Wards 7 and 8, historically marginalized areas in DC where access to affordable, healthy food is limited or non-existent. In these food deserts, areas where it is difficult to buy affordable or good quality fresh food, resources are scarce and environmental issues are more severe. GRID helps democratize renewable solar energy to make affordable electricity, cleaner air, and sustainable career development available to everyone.
GRID is led by Executive Director Elijah Perry, a charming and passionate DC resident whose family has called the District home for decades. Elijah believes firmly in the principle that even marginal changes have impact on intractable problems. This adage is also becoming clearer to me as I work in community impact and through collaborations with people like Elijah—we do not need to wait to be able to move mountains to solve problems. Our work could start small and lead to a ripple effect in the community. GRID’s work in the Washington DC community, led by Elijah, is a pebble breaking the surface of the pond.
There is no better example of the immense impact of GRID’s work in the community than Jahlil Wormley, a graduate of the Solar Works DC program. When Jahlil graduated high school, he was unsure about what career options he could pursue. In the few months following his graduation, he experienced homelessness and gun violence. The violent experiences threatened his life and his ability to walk again. Two years later, Jahlil is not only walking well, but he also lives in his own apartment and earns $20 per hour in his first full-time job at Tesla Energy in Prince George’s County, MD. He credits GRID’s Solar Works DC program for helping him get his life on track. Not only did Jahlil attend the hands-on solar installation training, but he also used the career development and wrap-around support services provided by the program. Solar Works DC trains people on how to install solar panels and provides support through resume building, financial literacy, mock interviews, and addressing needs related to mental health, hunger and other issues that can affect personal growth.[2]
Since the fall of 2021, over 40 participants have graduated from GRID’s workforce training programs. Out of these graduates, 19 of them have received offers for solar jobs in the Washington DC metropolitan area. One local partner hired four trainees from the class, the most hires made by a single organization. This employment opportunity includes a trip abroad to work on solar installation projects in Kenya. According to Elijah, the intangible benefits from an opportunity to travel internationally are immeasurable especially for people who never left the locality where they were born and raised. Not only does GRID help its trainees to secure employment with its partners, GRID also frequently hires trainees as instructors for new classes. To continue playing a role in addressing the gender disparities that exist in the solar industry, GRID has hired three women from the recent class as full-time solar instructors.
A financial contribution from Sol Systems (Sol) enhanced GRID’s ability to provide financial and computer literacy components to the installer training curriculum, career support activities, build community partnerships, and engage more employers to support greater inclusion in the solar sector.
Sol’s commitment to under-resourced communities is a priority shared by the leadership and staff. On April 13, 2022, staff at Sol participated in an Employer Day hosted by GRID for Solar Works DC trainees. During that session, Sol staff shared their various pathways to a career in the solar industry, offered instruction on job search, interviewing and soft skills needed to succeed in the workplace, tips on the benefits of mentorship, etc. The benefits of learning from employees in an organization in the industry where a person hopes to gain a foothold are innumerable especially in the face of barriers to advancement. On April 23, 2022, GRID Alternatives joined Sol Systems to celebrate Earth Day at a Starbucks Community Store event in Landover Hills, Maryland. Partnering with organizations like GRID shows how meaningful engagement with communities to tackle local challenges and build a sustainable pathway for future generations can be accomplished when the mission is shared by leadership, staff, and the community.
[1] Solar Works DC is part of the Department of Energy and Environment’s Solar for All program, which seeks to provide the benefits of solar electricity to 100,000 low-income households and reduce their energy bills
At Sol Systems, we work with our customers to design tailored programs for a more sustainable infrastructure solution. We do this because we believe in the work, it maps to our own culture and mission, and we can help lead our customers to make a transition they might not otherwise make. Our work connects our investments and projects to the communities in which we work and operate through educational programs focused on sustainability and clean energy, through job training programs, and through integrated economic activities. We focus on three aspects of the life cycle for the projects that we develop and/or finance: (1) site selection, (2) development, and (3) operations. In each phase, we aim to maximize overall impact.
As part of our commitment to supporting under-resourced communities through infrastructure investment and development, on May 17, 2022, Sol Systems and FedEx announced a unique charitable arrangement with So Others Might Eat (SOME), a local Washington DC non-profit. This effort builds off the 915Kw solar system Sol Systems constructed on the roof of the FedEx Express Eckington Place facility in Northeast Washington, D.C. A portion of the energy credits generated from the project will be donated to SOME and help offset annual electricity costs at two of their facilities in Ward 5. At these facilities and through its overall mission, SOME provides programs to support DC residents who are burdened by mental health, homelessness, and poverty.
In addition, Sol has partnered with Microsoft to combine a 500MW framework power purchase agreement (one of the country’s largest) with a groundbreaking strategy to invest in under-resourced communities and communities disproportionately impacted by climate change. As part of this initiative, Sol Systems will identify places where we can craft community-based energy solutions, support local workforce development opportunities and partner with local organizations working to address challenges in their communities.
In this spotlight series, we will provide the opportunity for our staff, partners, and customers to get to know the community-based organizations we work with and to learn more about Sol’s journey to help facilitate a more just and fair energy future.
The first five organizations are based in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC, all focused on issues related to renewable energy, environmental justice, jobs creation and training, habitat restoration, and other community and societal impact challenges. In the coming months, you will hear more about these organizations and how Sol Systems works with them towards an equitable clean energy future.
PowerCorpsPHL based in Philadelphia, connects disconnected young adults and returning citizens to careers by using community service as a model to provide education and paid work experience. Sol’s partnership will help PowerCorpsPHL to expand a skills-building program focused on mathematics and construction and field tests for the utility industry, increase career exposure opportunities for the students and address transportation logistics services for the program graduates.
Philadelphia Energy Authority’s Bright Solar Future (BSF) program provides access to solar careers for young people in Philadelphia, growing a diverse and more equitable workforce that will help make national climate priorities a reality. The students who are primarily from communities of color, train in solar and battery storage installation, sales, design, weatherization, construction basics, and job site safety. Sol’s partnership will help curriculum development and equipment purchases for their new energy storage training model and adapt existing curriculum to create a permanent solar training program for various school districts.
Groundswell based in Washington DC, is a non-profit organization that builds community power through equitable community solar projects and resilience centers, clean energy programs that reduce energy burdens, and research initiatives that help light the way to clean energy futures for all. Groundswell is working with various partners in the energy industry including the Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) to identify appropriate facilities for energy resiliency centers (solar + storage) serving low-income neighborhoods within Baltimore City. The non-profit City of Refuge will be among the first resiliency centers in the city with solar and battery storage.
GRID Alternatives Mid-Atlantic (GRID Mid-Atlantic) based in Washington DC, is non-profit organization that provides no-cost solar installations and solar job training. Through their Solar Works DC Training and Solar Futures Programs, GRID provides group-based job training and education in solar system installation to residents with low incomes. Sol’s partnership will help GRID to provide its students with career support services (such as, career check-in sessions, resume techniques, professionalism in the workplace, etc.), financial and computer literacy programs, and other program support services.
Black Owners of Solar Services (BOSS) is a nationwide collaborative of entrepreneurs, financiers, veterans, attorneys, engineers, contractors, and developers whose mission is to combine and leverage their collective power to lead actionable solutions for sustained access to equitable opportunities in clean energy production, distribution, and storage for Black owned businesses. BOSS and Sol will collaborate in the development and implementation of a business-to-business mentorship and sponsorship program that will help connect diverse business owners to opportunities and relationships across the renewable energy industry
Sol Systems is making it a priority to continuously work with its partners to meaningfully engage with communities through innovative solutions to tackle local challenges and build a sustainable pathway for future generations. Our commitment to working with under-resourced and communities of color is ongoing and built into the mission and vision of our company.
