Partnership is leadership, and the ability to collaborate effectively with diverse people and organizations to quickly propagate a good idea is the most important competitive advantage we can have as a community.
Why? Because diversity is strength, and we’re better, smarter, and faster when we work together.
What does that mean for Groundswell? First and foremost, building strong service-focused partnerships with local faith and community organizations is fundamental to our mission and our culture. We build community power, not for ourselves, but for the people we serve.
Through partnership, we serve more effectively. Because of our collaboration with Sustainable Capital Advisors and founding supporters McGuire Woods, we have been able to rapidly develop and deploy an innovative community solar program that’s custom-built for low and moderate income families.
Partnership will also enable us to expand our impact to serve more people as the community solar field itself grows. Today, there are about 120 operational community solar projects in the United States. The National Renewable Energy Lab projects that number could grow to 8 gigawatts of generation capacity or 5,000 projects or more just within the next five years. That means that it’s urgent to act now to deploy accessible and equitable models for community solar that can scale with the market.
At this early stage in the market’s development, we have an extraordinary opportunity to work together as a community of leaders and pioneers to learn from what’s working and what’s not, share with other organizations with similar goals and values, and make sure that we don’t reinvent the wheel.
That’s why Groundswell is grateful to be a part of the White House and US DOE-convened National Community Solar Partnership and to be a National Partner in DOE’s Better Buildings Accelerator for Clean Energy for Low Income Communities.
In the coming months, we’ll be using the “Stories” platform on our website, this newsletter, and our social media program to introduce more of our partners. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share their voices with you. And if you have a story about community power to share, we’d love to hear from you, too.