Join industry and nonprofit leaders in the development of community solar serving households with low and moderate incomes for a discussion about innovations and opportunities to break critical barriers and achieve 100% savings for subscribers. Community solar projects that serve households with low and moderate incomes are critical within the solar industry to ensure more equitable access to clean energy and lower energy burdens for our most vulnerable communities. In order to achieve 100% savings, developers must overcome difficult barriers to project financing, customer acquisition, and long-term subscriber management.
On March 28, 2023, experts from Groundswell, Trajectory Energy, Holy Cross Energy (HCE), and Elevate will share insight and case studies from projects that have achieved 100% savings. Some projects include Groundswell’s SharePower program, which recently received national recognition for providing meaningful benefits to LMI households in Washington, D.C.; Trajectory Energy’s implementation of the Give-A-Ray program in Illinois; and how HCE (a rural electric cooperative) delivers bill savings to LMI households in Colorado. Elevate will provide some context for how unprecedented new legislation can strengthen past innovations and accelerate new opportunities for achieving 100% savings.
Because the rules, incentives, and financing mechanisms differ widely across geographies and regulatory environments, many developers struggle with achieving healthy project value stacks and replicable development models when maximizing savings to LMI households. The past innovations discussed by our panelists, along with new funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), show tremendous potential to bolster the value stack for projects like these in the future and have the potential to change the way solar developers and investors look at serving LMI communities. Most importantly, it may offer replicable models that can more easily be implemented across the country.
Join us at Energy Futures: 2023: How to Reach 100% Savings with Community Solar Serving Households with Low and Moderate Incomes for a discussion on how developers and communities can pursue this ambitious goal using community solar financing best practices to provide 100% savings models for low and moderate-income community solar subscribers.
This Energy Futures webinar is part of the US Department of Energy-funded post LIFT Solar Everywhere Research. For more information about the LIFT Toolkit, click here.