‘Solar Gardens’ Put Clean Energy Within Reach Of Low-Income Families
Originally published on Climate Progress.
by Bryan Lewis
Everyone deserves access to clean energy — especially those living in disadvantaged communities. Lower-income Americans are more susceptible to the negative impacts of climate change. Many are already affected by urban pollution, extended power outages due to extreme weather events, and health hazards from living disproportionately closer to dirty coal plants. This makes clean energy access for low-income Americans not just an issue of economics, but an issue of justice, as well.
Because most of those in poverty cannot afford the American dream of homeownership, many of them rely on affordable single or multifamily rental housing. Of the more than 40 million rental households in the United States, nearly one out of four reported extremely low incomes according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Furthermore, the Department of Health and Human Services found that low income households spend up to 16.4 percent of their income on residential energy services, while the average household spends just 7.2 percent. These households disproportionately represent the elderly, disabled, minorities, veterans, and female-headed households. With the number of renters on the rise and poor families excessively burdened by high energy prices, we must increase access to affordable distributed generation resources.
One option is to expand the use of Community Solar Garden (CSG) programs. CSGs are communally-owned solar installations that sell power to local utilities, providing credits to their investors’ residential electricity bills. CSGs can deliver cheaper energy through economies of scale and do not require rooftop installation, making them a valuable option for renters.
Colorado is a leader in CSG and provides an excellent model from which to build. In 2010, the Colorado Community Solar Gardens Act (CCSGA) made the state one of a few that allows CSGs. Various studies have suggested modeling legislation in other states after the CCSGA because it greatly increases access to solar technologies. Most importantly, the Colorado bill includes a 5 percent carve-out for low-income investors who can only afford to purchase a smaller portion of power from the solar installation. As a result, these investors can purchase shares of power for as low as $10, rather than having to buy four or five panels.
Further expansion of CSGs throughout the country will require cooperation from utilities and regulatory boards. State governments and Public Utilities Commissions (PUCs) should work with utilities to determine fair standards for Community Solar Gardens within their jurisdictions, and should use Colorado as an example. Furthermore, the federal government should act to extend federal incentives for solar to CSGs.
To support CSGs at the federal level, Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) has introduced the Solar Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN) Act of 2013, which extends the 30% Federal Investment Tax Credit for solar power to CSGs. The bill helps tax-exempt entities like municipal utilities or rural electric cooperatives pass along tax credits to their residential customers who invest in CSGs. This provides communities both an incentive to support clean energy and relief from high energy burdens.
Udall’s SUN Act is an excellent first step toward promoting CSG programs across the country. The next step should be to promote CLEAN Contracts for community solar. Without sufficient tax liability, low-income Americans cannot benefit from the ITC at the same rate as wealthier customers. A CLEAN Contract, similar to a Feed-in Tariff, will allow everyone to reap equal benefits from solar incentives. Utilities should work with municipalities to institute these programs within their jurisdiction.
Low-income Americans can have better access to clean energy if public officials at all levels of government — along with private utilities — promote smart, accessible solutions like these.
Bryan Lewis is a renewable energy finance intern at the Center for American Progress.
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I know it will never happen, but every penny now given through subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuels* and nuclear power** should, instead, be used to subsidize the installation of solar/geothermal/wind systems on all public housing and the homes or apartment buildings of people that make less than $60,000 a year.
When all the people in that segment of the population are net zero energy, then proceed to subsidize the middle class until every fossil fuel and nuclear power plant is shut down. And then the stock holders in dirty energy utilities should be forced to shoulder the decommissioning and bioremediation costs for nuclear power plants and superfund sites. They benefited at the expense of the poor with their dividends from dirty utility energy. It is only fair that they pay back for these wrongly and unethically produced “externalities” (poor health for poor people living near dirty power plants).
*global fossil fuel subsidies were $523 billion and renewable energy subsidies $88 billion in 2011.[1]
**
One of the largest subsidies is the cap on liabilities for nuclear accidents which the nuclear power industry has negotiated with governments. “Like car drivers, the operators of nuclear plants should be properly insured,” said Gerry Wolff, coordinator of the Energy Fair group. The group calculates that, “if nuclear operators were fully insured against the cost of nuclear disasters like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima, the price of nuclear electricity would rise by at least €0.14 per kWh and perhaps as much as €2.36, depending on assumptions made”.[17]
Externalities
The subsidies the nuclear and fossil-fuel industry receive — and have received for many years — make their product “affordable.”
Those subsidies take many forms, but the most significant are their “externalities.” Externalities are real costs, but they are foisted off on the community instead of being paid by the companies that caused them.18]
Paul Epstein, director of Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, has examined the health and environmental impacts of coal, including: mining, transportation, combustion in power plants and the impact of coal’s waste stream.
He found that the “life cycle effects of coal and its waste cost the American public $333 billion to over $500 billion dollars annually”. These are costs the coal industry is not paying and which fall to the community in general. Eliminating that subsidy would dramatically increase the price of coal-fired electricity.[18]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies