Community-owned community solar provides an example of what a more equitable, decentralized clean energy transition could look like.

For energy transition equity, communities must run community solar

In 2021, the median income of a rooftop solar adapter was $110,000 a year. That same year, the U.S. median income was $63,000.

The gap is closing — in 2010, the median rooftop solar adapter made $138,000 compared to just under $50,000 for the median American — but it’s not closing fast enough to get enough solar to the people who need it most. Low-income families who need their bills cut fast, communities of color historically choked by ash and soot, people who don’t own their homes or who don’t have the cash to put panels on the roof are all left out of this transition. And it’s a lost opportunity during a climate crisis that demands we get as many renewables on the grid as fast as possible.

Not just community solar, but specifically community-owned community solar, provides an example of what a more equitable, decentralized clean energy transition could look like.

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Source: Utility Dive

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State policymakers and utility regulators can put more consumers and communities on a path to long-term energy affordability and mitigate the impact of future energy price spikes.

How states and utilities can lower consumer bills and accelerate the clean energy transition

Last year’s shocking winter heating prices are back with a vengeance: Natural gas heating costs are expected to rise 28% compared to recent winters. One in six households are already behind on their utility bills, and national utility bill debt doubled from December 2019 to June 2022, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

While household energy cost price spikes across the United States feel like déjà vu, the overall energy picture has changed drastically since last year. The Inflation Reduction Act’s historic clean energy investments will accelerate deployment of utility-scale renewable energy and energy storage, distributed clean energy resources, and high-efficiency electric technologies.

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Source: Utility Dive

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Floating panels are placed in human-made bodies of water, not taking up land that could be used for nature preserves or food production.

Floating solar panels could unlock clean power without wasting land

Many countries bet on solar panels when engaging in the switch to cleaner energy. But the technology requires much larger areas than conventional fossil fuel plants to generate the same amount of electricity. An emerging solution to save space is to float the panels on bodies of water, an approach dubbed ​“floatovoltaics.” Scientists believe this new approach could help solar energy to scale globally and fight climate change, but its environmental impacts are largely unexplored.

The world’s first commercial floatovoltaic system was installed on an irrigation pond at a California winery in 2008. Since then, bigger plants with capacities in the hundreds of megawatts have been built on lakes and hydropower reservoirs in China, and more are planned in Southeast Asia and Brazil.

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Source: Canary Media

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Solar panels placed over parking spaces are among the many options that can help companies get closer to their sustainability goals.

Four amazing benefits of adding parking lot solar panel canopies

People are getting progressively creative about how and where they deploy solar panels. One recent example concerns efforts to plant certain crops under them. Then, farmers can take advantage of formerly unused land, plus get power generation potential and extra earning opportunities. Parking lot solar power is another possibility gaining momentum. Here’s a closer look at some of the perks it offers.

1. Enabling Greater Energy Independence
2. Increasing Research Opportunities
3. Enhancing Convenience for Drivers of Electric Cars
4. Creating Shadier Spaces While Prioritizing Sustainability

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Source: Renewable Energy Magazine

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Tesla now has 40,000 Supercharger stations worldwide, and more are in the works, including a massive 88-stall facility in a small town in AZ.

Tesla tops 40,000 Superchargers; new site to have four solar canopies

Tesla now has 40,000 Supercharger stations worldwide, and more are in the works, including a massive 88-stall facility in a small town in Arizona. @MarcoRPTesla, who has a knack for finding Supercharger plans, tweeted the detailed construction project. The drawings show 20 prefabricated Supercharger units, two trailer-friendly stalls, and four solar canopies.

Quartzsite, Arizona, with a population of 2,413, is the location of the huge Supercharging station. Incredibly, it is being built right across the road from a 36-stall Supercharger. So why is there now one Supercharger for every 20 people in Quartzsite? Interstate 10 runs through the small town, which is at the intersection of U.S. Route 95 and Arizona State Route 95 with I-10.

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Source: not a tesla app

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As the cheapest clean energy technology, solar energy will be deployed at a massive scale to help the world meet its climate & energy goals.

How solar power can become a leader for positive impact

Solar infrastructure brings about important opportunities for ecology and regeneration — this was the headline of the session, “How to reconcile Economy and Ecology?”, co-organized by the Global Solar Council and SolarPower Europe at the Wind and Solar Pavilion, in the Blue zone of COP27 on November 9.

As the cheapest clean energy technology, solar energy will be deployed at a massive scale to help the world meet its climate and energy goals. Such deployment of solar infrastructure requires space and land, creating both challenges and opportunities.

So far, climate change mitigation and adaptation focused on carbon neutrality and sustainable finance-developed carbon markets. But to tackle the challenges of soil degradation and biodiversity loss, finance and business models will have to evolve.

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Source: IMPAKTER

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Disadvantaged communities are bearing the brunt of clean energy supply chain blockages. Many believe that IRA will help alleviate supply chain constraints.

Clean energy supply chain issues affect disadvantaged the most

Disadvantaged communities in many parts of the U.S. are bearing the brunt of clean energy supply chain blockages that range from materials to labor, according to environmental justice advocates and utility officials.

In marginalized communities, it is “substituting one kind of delay for another,” said Shelley Robbins, project director for the Clean Energy Group, based in Vermont. “If you can’t get something, the price goes up.”

Historically, renewable energy and electrification projects in underserved communities have been “way too expensive,” she said in a recent phone interview.

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Source: Utility Dive

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How your state ranks on fostering community-led clean energy

Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.

Communities around the U.S. are taking the lead to build clean energy projects designed to benefit their own residents, as we’ve been reporting this week in our series Power by the People: Clean Energy from the Grassroots. But some kinds of community-led clean-energy efforts can only succeed if the right policies are in place, and policies vary widely from state to state. So which states are most effectively supporting communities in their quest for clean energy? California and Massachusetts top the list, according to a scorecard from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, while Kentucky and Louisiana are at the bottom.

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Source: Canary Media

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Solar power is becoming essential for healthcare “sustainability and resiliency” as climate change increasingly threatens traditional energy resources.

Inside America’s groundbreaking solar-powered health facility

It is not easy to rattle Rosa Vivian Fernandez. The chief executive of a California healthcare clinic, she sees the harsh realities that the low-income, largely Hispanic community served by the clinic faces every day.

But when Fernandez traveled to Puerto Rico in 2017 to visit family, she was shocked to see how deeply Hurricane Maria had devastated the island.

“All the healthcare centers – the ones that did not get flooded or destroyed by the storm – went down,” Fernandez said. More than 5,000 people died due to the violent Atlantic storm, which caused an estimated $90bn (£80bn) in property damages, wiping out the electrical grid. “People died from the lack of services,” she added.

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Source: The Guardian

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One of the biggest advances we can expect to see over the next decades is how we store and use power from solar cells and other renewables.

Solar cells: essential for a brighter future

You wouldn’t recognise the precursor to the modern solar panel if you saw it, and who knows what they’ll look like in the future?

The precursor to the first solar panel wasn’t really a panel, and it didn’t even use the sun’s light. But the physical processes first observed by French scientist Antoine César Becquerel, in his laboratory in 1839 and then in bars of selenium by Willoughby Smith when checking telegraph cables to be submerged under the Atlantic Ocean, are essentially the same as what happens in solar cells everywhere today.

In a nutshell: light shines onto a semiconductor material, which then produces an electric current – no moving parts, no steam, no turbines.

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Source: COSMOS

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