Celebrate Earth Day 2024 with some exciting news!
Sixty selected applicants will create new or expand existing low-income solar programs, which will enable over 900,000 households in low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from distributed solar energy.
As mentioning in the EPA press release: This award is part of the historic $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created under President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act to lower energy costs for families, create good-quality jobs in communities that have been left behind, advance environmental justice, and tackle the climate crisis.
| Vermont Department of Public Service | VT | $62,450,000 | SFA Vermont’s (SAV) mission is to lower the cost of electricity for low-income and disadvantaged Vermonters across though the ownership of solar arrays—maximizing greenhouse gas emission reductions and solar market development in the process. SAV will provide the incentives, organizational structures, and program policies needed to install thousands of solar systems on the roofs of low-income and disadvantaged homeowners, on the roofs and sites of managed permanently affordable apartment buildings, and as residential-serving community arrays that will provide meaningful benefits to the homeowners, affordable housing residents, and renters.Additionally, greenhouse gas savings will be maximized with the installation of battery storage systems and electrical systems upgrades, which will allow homeowners to displace fossil-fueled back-up generators and to adopt other greenhouse gas saving appliances like cold climate heat pumps. SAV will have long-term impact by stimulating additional solar development beyond its initial period of performance by establishing revolving loan funds and financing programs that will leverage private capital and other greenhouse gas reduction programs in Vermont. |
| Executive Office of the State of New Hampshire | NH | $43,510,000 |
The New Hampshire Department of Energy (NHDOE), The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, and New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority have jointly designed a comprehensive and complementary approach to bring the benefits of residential-serving community solar to those least able to afford this new technology. The Community Loan Fund will target resident-owned communities through their existing program, which helps the residents of manufactured housing parks buy the park from owners and convert them into cooperatives. NH Housing will use funding to install residential-serving community solar on workforce housing projects. Lastly, the NHDOE, serving as the Coalition lead applicant, will scale up its existing community solar program with these funds, serving as a catch all to those communities or projects that do not neatly fit into any of those programs by the Community Loan Fund and Housing Finance Authority.
|
| The Maine Governor's Energy Office | ME | $62,120,000 | Maine's program (MESA) will use this funding for four financial assistance program channels that comprehensively address the range of barriers faced by low-income and disadvantaged households: single-family and multifamily on-site solar programs as well as targeted support for cooperatively-owned community solar. Energy storage is incorporated across all four channels to build resilience and maximize value. MESA also proposes a holistic range of technical assistance such as expanded workforce development opportunities, siting and permitting supports, and additional support to overcome barriers including interconnection challenges. |
While Vermont doesn't host any fossil fuel burning power plants, our neighboring states in the New England power grid do. So, every time a Vermonter goes solar, it means less fossil fuels are burned to generate electricity in one of those 64 oil and natural gas plants that are typically located in lower income neighborhoods.
“It’s a really important impact of this funding- helping more Vermonters go solar and increasing energy storage will help the hundreds of thousands of people in other New England States living near gas and oil plants that generate our electricity lead healthier lives” said Peter Sterling of Renewable Energy Vermont.