In the News: John Farrell and Maria McCoy
September 20, 2020
Media Outlet: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
ILSR’s John Farrell and Maria McCoy contributed a chapter on community solar programs to the Affordable and Clean Energy volume of the Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs outline how we can take action on different global issues simultaneously. John and Maria’s chapter describes the importance of decarbonizing the generation of electricity and why community solar programs offer the flexibility and wider participation necessary for a successful transition to clean energy.
Community solar adds an important dimension in the transition to decarbonized energy: the power of collective action. The outcome is local participation in energy generation, which makes it possible for everybody to join the solar revolution: renters, apartment dwellers, and others who cannot, for one reason or another, install rooftop solar. As a communally owned resource, community PV opens exciting new avenues to apportion and lower initial investments in solar technology, tap into sources of funding not available to individuals, and generally lower electricity rates. In conjunction with storage, community solar can inject flexibility and positive interactions between solar gardens, microgrids, and the existing centralized grid.
Photo via Flickr.
