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Over 80 U.S. cities have now made commitments to reach 100 percent renewable energy with deadlines set in the 2030s or beyond. Though not all have considered which implementation strategies, including both policies and programs, will help them reach these goals.
With a population of close to 500,000 people, Atlanta is the economic center of one of the country’s largest metropolitan areas and the largest city in the state of Georgia. It is also a regional leader in the pursuit of clean energy, making its pledge in 2017 to transition to 100 percent renewable energy in both its municipal operations and citywide by 2035.
Since Atlanta made its formal commitment to renewable energy, the city’s Office of Resilience has worked with local partners to assess the city’s current energy outlook, engaged countless community members and groups, and developed a Clean Energy Atlanta Plan, detailing possible implementation strategies to reach its goal.
Megan O’Neil is the Energy Programs Manager for the City of Atlanta, where she coordinates energy programming and policy on behalf of the city. During the fourth episode in our multi-part Voices of 100% podcast series, O’Neil spoke with ILSR’s Energy Democracy director, John Farrell about Atlanta’s 100 percent commitment and which strategies it plans to implement to achieve its goal.
Leading Locally
O’Neil points to several factors that motivated Atlanta to make the commitment. First, the city has long been a leader in the South on sustainability, energy efficiency, and renewable energy policy. It has used its leverage to push for policy change and saw an opportunity to continue to lead by example.
Then, specifically in reaction to the Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the international Paris Climate Agreement, O’Neil describes how Atlanta saw a moment to step up in the absence of federal action.
“We, just like many other cities in the US, felt the responsibility fell on us as a city and a major emitter of carbon emissions within our region, to do everything we could on our own to help advance the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.”
While renewable energy represents less than 10 percent of the electricity mix supplied by Georgia Power, Atlanta’s incumbent utility, O’Neil acknowledges the company will be an “essential partner” in the city’s transition to clean energy and that the utility and city will need to “work together to do what we can to advance this goal.”
O’Neil also notes that Southern Company, of which Georgia Power is a subsidiary, recently made its own goal of “low- to no-carbon operations” by 2050.
Digging into the details of this pledge, Southern Company’s future plans notably include not only the expected mix of renewable energy, battery storage, and energy efficiency measures, but also resource-intensive grid investments, increased use of natural gas, and the construction of new nuclear generation — not the strategies most supporters of distributed generation would hope.
Advocates believe the company “can do more” to advance renewables, particularly as more of the cities like Atlanta that they serve make 100% commitments.
A Local, Renewable Energy Mix
While resource planning decisions made by Georgia Power and Southern Company provide important context and will continue to impact Atlanta’s ability to reach its goal, O’Neil stresses there are other strategies and pathways the city can take to advance clean energy locally, as well. To start, the city plans to focus on energy efficiency.
“The easiest way to move entirely to clean energy is demand less of it,” O’Neil explains. “Our focus area from the beginning is going to be energy efficiency. Building more efficient buildings and making the buildings we have even more efficient than they are already.”
Because Atlanta has the ability to set more ambitious building codes than those established by the state of Georgia, there is ample opportunity for the city to improve how buildings save and use energy more efficiently within its boundaries.
Read more about why energy codes matter here, and find other examples of how cities can use their local authority to set building codes in our interactive Community Power Toolkit.
In addition to energy efficiency measures, Atlanta has several other opportunities to use its authority to promote and invest in renewable energy. For example, it can put its public spaces and buildings to use in harnessing local, clean energy.
O’Neil shares how the city is currently installing over one megawatt of rooftop solar on municipal facilities. Once complete, this municipal solar project will the first third-party financed and installed solar project of its kind in the state of Georgia, which only recently began allowing “Solar Energy Procurement Agreement” (SEPAs) or power purchase agreements (PPAs). These third-party ownership models or financing arrangements for rooftop solar can remove traditional, upfront barriers such as installation or maintenance costs.
Early demonstration projects like this can help Atlanta and its utility figure out how different financing mechanisms and ownership frameworks can work. As a result, these projects will ultimately help “other consumers who may not have the resources that we as a city have to be able to adopt similar financing mechanisms for solar at their own facilities,” O’Neil says.
For more on how cities, as asset and facilities managers, can invest in distributed generation on municipal buildings, explore our Public Rooftop Revolution report, and learn how other southern cities are solarizing their rooftops through earlier podcast episodes about Kansas City and Sante Fe.
In addition to creating a scalable model for how a power purchase agreements could roll out citywide, Atlanta has also been active in developing another helpful financing program, this one for commercial properties.
“We have been working for many years to develop a Property Assessed Clean Energy program for commercial properties [through] partnerships with investment in our Economic Development Agency,” O’Neil explains.
Property Assessed Clean Energy or PACE programs finance energy upgrades through adjustments to property tax bills. Because costs and benefits of improvements are tied to the property, this mechanism carries over to future owners in the event a property is sold.
According to O’Neil and given recent city approval, Atlanta will likely have an operational commercial PACE program by the end of this year.
Learn more about how property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs can be helpful tools for financing distributed solar for both residential and commercial customers, here. You can also explore which states enable PACE programs using ILSR’s interactive Community Power Map.
With all of these local strategies in mind, O’Neil explains later in the program how by modeling building footprints and energy demand citywide, Atlanta could reasonably expect to reach more than half of its target locally. This would consist of a mix of energy efficiency measures (35 percent), rooftop solar (17 percent), and green space solar (10 percent), with the remainder likely coming from the purchase of renewable energy credits.
Ensuring Renewable Benefits for All
Local energy efficiency improvements and renewable energy bring a number of benefits, which have further motivated Atlanta’s move toward clean energy. O’Neil cites how these measures can create create local jobs, reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, and improve local air quality, which in turn helps avert healthcare costs associated with poor air quality. In addition, energy efficiency measures can help customers save money.
A key goal of Atlanta’s renewable energy target is whether all of these benefits are accessible to all residents, and support those customers who need relief, in particular.
“Our legislation and plan say extensively — we need to make sure that we have 100 percent clean energy for 100 percent of Atlantans.”
Many households in Atlanta struggle when it comes to paying their electricity bills, in a state and region where residential customers often pay more than the national average.
As a result, Atlanta performed an extensive analysis into the indicator of energy burdened households to understand which areas of the city pay a higher than average share of their income on their utility bills. The results revealed several ZIP codes in lower income and predominantly African-American communities in Atlanta, where, O’Neil explains, the median energy burden is nearly three times the national average (9 percent compared to 3.2 percent).
These staggering results have shifted how the city plans to prioritize its policies and programs to be more equitable.
“With this more specific data that we have around burdened type of geography, as well as our commitment to transition to 100 percent clean energy with equity as a priority, we’re going to design policies and programs that really target those who need these benefits the most,” she explains.
Ultimately, it is important for cities to meet residents where they are — that could mean rooftop solar for some, but for many Atlantans, this means starting with energy efficiency, O’Neil explains.
“While solar is hugely impactful, putting solar panels on your roof isn’t going to transition you to 100 percent clean energy, if you don’t have insulation in your attic.”
For specific examples of how communities like Atlanta can build a more equitable energy system, explore the NAACP Just Energy Toolkit. A complementary video module, which supports this toolkit and draws on ILSR research, illustrates in detail how to advance energy democracy and community renewable energy.
Supporting Renewable Energy Commitments
For other cities looking to make renewable energy commitments, O’Neil has some words of advice. First, she emphasizes how important it is for cities to assess the gap between their current energy system and their goal. This horizon scan will help the city identify what power supplies, policies, and resources it will need.
In addition, O’Neil speaks to the success of Atlanta’s intentional public engagement efforts and recommends other cities develop similar strategies to increase participation.
Atlanta found success, she explains, in drawing on a number of engagement tools, from community member surveys to large 100-person town halls that provided educational resources to residents and helped collect feedback on what the city should prioritize. City staff also organized smaller focus groups with subject matter experts from a range of sectors — on topics ranging from equity to economic development, housing, and the environment — to dig into these priority areas even further.
Outside of what cities can do themselves, O’Neil also points to the importance of state policies for enabling the conditions needed for transforming local energy systems. In Georgia, O’Neil would specifically like to see the state adopt an aggressive statewide energy efficiency standard and a renewable portfolio standard. Such policies would help ensure that Atlanta and its peers are not held back.
Having support from local, state, and national partners helps these commitments, as well.
“We’re incredibly fortunate to have a whole bevy of local nonprofit partners and environmental groups, both locally and nationally that really are major contributors to this plan,” O’Neil explains. “We couldn’t have done it without them.”
Want to hear other stories of how communities are making and implementing 100 percent renewable energy commitments?
Stay-tuned for our next episodes in the Voices of 100% series every three weeks. In upcoming episodes, we’ll feature advocates from Portland, Ore., supporting a November ballot initiative to create a clean energy fund that would support the city’s transition to renewable energy, and local leaders from the small town of Abita Springs, La., about their efforts to reach their 100 percent renewable energy commitment.
Episode Notes
Mentioned during the interview, a recent InsideClimate News article summarized Atlanta’s renewable energy pathways and the city’s recently released Clean Energy Atlanta Plan. Additional analysis of Atlanta’s pursuit of renewable energy was featured in Sierra Magazine, as well.
In addition, Megan O’Neil extended thanks to the city’s diverse partners that have been instrumental in supporting Atlanta’s renewable energy pledge and its efforts to-date. These partners include Southface Energy Institute and The Greenlink Group.
For more on city tools to meet ambitious local energy goals, see ILSR’s Community Power Toolkit.
Locate other cities and towns like Atlanta that have existing 100 percent renewable energy commitments, states that have building energy code, property assessed clean energy, and renewable portfolio standard policies, as discussed in this episode, and explore other local and state strategies that help advance clean energy goals, using ILSR’s interactive Community Power Map.
This episode is part of Voices of 
, a series of Local Energy Rules and project of the Energy Democracy initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, produced by Energy Democracy Director John Farrell and Research Associate Marie Donahue.
This article originally posted at ilsr.org. For timely updates, follow John Farrell or Marie Donahue on Twitter, our energy work on Facebook, or sign up to get the Energy Democracy weekly update.
Photo Credits: John S. Quarterman (featured image: Atlanta solar parking lot), Georgia Sierra Club (Southern Company shareholder meeting inset image), and 100% Campaign/Sheila Pree Bright (partnership meeting inset image) via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)