Leeda.the.Paladin
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Stepping Into The Sun: A Mission To Bring Solar Energy To Communities Of Color
July 23, 201912:04 PM ET
ANDREA HSU
Twitter
A few years ago, Jason Carney came across a statistic that took him by surprise.
In its 2015 survey of jobs in the solar industry, the nonprofit Solar Foundation reported that 0.0% of solar workers in the state of Tennessee were black or African American.
That number caught Carney's eye because the Nashville native is African American — and was working there as a solar installer in 2015. In fact, he was starting to design a solar array for his own home in north Nashville. Clearly, there had been an undercount.
But, he thought, maybe not by much. Throughout his career, Carney, 39, has frequently been the only person of color in the room. It was true when he worked in the heating and cooling industry, and it remained true as his professional path led him into green building work and solar design.
"Going into [a] boardroom, I'm the only person of color. We go to these conferences, and I'm the only person of color. We go to the U.S. Green Building Council — the local chapter — and of 200 people, it might be me and maybe one other person of color," he says. "It was very intimidating."
Add to that, Carney says, there was just no talk about solar or clean energy within Nashville's black communities. It was a depressing reality, he thought, given that solar is booming in the U.S., with installations doubling in the past three years and set to double again by 2023, according to the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
Fearful that communities of color will miss out on the economic and environmental benefits of clean energy, Carney is working to introduce solar in places where it has yet to take off and to people who may not think that solar is for them.
While Carney is focused on Tennessee, research shows that his experiences in Nashville reflect national trends.
In 2016, Deborah Sunter was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, working on electricity grid modeling when her work took her in an unexpected direction.
She was mining the massive trove of data behind Google's Project Sunroof, a website that helps homeowners figure out the costs and benefits of installing rooftop solar. (Rooftop solar refers to solar installations on top of buildings, usually homes or businesses, versus utility-scale solar farms built on vast tracts of land.)
Project Sunroof used Google Earth imagery to analyze more than 60 million buildings across all 50 states, noting which buildings already had solar panels on them. By studying where there already were solar panels, Sunter thought she might be able to predict where they could be adopted in the future.
She looked at U.S. census data for the places that Google had analyzed to see whether there was a correlation between population density and solar installations. To her surprise, population density wasn't among the most statistically significant factors. But race and ethnicity were.
The data revealed that black- and Hispanic-majority census tracts — neighborhoods where African Americans and Latinos make up at least 50% of the population — had much less rooftop solar than white-majority census tracts and even census tracts where there is no racial or ethnic majority.
This held true even after accounting for differences in household income and homeownership.
n Nashville, Carney doesn't know of any black household — aside from his own — that has installed solar. That troubles him, given what he knows about black neighborhoods in Nashville. Many residents, including his own grandmother, face high energy burdens, meaning they spend a large share of their income heating and cooling their homes.
"Bottom line is, the houses are old. And when the houses are old, they're less efficient," he says. "Insulation may have never been there, according to old codes that aren't as good as the codes are today. Or it's old and sagging and not doing what it used to do. Roofs may need to be updated. HVAC units [may be] out of whack."
Carney says all of this contributes to monthly utility bills running in the hundreds of dollars — and to a sense of helplessness.
"There is no conversation about what we can do. The conversation is always about how high my bill is. People almost get into a competition. It's like a sad competition" about who has the highest bill, he says.
Through advocacy work over the past few years at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and now at his own clean energy consulting business, Carney has tried to steer the conversation elsewhere.
And then there's his project at Whites Creek High School, a majority-black, majority-low-income public school that is a seven-minute drive from his home in north Nashville.
Accounting for household income, black- and Hispanic-majority census tracts had installed 69% and 30% less rooftop solar compared with no-majority census tracts, while white-majority census tracts had installed 21% more.
Accounting for homeownership, black- and Hispanic-majority census tracts had installed 61% and 45% less solar compared with no-majority census tracts, while white-majority census tracts had installed 37% more.
Given how much solar prices have fallen in recent years, Sunter sees these disparities as a kind of environmental injustice, akin to the placement of a toxic landfill near a poor neighborhood.
"Equity isn't just who's bearing the disproportionate burdens of the world, but it's also who's missing out on the benefits," she says.
Now an assistant professor at Tufts University, Sunter is trying to figure out why minority communities are not adopting rooftop solar at the rates of white communities.
One hypothesis is that people of color are less likely to know anyone working in the solar industry.
The Solar Foundation, along with the Solar Energy Industries Association, published a diversity report earlier this year that found that executive leadership in solar companies is almost exclusively white men. It also found that women and African Americans are underrepresented in the industry. (The 2018 solar census found that 7.6% of 242,000 solar workers nationwide are African American.) The industry association has called on solar companies to diversify, calling it a business imperative.
Another hypothesis: People in minority communities just don't see a lot of solar around them.
"Essentially half of the black-majority neighborhoods didn't have a single installation of rooftop solar," Sunter says, decreasing the possibility of hearing about its benefits by word of mouth.
Compare that to a quarter of Hispanic-majority census tracts and only one-fifth of white-majority census tracts.
July 23, 201912:04 PM ET
ANDREA HSU
A few years ago, Jason Carney came across a statistic that took him by surprise.
In its 2015 survey of jobs in the solar industry, the nonprofit Solar Foundation reported that 0.0% of solar workers in the state of Tennessee were black or African American.
That number caught Carney's eye because the Nashville native is African American — and was working there as a solar installer in 2015. In fact, he was starting to design a solar array for his own home in north Nashville. Clearly, there had been an undercount.
But, he thought, maybe not by much. Throughout his career, Carney, 39, has frequently been the only person of color in the room. It was true when he worked in the heating and cooling industry, and it remained true as his professional path led him into green building work and solar design.
"Going into [a] boardroom, I'm the only person of color. We go to these conferences, and I'm the only person of color. We go to the U.S. Green Building Council — the local chapter — and of 200 people, it might be me and maybe one other person of color," he says. "It was very intimidating."
Add to that, Carney says, there was just no talk about solar or clean energy within Nashville's black communities. It was a depressing reality, he thought, given that solar is booming in the U.S., with installations doubling in the past three years and set to double again by 2023, according to the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
Fearful that communities of color will miss out on the economic and environmental benefits of clean energy, Carney is working to introduce solar in places where it has yet to take off and to people who may not think that solar is for them.
While Carney is focused on Tennessee, research shows that his experiences in Nashville reflect national trends.
In 2016, Deborah Sunter was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, working on electricity grid modeling when her work took her in an unexpected direction.
She was mining the massive trove of data behind Google's Project Sunroof, a website that helps homeowners figure out the costs and benefits of installing rooftop solar. (Rooftop solar refers to solar installations on top of buildings, usually homes or businesses, versus utility-scale solar farms built on vast tracts of land.)
Project Sunroof used Google Earth imagery to analyze more than 60 million buildings across all 50 states, noting which buildings already had solar panels on them. By studying where there already were solar panels, Sunter thought she might be able to predict where they could be adopted in the future.
She looked at U.S. census data for the places that Google had analyzed to see whether there was a correlation between population density and solar installations. To her surprise, population density wasn't among the most statistically significant factors. But race and ethnicity were.
The data revealed that black- and Hispanic-majority census tracts — neighborhoods where African Americans and Latinos make up at least 50% of the population — had much less rooftop solar than white-majority census tracts and even census tracts where there is no racial or ethnic majority.
This held true even after accounting for differences in household income and homeownership.
n Nashville, Carney doesn't know of any black household — aside from his own — that has installed solar. That troubles him, given what he knows about black neighborhoods in Nashville. Many residents, including his own grandmother, face high energy burdens, meaning they spend a large share of their income heating and cooling their homes.
"Bottom line is, the houses are old. And when the houses are old, they're less efficient," he says. "Insulation may have never been there, according to old codes that aren't as good as the codes are today. Or it's old and sagging and not doing what it used to do. Roofs may need to be updated. HVAC units [may be] out of whack."
Carney says all of this contributes to monthly utility bills running in the hundreds of dollars — and to a sense of helplessness.
"There is no conversation about what we can do. The conversation is always about how high my bill is. People almost get into a competition. It's like a sad competition" about who has the highest bill, he says.
Through advocacy work over the past few years at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and now at his own clean energy consulting business, Carney has tried to steer the conversation elsewhere.
And then there's his project at Whites Creek High School, a majority-black, majority-low-income public school that is a seven-minute drive from his home in north Nashville.
Accounting for household income, black- and Hispanic-majority census tracts had installed 69% and 30% less rooftop solar compared with no-majority census tracts, while white-majority census tracts had installed 21% more.
Accounting for homeownership, black- and Hispanic-majority census tracts had installed 61% and 45% less solar compared with no-majority census tracts, while white-majority census tracts had installed 37% more.
Given how much solar prices have fallen in recent years, Sunter sees these disparities as a kind of environmental injustice, akin to the placement of a toxic landfill near a poor neighborhood.
"Equity isn't just who's bearing the disproportionate burdens of the world, but it's also who's missing out on the benefits," she says.
Now an assistant professor at Tufts University, Sunter is trying to figure out why minority communities are not adopting rooftop solar at the rates of white communities.
One hypothesis is that people of color are less likely to know anyone working in the solar industry.
The Solar Foundation, along with the Solar Energy Industries Association, published a diversity report earlier this year that found that executive leadership in solar companies is almost exclusively white men. It also found that women and African Americans are underrepresented in the industry. (The 2018 solar census found that 7.6% of 242,000 solar workers nationwide are African American.) The industry association has called on solar companies to diversify, calling it a business imperative.
Another hypothesis: People in minority communities just don't see a lot of solar around them.
"Essentially half of the black-majority neighborhoods didn't have a single installation of rooftop solar," Sunter says, decreasing the possibility of hearing about its benefits by word of mouth.
Compare that to a quarter of Hispanic-majority census tracts and only one-fifth of white-majority census tracts.
