Providing Community Solar to LMI Communities in Texas

Enabling low-and-moderate-income (LMI) communities to participate in distributed solar markets

Champion: Jewell and Associates

Overview

This group will focus on how best to advance a community solar-plus-storage project that can provide bill savings for low- and moderate-income subscribers as well as resilience to a local community asset, such as a school, in the Texas retail market. The goal is to outline a model for future testing that minimizes project costs and aligns key players to implement and offer such a project through a retail energy provider.

Project Objective

Identify and prioritize strategies by which community solar and storage can benefit underserved communities in the Texas market.

Facilitator

Mady Tyson, RMI Senior Associate, City Renewables Accelerator

Team Members

• Michael Jewell, Attorney, Jewell and Associates, LLC
• John Hall, Director, Regulatory and Legislative Affairs, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)
• Kerry O’Neil, CEO, Inclusive Prosperity Capital
• Joey Romano, President, Local Sun Energy
• Gavin Dillingham, Program Director for Clean Energy Policy, HARC Research

Progress Made to Date (pre-Accelerator)

The members of this team have all been engaged in conversations on various aspects of this project/topic in various combinations.