How Cities Can Scale On-Site Solar with New Federal Incentives
San Antonio, Texas, will soon be one of the first major US cities to leverage the new “direct pay” mechanism to build one of the largest on-site solar projects for local governments.
US Cities & Communities
Accelerating Local Clean Energy for All
Jump to RMI’s policy analysis and modeling for: US Federal | US States | US Cities | Back to overview.
What It Is
RMI’s US Cities & Communities team partners with local governments and community organizations to develop and scale impactful, equitable decarbonization projects and programs. Leveraging years of experience working with communities, our team enables innovative local project deployment by building capacity, supporting stakeholder engagement, and providing key technical insights. RMI then seeks to scale proven approaches by developing resources to help communities overcome key barriers and engaging external partners to create turn-key solutions for local communities.
Why It Matters
Local governments and communities have proven to be persistent, powerful climate champions. With federal programs providing an unprecedented level of financial resources to support climate action, these groups now have the means to implement ambitious programs to address key community objectives such as air pollution, water scarcity, energy affordability, equity, and community health. However, while available funding and financing for local governments and communities has increased dramatically, their time and capacity are still limited. As such, it is more important than ever to provide communities with the insights, innovative models, and tools to help them make these unprecedented federal resources go further, faster.
What We Are Doing
RMI enables local government and community action by:
- Supporting ambitious, high-impact projects through direct technical assistance and thought leadership. Examples include:
- Partnering with the City of Chicago on its innovative 100% renewable energy transaction
- Helping San Antonio leverage direct pay and streamline solar deployment on 42 city rooftops and parking lots
- Collaborating with the City of Cincinnati to secure 100 MW of solar generation for its community
- Articulating the opportunities for holistic community solar projects to address multiple community needs at once.
- Scaling impactful solutions by engaging groups of communities through workshop series that build local capacity and enable peer engagement. RMI has leveraged this “cohort” model over 25 times to help communities:
- Providing simplified, streamlined approaches to enable broader uptake of solutions. Recognizing local communities have many competing priorities, RMI seeks to provide accessible means for communities to achieve their objectives. In some cases, this can take the form of resources such as the AFFORD tool, which provides a pathway to easily identify and prioritize federal funding opportunities, or our Green Upgrade Calculator, which provides a simple, tailored, and technically rigorous analysis of residential decarbonization opportunities. In other cases, our team engages with external partners such as energy developers, policymakers, financial institutions, and other partners to deploy turn-key solutions to streamline equitable, local clean technology deployment.
Who’s Involved
RMI’s US Cities & Communities team works closely with a variety of external entities including local governments, community-based organizations, CDFIs, green banks, non-profit partners, and others.
Reports, Insight Briefs, and Articles
Developing an Impactful Solar for All Proposal
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides funding for the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a $27 billion program to drive low-cost, accessible financing into building a clean energy economy.
Bringing Solar Power to the People
By addressing equity issues, RMI’s Solarize cohorts have made rooftop solar and lower electricity bills available to more people around the country.
Narrowing the Solar Equity Gap through Solarize
Cities are helping low- and moderate-income households install solar with Solarize campaigns.
Weathering Climate Disasters with Resilience Hubs
In the face of worsening extreme weather, cities are creating resilience hubs to provide communities with numerous health, economic, and environmental benefits.
How to Get Your Local Government to 100 Percent Clean Electricity
A new framework from RMI helps cities and counties prioritize energy projects.
At Last, a Residential Modeling Tool for Energy Professionals
RMI’s industry-tested Green Upgrade Calculator analyzes the economic and climate impacts of common household solutions that reduce emissions.
