The Biden administration has enacted the most consequential federal clean energy and climate policy in U.S. history, giving the nation a fighting chance at reducing greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to deal with the climate crisis. Former President Donald Trump, who has won the 2024 presidential election, has pledged to undo that work.
Though Trump’s executive powers will allow him to slow the energy transition in a number of ways, the extent to which he rolls back Biden’s clean energy accomplishments will be dictated in part by whether Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives. The GOP flipped the U.S. Senate, but votes are still being counted in key House races as of Wednesday morning.
Here’s what clean energy and climate experts say is most likely to be lost under a second Trump administration — and what might survive.
What Trump has said about energy
Trump’s rhetoric presages a worst-case future. He has called climate change a hoax and the Biden administration’s climate policies a “green new scam.” He has said he wants to repeal the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and halt the law’s hundreds of billions of dollars of tax credits, grants, and other federal incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles, and other low-carbon technologies.
Trump has also made “drill, baby, drill” a call-and-response line at his rallies, pledging to undo any restraints on production and use of the fossil fuels driving climate change. U.S. oil and gas production is already at a record high under the Biden administration.
“He has pledged to do the bidding for Big Oil on day one,” Andrew Reagan, executive director of Clean Energy for America, said during a recent webinar.
“Oil and gas lobbyists are drafting executive orders for him to sign on day one,” Reagan added, citing news reports of plans from oil industry groups to roll back key Biden administration regulations and executive orders.
A Trump administration would be all but certain to reverse key Environmental Protection Agency regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles, and the oil and gas industry, all of which analysts say are necessary to meet the country’s climate commitments. It’s also almost sure to lift the Biden administration’s pause on federal permitting of fossil-gas export facilities.
Trump has also promised to withdraw the U.S. from international climate agreements (again), including the Paris agreement aimed at limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
“We know that Trump would take us out of the Paris agreement, and that would be the last time his administration uttered the word ‘climate,’” Catherine Wolfram, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy economics in the Biden administration’s Treasury Department, told Canary Media. “Losing that global leadership would be one of the greatest losses of a Trump presidency.”
What will happen to the Inflation Reduction Act?
Trump won’t have the power to enact all of his promises on his own. Some of the decisions must be made by Congress, including any effort to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act or to claw back unspent funds from that law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.
Complete repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act would be highly disruptive to a clean energy sector that has seen planned investment grow to roughly $500 billion since the law was passed in mid-2022.
It would also undermine clean energy job growth, which has increased at roughly twice the pace of U.S. employment overall. A recent survey of clean energy companies found that a repeal of the law would be expected to lead to half of them losing business or revenue, roughly one-quarter losing projects or contracts, about one-fifth laying off workers, and about one in 10 going out of business.
“We found that especially rural areas and smaller rural communities would experience the largest negative impacts of repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Shara Mohtadi, co-founder of S2 Strategies, said in an October webinar presenting the survey data. “These are the regions of the country that have seen the biggest uptake in the economic benefits and the manufacturing jobs coming from other countries into the United States.”
These on-the-ground realities have driven expectations that large swaths of the law’s tax credits would be likely to survive even with Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress. Trump would face pushback within his own party to undoing the law entirely.
In an August letter to current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), 18 House Republicans warned against repealing the clean energy and manufacturing tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, which have “spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country — including many districts represented by members of our conference.”
“Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” the 18 House Republicans wrote. “A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”
Republicans would need a roughly 20-seat majority to overcome opposition from these party members opposed to a full repeal, said Harry Godfrey, head of the federal investment and manufacturing working group of trade group Advanced Energy United.
“I don’t envision Republicans holding the House with 20-plus seats,” he said.
Godfrey also doubted that a Trump administration would be eager to undermine the domestic manufacturing boom that the law’s tax credits have spurred. He noted that at the October 1 vice-presidential debate, J.D. Vance, the Republican Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate, emphasized the need for the U.S. to “consolidate American dominance” in key energy sectors and industries now dominated by China.
While Vance went on to falsely accuse the Biden administration of failing to bolster U.S. industries against China, the goal of emphasizing domestic competitiveness could lead Republicans to avoid undermining progress in that direction, he suggested.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Growth Energy—the leading voice of America’s biofuel industry—urged the White House to swiftly finalize clear, flexible guidance for the 45Z clean fuels credit, which was signed into law two years ago this week.
“After two long years, we’re eager to see this administration’s clean fuel incentive reach its full potential,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “That’s why we’ve been working closely with the administration and our bipartisan champions on Capitol Hill to ensure the Department of Treasury finalizes flexible guidance for 45Z, so farmers and biofuel producers can plan and invest ahead of the next harvest.
“Properly implemented, 45Z could be the starting pistol for rural communities waiting to access new economic opportunities and deliver on the promise of climate-smart agriculture. To unlock those investments, the White House must avoid pitfalls that encumbered its approach to the 40B sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) credit. That means setting the new guidelines without delay, and sending a strong market signal that all low-carbon innovations on the farm and at the plant will be properly rewarded.
“President Biden said that farmers would provide 95 percent of SAF over the next two decades, and this anniversary is a wonderful opportunity to move us closer to that goal.”
Starting in 2025, the president’s 45Z clean fuel production tax credit will become the primary incentive for the production of low-carbon fuels in transportation on the ground and in the air. According to an analysis published by Growth Energy on the first anniversary of the IRA, a properly implemented 45Z tax credit could add $21.2 billion to the U.S. economy, generate nearly $13.4 billion in household income, support more than 192,000 jobs across all sectors of the national economy, and provide farmers with a 10 percent premium price on low carbon corn used at a bioethanol plant.
DALTON, Ga. — Growing up in Cartersville, Georgia, Lisa Nash saw what happens to communities when factory jobs disappear. It was the 1980s and corporations were offshoring production to reduce costs and raise profits. The jobs that remained in this northwest corner of the state were typically lower-paying ones that didn’t offer the same ladder to the middle class.
“My parents and grandparents were in manufacturing, and they were the ones saying, ‘Don’t do it,’” Nash recalled.
Nash disregarded their advice, embarking instead on a long career in manufacturing — first in textiles, followed by stints in aviation, automotive, and steel. Now she’s helping to bring higher-tech, higher-paying factory work back to the corridor between Atlanta and Chattanooga.
Nash is the general manager of the Qcells solar panel factory in Dalton, a town of 34,000 located 50 miles up I-75 from her hometown. It opened in January 2019, after the Trump administration imposed a fresh round of tariffs on Chinese-made panels. The Korean conglomerate Hanwha owns Qcells, and initially planned to hire several hundred people at the site, Nash told me on a recent visit to the factory. By the end of 2019, it employed more than 800.
Then, in 2020, Georgia helped elect President Joe Biden and sent two Democrats to the Senate, clinching a thin majority. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock got to work crafting detailed policies to promote domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, which China had dominated for years; they wanted solar panels and batteries made in America — specifically Georgia — instead of in China, a geopolitical rival.
Those measures made it into the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in August 2022 — two years ago this week. The legislation created the nation’s first comprehensive policies to support domestic clean energy manufacturing. Qcells broke ground on a second facility in Dalton in February 2023. Completed that August, the expansion added two football fields’ worth of manufacturing space with four new production lines — which produce 1.5 times more solar panels than the original three lines, thanks to technological advances. Now the whole complex employs 2,000 people full time and makes 5.1 gigawatts of solar panels a year, more than any other site in the U.S.
Politicians have been promising for decades to retrain American workers and revive long-lost manufacturing, with little to show for it. Now, though, the U.S. has entered a new era on trade: Leaders of both parties have rejected the long-standing free-trade consensus and its penchant for offshoring jobs. Biden married that reshoring impulse with a desire to boost clean energy production, to both stimulate the economy and fight climate change.
This grand experiment remains in its infancy, and the success of the clean energy manufacturing revolution is by no means guaranteed. Cheap imports could outcompete even newly subsidized American products.
And if Republicans win the presidency and retake Congress, they’ve threatened to stop subsidizing low-carbon energy resources and instead double down on fossil fuel production. House Republicans — including Dalton’s representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have voted repeatedly and unsuccessfully to repeal the domestic manufacturing incentives in the IRA. (Greene’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)
“Donald Trump and his Republican allies promised to gut the Inflation Reduction Act if he’s reelected, so there’s a lot at stake here,” Representative Nikema Williams, who leads the Georgia Democrats, told me.
Since the IRA passed, Georgia has received $23 billion in clean energy factory investment, much of it flowing to northwest Georgia. I wanted to see what impact this is having on communities formerly hit hard by industrial decline, so I followed the money trail to Dalton earlier this summer.
I found a population that seems to like having advanced solar manufacturing in their backyard. Dalton’s solar jobs are boosting wages, invigorating the historic town center, and employing local high school graduates. Those benefits are starting to spread to nearby communities, where new solar factories are springing to life. In November, voters will weigh two very different visions of America’s energy future on the ballot, but Dalton is already reaping the rewards from slotting solar into its storied history of industrial production.
From carpets to solar
Both CSX and Norfolk Southern run Class I rail lines through Dalton, a testament to its industrial legacy, and freight trains bellow day and night.
That legacy harks back to 1900, according to local historians, when Catherine Evans Whitener sold a hand-tufted bedspread from her front porch for $2.50. The cottage industry took off in this land of forested ridges and stream-crossed valleys, and over time, local factories consolidated into global carpeting giants Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries.
“The carpet industry was born here,” Carl Campbell, executive director of economic development at the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, told me when I visited the Chamber. The New Georgia Encyclopedia states that 80 percent of America’s tufted carpet production happens within 100 miles of Dalton.
The conference room where we spoke sported large-format aerial photographs of the major factories nearby: the largest Shaw site, 650,000 square feet; and the new Engineered Floors colossus, 2.8 million square feet.
“You feel like there’s enough carpet in that building to cover the whole world,” said Campbell, who grew up in Dalton.
Dalton employment numbers peaked at 80,200 in 2006, per the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But the Great Recession crushed the homebuilding industry, cratering demand for Dalton’s carpeting products.
Dalton “was a ghost town in 2011, nothing going on because everybody was hurting,” Campbell added. From June 2011 to June 2012, Dalton notched the dubious distinction of most jobs lost of all 372 metro areas surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By that point, one-quarter of Dalton’s pre-recession jobs had vanished, and unemployment surged to 12.3 percent.
Since then, the industry has recovered somewhat. Engineered Floors, Mohawk, and Shaw still dominate local employment, with some 14,000 jobs among them, Campbell said. Those companies have had to adapt to evolving consumer tastes, shifting from wall-to-wall carpets to hardwood and other flooring materials. They’ve also automated aspects of production, reducing the number of workers needed.
In the wake of the Great Recession, local leaders sought to diversify Dalton’s industry. The county acquired an undeveloped lot south of town, and Campbell later pushed to clear and level the site, so it was shovel-ready for some future tenant. When Trump’s solar tariffs kicked in, Campbell’s counterparts at Georgia’s Department of Economic Development sent Qcells his way.
Qcells showed up in February 2018, looking to spin up its first American solar-panel factory in less than a year. “Suddenly, we had exactly what they needed,” Campbell said.
Thus Dalton managed to bring in new industry to balance out its base of carpets and flooring. Qcells originally promised to invest $130 million and hire 525 people within five years, Campbell said.
“They did it in three months,” he added. “In terms of an economic development project, they check all the boxes: Everything they said they would do, they did it faster than they said they would do it.”
Domestic solar manufacturing, by humans and robots
When I asked folks around town what they thought of Qcells, they kept mentioning the dozens of air-conditioning units arrayed on the factory roof, like a field of doghouses, easily visible from I-75. I later learned that Qcells brought in helicopters to install those units, which made for a bit of small-town spectacle. Still, it struck me as a surprising detail to dwell on for a business that somehow turns the sun’s rays into cheap, emissions-free electricity.
Once I crossed Qcells’ sizzling parking lot and stepped indoors, it started to make sense. Georgia gets hot, and carpet factories get hot, but the vast floors of the twin solar factories are quite literally cool places to work.
The climate control is not unique to assembling solar panels, but it is required for the sensitive, precisely calibrated product. The air conditioners are but one sign that high-tech manufacturing has arrived, and that it makes for pretty comfortable work.
I met my two tour guides, Wayne Lock and Alan Rodriguez, in the factory lobby, and they quickly confirmed the physical appeal of Qcells jobs. Lock, now a quality engineer at Qcells, previously worked in carpet manufacturing; he had to wear special heat-resistant gear to handle carpeting materials that would otherwise deliver third-degree burns. Rodriguez, an engineering supervisor at Qcells, used to apply the coating material underneath carpets.
“You’re sandwiched between the steamer and the oven, so it gets quite hot,” Rodriguez told me. Attending to those machines exposed him to temperatures that could exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Even more than Qcells’ air conditioning, though, people I spoke to kept bringing up the pay.
By offering more for zero-skill, entry-level positions than the other factories in town, Qcells started attracting workers and pushed up wages across Dalton, Campbell said: “Competition brings everybody, so everybody’s had to kind of equalize to keep employees.”
Now Qcells hourly wages for non-experienced hires start at $17.50 to $22 — that amounts to $36,400 to $45,760 a year for full-time work. Workers with experience in robotics and manufacturing can take home much more than that. Employees can raise their pay through a variety of on-the-job training, most of which involves handling and troubleshooting the in-house fleet of robots.
Engineers Alan Rodriguez, left, and Wayne Lock pose with a recently completed solar module at Qcells’ new factory in Dalton. (Julian Spector)
Lock, Rodriguez, and I walked into the newest factory, past meeting rooms with names like Naboo and Mandalore, Star Wars locales where quirky robots coexist with all manner of creatures. As we strolled across the floor, squat wheeled autonomous vehicles rolled past us down pathways marked by tape on the smooth floor, ferrying bales of materials or hauling out hulking boxes of finished panels.
“We try to stay out of their way, and if we don’t, they yell at us,” said Lock. “It’s fun.”
As we stood talking, I noticed that one such robo-buggy was waiting for us to move. Barely discernible over the background drone of machines, a female voice intoned, “Robot is moving. Please look out.” When humans hold up more time-sensitive deliveries, Lock explained, the voice switches to male and gets louder.
Other robots remain fixed in place, carrying out repetitive precision tasks. I stared, mesmerized, at one machine that split wafer-thin silicon cells in half, first scoring them with a laser, then slicing them with a concentrated jet of water. A taller machine grabbed nearly 8-foot metal frames and sliced them through the air like a master swordsman in a Kurosawa film, to slot them around glassed-in silicon panels.
Throughout the process, cameras scan cells and use artificial intelligence to shunt defective items off the line for manual correction.
In the 2019-era factory next door, humans carry out many of these tasks. Lock, though, didn’t see the robots as competitors — he said they were taking on more physically demanding jobs so the humans could step into higher-skilled roles tending to robots.
“The ergonomics are better for you,” he said, and the new lines are more productive.
Hiring local, spending local
When Qcells was first staffing up, it relied on Quick Start, a Georgia state program that funds worker training for new factories before they open — a major draw for executives deciding where to locate their factories.
Qcells still recruits to meet ongoing staffing needs, and it has been paying special attention to high schoolers who are graduating and looking for employment. Nash speaks passionately about Qcells’ recruitment efforts; she’s seen the civic fallout from decades when local families encouraged kids to avoid manufacturing.
“Small communities cannot thrive with kids graduating and leaving those communities to live elsewhere, to get high-paying technical jobs,” Nash said. “That’s what’s happening across the country. Bringing manufacturing back, and bringing highly automated manufacturing, is offering job opportunities where now these students are staying here.”
Some 56 percent of Dalton-area students enroll in postsecondary education within 16 months of graduating high school, said Stephani Womack, director of education and workforce development for the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce. For the remainder, the chamber wants to make sure family-supporting jobs are available.
For two weeks in June, Womack helped run Project Purpose, a crash course in how to start and navigate careers that pay living wages. Recent high school graduates prepped for interviews, shopped for professional clothes, and toured housing options and downtown hotspots — the kinds of places they could frequent once they join the workforce.
But the centerpiece of the program amounted to professional speed dating, as Dalton’s major employers offered tours and entry-level jobs. Last year, Dalton’s first time running Project Purpose, seven young adults completed the program, and Qcells hired one of them. This time, 18 finished, and Qcells hired 12 of them to start on July 1.
“Next year, we hope to double that, or more,” Nash said.
Several participants came in knowing about Qcells, betting that the intensive crash course would increase their odds of landing good roles there, Womack told me over a table at Garmony House, a downtown coffee shop that draws lines for its statuesque strawberry cupcakes and coffee-glazed cinnamon rolls.
“Qcells is providing a diverse set of options for our students who need to go to work but want to stay in our community,” Womack said. “They see a climate-controlled facility with entry-level opportunities — that’s exciting for them. … Manufacturing isn’t what it used to be.”
For younger people to stay in town and build a life, Dalton needs more housing, and now it’s getting its first large apartment complex in over two decades, Campbell said. In total, 900 apartment units are slated to come online from last August through this November — not enough to catch up on a long-running housing deficit, but a step in the right direction.
That renewed real estate activity is reflected in downtown Dalton’s bustling core.
Locals pack the booths at the Oakwood Cafe, perhaps the only place in America that sells a platter of egg, sausage, toast, and grits for just $3.65. Multiple microbreweries beckon, as does a plush cocktail bar, the Gallant Goat, which stocks fresh mint by the fistful to garnish its drinks. Down the road, diners can sample ceviche of shrimp shipped in from coastal Mexico, succulent chicken wings, and high-end Southern cuisine.
This spring, the plush Carpentry Hotel opened across from the Oakwood Cafe, decked out with vibrant textile art to commemorate the town’s carpeting heritage.
“That’s been big for us, getting that hotel in downtown. That’s indicative of a robust local economy that people are coming to participate in,” local real estate agent Beau Patton told me as the late afternoon sun streamed into the Gallant Goat. Patton works with Qcells employees who want to buy homes in the area. He sees the factory’s decision to locate there as “very mutually beneficial” for Qcells and Whitfield County: “What you hope is Whitfield County grows with it, and it grows with Whitfield County.”
From Dalton to towns across Georgia
Dalton got in early on the national clean-energy factory revival, and has already seen its solar factory push up wages, enable high school graduates to stay and start careers, and inject money into a reinvigorated downtown. Many more communities in Georgia are following close behind with their own cleantech factories, seeking a similar economic jolt.
“There is a palpable and intense sense of excitement across the state about how these manufacturing and infrastructure policies are supercharging Georgia’s economic development,” said Senator Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat who authored the IRA manufacturing incentives that Qcells is tapping into. “And I would add, it’s not just the primary industrial facilities; it’s all of the secondary and tertiary suppliers and vendors and service companies and the financial services firms needed to support them.”
Qcells is building an even bigger factory compound down in Cartersville, which won a conditional $1.45 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy on August 8. This facility will take advantage of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits to onshore more steps of the solar supply chain: slicing silicon wafers, carving them into solar cells, and assembling finished modules with even newer robots than the ones I saw in Dalton. Until now, those high-value precursors to solar panels were shipped in from overseas. Workers in Dalton complete just the last step: assembling modules. Cartersville promises to bring the dream of American-made solar a bit closer to reality.
To achieve that dream, the industry has a few other challenges to confront. For one, 97 percent of the glass that encloses solar panels comes from China. Besides the geopolitical implications of that dependence, glass is so fragile and heavy that its shipping costs make domestic production enticing both economically and environmentally.
“We need domestic glass to have an efficient supply chain,” said Suvi Sharma, founder and CEO of solar recycling startup Solarcycle. His company is breaking ground on a combination solar-panel recycling facility and solar-glass factory in Cedartown, some 70 miles southwest of Dalton. Sharma expects to invest $344 million in the community and hire 600 full-time employees.
Compared with Dalton and Cartersville, “Cedartown is more off the beaten path — this would be the first large-scale factory going up there,” said Sharma. After years in which the population declined and young people looked elsewhere for jobs, “this enables them to keep people and bring in more people. There’s a cascading impact.”
Solarcycle will use its rail spur to ship in low-iron silica from a mine in Georgia, plus soda ash and limestone. Over time, it will supplement those raw ingredients with increasing amounts of glass the company will pull from decommissioned solar panels, including those made by Qcells. The goal is to produce enough glass for 5 gigawatts of panels per year; Solarcycle will ship the glass to nearby customers. At that point, workers in northwest Georgia will have a hand in all the major steps of solar-module production except the processing of raw polysilicon. Hanwha recently became the largest shareholder in REC Silicon to secure access to domestic polysilicon from the Pacific Northwest.
Georgia also nabbed a hefty chunk of the electric-vehicle factory buildout catalyzed by IRA incentives. Hyundai is dropping nearly $1 billion on its “Metaplant” near the deepwater port of Savannah and building an adjacent $4.3 billion battery plant with LG. Kia erected a new EV9 SUV manufacturing line at its plant in West Point, about halfway down Georgia’s border with Alabama. The first EV9 rolled off the line in June — less than two years after the IRA was signed into law.
Dalton, then, is a leading indicator of the industrial invigoration that clean energy factories are bringing to cities and towns across Georgia. People broadly appreciate it — if not for the role in combating climate change or countering China’s industrial might, then for high starting wages, comfortable working conditions, and opportunities for advancement.
But for this nascent factory boom to endure, the policies that triggered it need to stay in effect. The people of Georgia played a decisive role in spurring this manufacturing revival; this November, they’ll have an outsize role in deciding if it continues.
Mou Vang grew up in Section 8 housing in the Twin Cities and is familiar with the outdated infrastructure that often exists in affordable housing. Now she uses her experience and knowledge to serve the residents of Wisconsin Housing Preservation Corp (WHPC). Recently, with financial support from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) Energy Innovation Grant Program (EIGP) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and technical assistance from Elevate Energy (Elevate), she co-led WHPC’s Green Team toward solar and battery storage for their Villa West property in Green Bay. The energy savings from these efforts will be reinvested in other areas of the property for the benefit of the residents.
WHPC has been dedicated to preserving, providing, and protecting homes for low- and moderate-income individuals and families across Wisconsin for over 20 years. With more than 9,000 housing units across Wisconsin, WHPC’s mission is not just about shelter; it’s about fostering stability, empowerment, and community well-being.
Central to WHPC’s initiatives is sustainability. In 2020 they convened a “Green Team” whose aim is to make its portfolio more environmentally friendly and efficient. By identifying opportunities for sustainable upgrades and prioritizing energy efficiency in its existing and new developments, WHPC is lowering utility expenses, reducing carbon emissions, and making the properties more comfortable for residents.
In April of 2022, WHPC received a grant from the PSC to create a microgrid at Villa West. This Green Bay property offers affordable housing for individuals earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income, with its residents being persons with disabilities or seniors.
“A lot of our properties were built in the mid to late 70s so they don’t have air conditioning,” said Mou. “In Wisconsin, not having air conditioning in a senior and disabled building is concerning.”
As an Asset Manager, Mou is regularly touring properties and can attest to the lack of progress that has been made in the quality of affordable housing. It reminded her of her childhood. On one hand, it forced her to reflect on how far she has come. On the other, she is well aware of the technological advancements that have been made since then and wonders why these properties seem to be frozen in time.
“The properties still look the same,” Mou said. “They still function the same. It really didn’t sit well with me. In 30 years, nothing’s changed.”
There is no shortage of work to be done to create more comfortable living spaces for residents living in affordable housing structures.
Embracing Sustainability through the Green Team
Partners at Elevate play a pivotal role in WHPC’s Green Team. Elevate is a nationwide non-profit specializing in clean affordable energy with a focus on low-income communities. Jake Archbell, Program Manager of Solar Programs at Elevate, leads efforts to study energy usage across properties and implement strategies to enhance efficiency.
For Jake, “The more complicated something is, the more I enjoy it. So, I love projects like this; I love doing new things and managing all the pieces and seeing them come together,” he said.
Jenna Grygier, Associate Director of High Performance Buildings at Elevate echoes Jake’s love for a challenge.
She said, “I’ve seen rooftop solar, ground-mounted solar, micro wind turbines, etc. but I’ve never seen battery storage on multi-family properties. So, it’s pretty exciting for me just to see how it all fits together.”
Bringing Solar and Battery Storage to Villa West
The initial phase of the Villa West project is nearly complete, with three of the twelve buildings having solar panels installed on the roof and backup solar battery storage. The solar panels alone amount to $14,000 of savings annually.
For WHPC, “that $14,000 is the difference between new flooring in the common space so that there’s less of a trip hazard,” said Mou.
While the battery storage has no direct cost savings for WHPC, the indirect savings are very real and tangible for the residents.
Mou explained, “Think of insulin that needs to be refrigerated but the power goes out; the medication may become unusable. Typically, insurance only covers this medication being refilled once a month. So now a person with limited income has to pay out of pocket for insulin to get through the month, in the event of an extended power outage.”
“It’s just something that I think a lot of people don’t think about because we don’t experience it firsthand,” added Mou.
When asked about the intangible benefits of this project for residents, Jenna highlighted an important, yet often overlooked aspect of making people feel valued.
She said, “Even if they [residents] don’t completely understand the mechanics of it, everyone can at least identify the solar panels. My hope is that it might make them feel more valued. That they live in a place where the owner cares enough to do something like renewable energy.”
Paving the Way for Clean Energy Benefits
Earlier this year, WHPC secured additional funding for Villa West to receive installations and storage for two more buildings. As each phase progresses, the vision of outfitting all buildings with solar and battery storage inches closer to reality, shaping a brighter, more sustainable future for Villa West and its residents.
Villa West Phase I was funded with a PSC EIGP award in 2022 for $500,000. WHPC will also be taking advantage of Focus on Energy incentives available at the time of installation completion to help fund this effort. Additionally, the IRA’s Elective Pay provision will enable Villa West to secure a federal rebate covering 30% of the solar project’s cost.
As WHPC continues to pave the way in the affordable housing sector, its commitment to sustainability stands as a testament to its ethos. Through the efforts of individuals like Mou and the Green Team, WHPC is providing housing, nurturing communities, and fostering a brighter, more sustainable future for all. In this journey towards inclusive, eco-conscious housing, WHPC is not just building structures; it’s building hope and resilience.
Mou added, “It truly is an investment back to the property and the tenants benefit from it.”
Login
