Two community-based geothermal pilot projects, each led by equity-focused nonprofits, have advanced to the second phase of funding through a U.S. Department of Energy program. 

Blacks in Green, a community organization based in Chicago, and Home Energy Efficiency Team, a Boston-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting an equitable transition to clean energy, were included last week in a set of five projects across the country that have been awarded a total of more than $35 million from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office to implement geothermal installations.

The five project teams advancing to the next phase of the DOE project were among a cohort of 11 projects participating in the initial phase of the program, where coalitions selected project sites, assessed geothermal resource and permitting needs, conducted feasibility analysis and local engagement, and identified workforce and training needs. The selected projects’ range of sizes, technologies, and innovations will provide potential templates for other communities considering implementing geothermal systems. 

Three of the five projects are located in urban or suburban areas; two are in rural communities. The other three recipients are the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan; the University of Oklahoma, for a project in the town of Shawnee; and GTI Energy, for a project in Hinesburg, Vermont. 

Tapping into Chicago’s alleys

Blacks in Green, located in West Woodlawn, a predominantly Black community on Chicago’s South Side, serves as the lead for a coalition which was awarded $9.9 million for its Sustainable Chicago Geothermal pilot. Other coalition partners are the City of Chicago, University of Illinois, The Accelerate Group, Citizens Utility Board, Climate Jobs Illinois, dbHMS, GeoExchange, and Illinois AFL-CIO.

The pilot, also located in West Woodlawn, utilizes alleys to circumvent the need for vast open plots for subterranean loop fields that form the heart of a geothermal array. Locating the bulk of geothermal loop lines in alleyways also sidesteps the underground congestion of existing utility infrastructure typically located underneath city streets.

It’s among an assortment of elements in the Sustainable Square Mile approach that advances BIG’s vision for energy justice through clean energy and microgrid/VPP systems owned and managed by the community, said Naomi Davis, BIG’s founder and CEO.

“BIG launched in 2007 with a goal of increasing household income and community resilience against the harms of climate crisis at neighborhood scale using the new green economy — so we’re grateful for this chance to make it manifest,” Davis said in a news release. 

Along with installation of the needed infrastructure within the multiblock footprint, year two of the West Woodlawn project will focus on community outreach and job programs. Once construction is complete, the geothermal system will provide heating and cooling, not to mention lower utility bills, for potentially more than 200 households. 

“The Sustainable Chicago Geothermal project will be a transformational investment in the West Woodlawn community. The effort to eliminate harmful emissions from homes and businesses, while lowering energy burden, has proven to be a community-wide challenge, and requires a community-wide solution,” said Andrew Barbeau, president of The Accelerate Group and principal investigator of the Blacks in Green project, in a news release. 

The need to reconstruct the alleyways after installation of the geothermal array also presents the opportunity to replace asphalt or concrete with permeable pavers. This would work to promote climate resiliency through mitigation of urban flooding, a persistent occurrence in many of Chicago’s South and West Side communities, said Nuri Madina, the director of Sustainable Square Mile, who serves as point person for the pilot.

“All of our programs are designed to create multiple benefits,” Madina told the Energy News Network in September.

A first-of-its kind project in suburban Boston

Home Energy Efficiency Team, commonly referred to by the acronym HEET, in partnership with Eversource Energy; the city of Framingham, Massachusetts; and engineering consultant Salas O’Brien; was awarded $7.8 million toward construction of a utility-based,community-scale geothermal system.

“We are honored to receive this funding from the DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office as part of the Community Geothermal Heating and Cooling initiative, and to show how geothermal energy networks can be interconnected to increase efficiency, build resilience, and decarbonize at the scale and speed we need to achieve our climate goals,” said Zeyneb Magavi, executive director for HEET, in a news release.

The proposed plans by HEET and its partners would connect to the first Framingham geothermal network, which was commissioned earlier this year. Once approved by the state Department of Public Utilities and upon completion, it would represent the first utility-owned community geothermal network to connect to an adjacent operational loop, establishing guidelines for the interconnection and growth of geothermal networks. 

“This innovative project not only showcases Framingham’s commitment to sustainable energy solutions but also sets a precedent for other communities across the nation. By harnessing the natural heat from the earth, we are taking a significant step towards reducing our carbon footprint and promoting renewable energy sources. Our collaboration with HEET and Eversource exemplifies the power of partnerships in driving forward clean energy initiatives,” said Framingham Mayor Charlie Sisitsky in a news release. 

The HEET-led program operates on the principle that utility-scale geothermal systems could operate on a billing model similar to that of natural gas or electrical utilities, and ultimately replace them, Magavi told the Energy News Network in October 2022.

“So instead of feeding natural gas into these buildings, we could feed geothermal water,” Magavi said. “And then we could meter that and sell that. It’s no different than when you pay your water bill.”

Department of Energy funding to boost community-led geothermal projects  is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Increased activity in the solar energy space has generated the need for more trained and skilled workers. At the same time, disinvested populations are often shut out of these jobs. 

For people who have spent time in prison, it’s even harder to catch a break.

The Renewing Sovereignty Project — or RSP, based in Chicago — seeks to address both circumstances, not just with job training, but also financial and social support designed to lend substance to the phrase “returning citizen.” 

RSP draws seed funding from community solar developer Cultivate Power, which has pledged six years of financial support. Trainees are recruited through the Chicago Coalition for Intercommunalism, a collection of more than 70 grassroots organizations across the city working to achieve social change. 

Instruction is provided by training partner 548 Foundation, while job placement is achieved through multiple hiring partners, including Knobelsdorff Energy. 

RSP also provides referrals for possible sealing or expungement of past convictions, which can ease the transition process for eligible participants, according to Jacqueline Williams, Regional and Prison Program Director for Zealous, a social support organization that functions as a primary administrator for RSP.

Opportunities created by the Illinois Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, or CEJA, earned high praise from Williams, who is determined to ensure those investments yield results.

“The worst thing that we can think of is that all of this money gets poured into these training programs … and then none of [the participants] actually get jobs in the solar field,” Williams said.

Reducing recidivism

While recidivism rates are dropping around the country thanks in large part to the 2008 Second Chance Act, job training and reentry programs for justice impacted people have had mixed success.

According to the findings from a 2023 report from the National Institute of Justice, or NIJ, intensive, individual-focused programs are more effective in reducing recidivism.

For instance, Mt. Tamalpais College, housed within San Quentin Prison, allows enrolled inmates to earn an associate’s degree transferable to four-year institutions. Each student receives an individual education plan — including intensive tutoring. Only 5% of its graduates ever return to prison. 

Likewise, on average 96% of those who complete the JUMPSTART Prison Ministry program, currently active in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio will never return to prison. This peer-led program works with individuals while they are incarcerated as well as after their release.

Specifically, the NIJ report emphasizes that a holistic approach to reentry employment training programs — like RSP — is essential to maximize the chances of a justice-impacted individual actually getting hired.

Williams said that often includes addressing fundamental needs like housing, food, child care and transportation.

“Anything that you can think of that would prevent someone from being successful in a really intensive 13-week program, we’re going to assess that barrier and we’re going to provide it. And those needs do change throughout the course of 13 weeks. And so we’ll be responsive pretty much immediately to those changing needs,” Williams said.

RSP’s results track with the findings of the NIJ report, and justify its intensive wraparound services. According to the RSP website. the first cohort of 12, which completed the program in 2023, achieved a 100% placement rate in solar and related industries. The current cohort of 18 graduates is on a pace to achieve similar levels of success, Williams said. 

“There are a lot of workforce training programs. We didn’t need to add another training program. What we needed to add was the intensive wraparound services and the barrier mitigation and the alumni support that really allows people to go from truly one completely different aspect of their life to through this training and into a long-term career in green energy,” Williams said.

Doing well by doing good 

Cultivate Power has committed $1.75 million over six years to support RSP, while also furthering their own mission of developing a more inclusive solar workforce in Illinois. Over the past two years, Cultivate Power has funded more than $500,000 in support of the current cohort of 18 graduates and the previous cohort of 12 graduates. 

Noah Hyte, managing director and co-founder of Cultivate Power, said the partnership with RSP is “one of the bigger commitments we’ve made” toward community initiatives.

“We’re in a situation broadly as an industry in Illinois where there’s simply not enough labor and construction companies to meet the demand associated with CEJA’s goals,” he said. “The state’s doing an excellent job of providing tens of millions of dollars of funding to workforce development programs to create workforce development hubs. And so we didn’t see a problem writ large with the scaling of workforce development. [Instead] we saw an opportunity for this specific group of people, and this specific profile that needed additional support, that needed a more thoughtful and wraparound approach to ensure that they would be as successful as possible in this endeavor.”

Along with funding, Hyte and fellow managing director and co-founder Brian Matthay lend their business know-how in advising the administration of RSP, while leaving the work of providing training and support services to 548 Foundation and Zealous, Hyte said. 

Inclusive vetting 

Programs like JUMPSTART, Mt. Tamalpais College — and RSP — operate on the principle that justice-impacted individuals are not throw-away beings. This recognition extends to the intensive selection and preparation process for prospective cohort members that takes place before they are assigned to a training program.

The vetting process performed by organizations within the Chicago Coalition for Intercommunalism focuses on developing candidates so that they are prepared to draw the most benefit from the training. 

“We get each one of our individuals as a referral,” Williams said. “They have to be a part of a community organization. And the reason for that is it really provides another layer of support and another layer of safety net for individuals, most of whom are system impacted. The vast majority of our individuals are involved with the criminal justice system in some way or have been to foster care.

“They go through the whole year of the program where they work on conflict resolution and personal readiness and violence prevention and all those things before they enter the workforce space. Each organization has that same model. So by the time they get to us, they are more ready,” Williams said.

RSP also imposes a strict attendance requirement — which reflects expectations that trainees will face on the job. However, commitment to the wraparound approach often makes the difference between a candidate dropping out — or finishing the program and obtaining a good job. 

“If somebody hasn’t shown up three days in a row, we’re not just going to kick them out of the program. We’re going to send somebody to your house, probably somebody from your coalition partner and see if you’re okay. We’re trying to find out the whys and not be punitive and recreate the same systems that we are trying to overturn. We really bring people that support right to their door.

“You can have the best intentions in the world, but if the lights are out at home and the refrigerator is not running and you’re not able to feed the kids, you’re not going to be able to complete that program,” Williams said.

Getting job-ready

Candidates referred to 548 Foundation for workforce training must meet two specific requirements: the ability to lift 40 pounds and read at an eighth-grade level. Beyond that, actual workforce training involves more than specific job-related task instruction, said 548 Foundation founder and CEO AJ Patton.

“They’re intentional about picking folks from the toughest situations, not just, oh, kid just graduated, doesn’t know what he wants to do in his life. No, they’re talking, ‘You just came home from prison. You’re in a tough situation. Here’s your chance. We’re going to put our arms around you.’ 

“We spend the first two weeks of class talking about professional development and human development, conflict resolution, how to be a professional, how you present yourself and how to communicate on a job site. Those things matter way more before I ever teach you how to install a solar system,” Patton said.

This preliminary instruction reflects a recognition of the lived experience of training cohort members. 

“We know in the streets how you address those things. There’s a very clear protocol. You call me out my name, this is what you get. But on the job site it’s different. We’re professionals now. There’s a kind of recalibration of how we engage one another and how we engage our contemporaries and colleagues,” Patton said. 

That being said, frequently, it’s the “hard timers” who perform the best during training and in the job market, Patton said. 

“People want to work. If you’re willing to show up on time and commit to the effort and the cost, then there’s a marketplace for you… That particular subset of the community has been the group that’s probably been the most focused in the classroom. They’ve been the most attentive. They know what this opportunity means. They’ve been working hard. And they are almost overwhelmed at graduation when there’s a bidding war for their efforts… I’ve had guys that spent 17 years in prison come to my program, and at the end of the program, they had three job offers,” Patton said.

Ongoing wraparound support

The individualized, specialized guidance and support each participant receives continues for a full year beyond formal graduation. Drawn from what the program calls an alumni fund, such assistance can be anything from a down payment for a reliable car to get back and forth to work, referrals and resources for child care or providing funds for required tools and clothing, Williams said. 

“Anything can really knock you for a loop. I mean, somebody hit a coyote the other day and blew out their radiator, and we just immediately got the radiator fixed so they wouldn’t miss a day of work. It’s those sorts of [situations] that can just totally derail a person that we try to just mitigate by providing access to that fund as well as mentorship,” Williams said. 

Sometimes support takes the form of providing a sounding board, Williams said. 

“There’s a lot of just phone calls around, like,’ This is really hard, it’s really hard to be away from my kids and I don’t know if I want to do this.’ And then we think through different options. ‘Would you rather do rooftop solar closer [to home]? Is this just a bad day? Or, is this something that you really want to consider changing?’ So that’s sort of like, guidance and mentorship. We’re pretty much on call all the time. Just making sure that we are there and available for people,” Williams said.

For Williams, Hyte, Patton and their various community and industry partners, RSP is not so much social service as an investment in society, and beyond that, working toward achieving a true just transition away from a carbon-fuel powered economy.

“So really our mission is to try to make these careers viable and sustainable for people through all that additional support …The success is not graduating the program. That’s a milestone. That’s a really great important milestone. 

“But it doesn’t mean anything if people aren’t actually changing the trajectory of their lives and their family’s lives. And if we aren’t actually changing the face of what solar looks like in Illinois and across the country. It’s so important for us to be clear about what success is. And success is a long-term career in green energy,” Williams said.

Illinois program’s ‘wraparound’ approach helps formerly incarcerated people land solar industry jobs is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Ensuring that traditionally disinvested Black and Brown communities are not left behind is essential for a just transition away from carbon-based energy sources. 

At the same time, many of these communities have vast stretches of vacant or underutilized properties, which could present opportunities for clean energy development. 

For instance, in Detroit, city officials are working with DTE Energy to build 33 MW of solar arrays on vacant property around the city. Detroit’s mayor has touted the project as a way to deal with blight while producing clean energy, but neighbors are divided.

Meanwhile, in the West Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, a community-based geothermal project is intentionally bypassing vacant lots, focusing instead on placing the necessary loop fields in alleyways.

“Not every block in the neighborhood even has a vacant lot that could be leveraged,” said Andrew Barbeau, president of The Accelerate Group in Chicago, which is providing technical assistance for the geothermal pilot, in an email. “Further, communities often have other ambitions for that land, whether it is new housing development, parks, greenways, or other beneficial uses.” 

For Blacks in Green, the Chicago-based organization leading the geothermal project, recognition of the role of the project within a broader scope is central to an overall goal of generating economic development and a healthy environment within the community, said Nuri Madina, Sustainable Square Mile director, who serves as point person for the pilot.

“We know that the communities have been underserved. And underserved by definition means that we have not gotten our fair share of taxpayer investment in the communities. We know what our streets look like. And one of the major assets in the community, which is not really viewed as an asset, is our vacant lots,” Madina said.

The geothermal pilot 

Conventional geothermal systems require substantial plots of land to lay the subterranean loop fields that circulate both hot and cold water — land that is often scarce in densely populated urban areas. 

But while West Woodlawn has a number of vacant lots, they are not being utilized for the project. Instead, alleys provide a potential solution for constructing geothermal loop fields, along with allowing for connection points for houses and multifamily buildings within the pilot footprint, Barbeau said.

“The good news is that based on the system design, we have more than enough capacity in the alleys to serve the load of the blocks we have modeled. The modeling also so far is showing us that the shared network model would require 20-30%  less wells than if each home built their own system,” Barbeau said in an email.

Locating the bulk of the geothermal infrastructure in alleyways also sidesteps the underground congestion of existing gas, electric and water infrastructure on city streets, said Mark Nussbaum, owner and principal of Architectural Consulting Engineers in Oak Park, Illinois.

“There’s a lot of stuff happening out near the street. It doesn’t mean it’s not possible to coordinate it, but it’s just what’s nice about the alley concept is, it’s kind of unused for utilities typically,” Nussbaum said.

Blank slate versus bright future 

“White flight” and housing segregation have left many U.S. cities with sections of vacant or underinvested property, typically in communities populated by Black and Brown people. 

With roughly 60% of the land area of Chicago, Detroit nonetheless has a much larger proportion of vacant land — approximately 19 square miles. In some neighborhoods,  multiple blocks may only have a single structure remaining, if any at all.  

DTE Energy’s plan to build large-scale solar arrays on some of that land is supported by some residents and municipal officials as a means to reduce illegal dumping and other nuisance crimes while working toward meeting city climate goals — and reducing utility bills for residents. 

But there has also been pushback, largely focused on potential detrimental impact on property values in adjacent properties and limitations on future use of the sites themselves.

“Solar panels will disrupt and destroy entire neighborhoods. There will be no future affordable housing being built anywhere around a solar farm,” councilmember Angela Whitfield-Calloway said during a city council meeting in July, as reported by Planet Detroit. 

Whitfield-Calloway also questions why municipal buildings or sites outside the city limits had not been considered for the solar arrays.

In Chicago, a battery storage facility constructed as part of the Bronzeville Microgrid project administered by electric utility ComEd generated similar debate during an extended period of community input. ComEd officials said the location of the battery facility, in the middle of a stretch of vacant plots near the South Side Community Art Center, was strategic to the overall microgrid project. 

A 40-yard-long mural designed and created by local artists and mounted on the exposed long side of the battery storage facility not only serves to obscure the structure, but also to highlight prominent figures in Black history and culture. While reactions to the mural have been overwhelmingly positive, reception of the battery storage facility itself has been mixed. 

“There were thorough talks with the community and the art community in Bronzeville about what they wanted, what [ComEd] planned to do [with] that battery station, because they did not want it to be an eyesore … they did not want it to just be, you know, brick walls around infrastructure,” Jeremi Bryant, a resident of Bronzeville, told the Energy News Network in February 2021.

For Bruce Montgomery, founder of Bronzeville-based Entrepreneur Success Program and a member of the advisory council for the Community of the Future, the location of the battery storage facility precluded potentially more beneficial future development for the site.

“That lot in most communities probably would have ended up being invested in as more quality residential,” Montgomery told the Energy News Network in February 2021. “But now you’ve taken it up with this box car. … You’ve got big things sitting out in the middle of a vacant lot a couple of doors down from one of the most historic locations in Bronzeville.”

Creating ‘multiple benefits’

For Blacks in Green, what might appear to the casual observer as a vacant lot overtaken by weeds belies its ultimate potential — as an affordable, energy-efficient residential complex, small business owned by a community resident, a much needed basic amenity like a grocery stocking fresh produce — or a native plant garden to attract pollinators.

On June 17, 2023, Blacks in Green collaborated with the Delta Institute to hold a combined Juneteenth celebration and BioBlitz to identify potential sites for green infrastructure. Experts and community residents worked side-by-side to map and measure plant life, insect populations, drainage and other elements during a walking inventory of vacant lots in the area.

In the case of West Woodlawn, installation of geothermal loop fields in its alleys — versus locating them in vacant plots — presents an opportunity to promote climate resiliency through mitigation of persistent urban flooding, by utilizing permeable pavers to replace existing concrete or asphalt, said Madina.

“All of our programs are designed to create multiple benefits,” Madina said.

Projects like the West Woodlawn community geothermal project represent a drive to revive and reinvent Chicago’s Black Wall Street within what once constituted the redline-confined boundaries of the Black population drawn to the city during the Great Migration of the 20th Century.

“In most communities, the vacant lots are really indicative of a declining community. But what we have tried to do is take that negative and turn it into something positive. So if we can take those vacant lots with weeds and debris and turn them into beautiful gardens, that is a very significant improvement in the community,” Madina said.

“So [we] could improve the quality of life, improve the spirit of the people in the community… that vacant lot can provide more than just beauty. It can provide more than just comfort for the residents. It can also provide biodiversity, it can provide pollination, it can provide food for the residents.”

Correction: A 40-yard-long mural was mounted on the side of a ComEd battery storage facility to obscure the structure and highlight prominent figures in Black history and culture. An earlier version of this story misstated its size.

Vacant urban land poses complex questions for clean energy siting is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

As low-income households face the dual burden of weather extremes and high energy costs, energy efficiency is an increasingly important strategy for both climate mitigation and lower utility bills.

Passive House standards — which create a building envelope so tight that central heating and cooling systems may not be needed at all — promise to dramatically slash energy costs, and are starting to appear in “stretch codes” for buildings, including in Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington and New York.

And while some builders are balking at the initial up-front cost, other developers are embracing passive house metrics as a solution for affordable multifamily housing.

“We’re trying to make zero energy, high performing buildings that are healthy and low energy mainstream everywhere,” said Katrin Klingenberg, co-founder and executive director of Passive House Institute-U.S., or Phius. 

Klingenberg says the additional work needed to meet an aggressive efficiency standard, is, in the long run, not that expensive. Constructing a building to passive standards is initially only about 3%-5% more expensive than building a conventional single family home, or 0%-3% more for multifamily construction, according to Phius.

“This is not rocket science… We’re just beefing up the envelope. We’re doing all the good building science, we’re doing all the healthy stuff. We’re downsizing the [heating and cooling] system, and now we need someone to optimize that process,” Klingenberg said. 

Phius in practice and action

A Phius-certified building does not employ a conventional central heating and cooling system. Instead, it depends on an air-tight building envelope, highly efficient ventilation and strategically positioned, high-performance windows to exploit solar gain during both winter and summer and maximize indoor comfort. 

The tight envelope for Phius buildings regulates indoor air temperature, which can be a literal lifesaver when power outages occur during extreme heat waves or cold snaps, said Doug Farr, founder and principal of architecture firm Farr Associates.

Farr pointed to the example of the Academy for Global Citizenship in Chicago, which was built to Phius standards. 

“There was a really cold snap in January. Somehow the power went out [and the building] was without electricity for two or three days. And the internal temperature in the building dropped two degrees over three days.”

Farr said that example shows a clear benefit to high efficiency that justifies the cost.

“You talk about the ultimate resilience where you’re not going to die in a power outage either in the summer or the winter. You know, that’s pretty valuable.” 

There is also a business case to be made for implementing Phius and other sustainability metrics into residential construction, such as lowered bills that can appeal to market-rate buyers and renters, and reduced long-term maintenance costs for building owners. 

AJ Patton, founder and CEO of 548 Enterprise in Chicago, says in response to questions about how to convince developers to consider factors beyond the bottom line, simply, “they shouldn’t.”

Instead, he touts lower operating costs for energy-efficiency metrics rather than climate mitigation when he pitches his projects to his colleagues. 

“I can’t sell people on climate change anymore,” he said. “If you don’t believe by now, the good Lord will catch you when He catch you.

“But if I can sell you on lowering your operating expenses, if I can sell you on the marketability, on the fact that your tenants will have 30%, 40% lower individual expenses, that’s a marketing angle from a developer owner, that’s what I push on my contemporaries,” Patton said. “And then that’s when they say, ‘if you’re telling the truth, and if your construction costs are not more significant than mine, then I’m sold.’”

Phius principles can require specialized materials and building practices, Klingenberg said. But practitioners are working toward finding ways to manage costs by sourcing domestically available materials rather than relying on imports.

“The more experienced an architect [or developer] gets, they understand that they can replace these specialized components with more generic materials and you can get the same effect,” Klingenberg said.

Patton is presently incorporating Phius principles as the lead developer for 3831 W Chicago Avenue, a mixed use development located on Chicago’s West Side. The project, billed as the largest passive house design project in the city to date, will cover an entire city block, incorporating approximately 60 mixed-income residential units and 9,000 sq ft of commercial and community space.

Another project, Sendero Verde, located in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City, is the largest certified passive-house building in the United States with 709 units. Completed in April, Sendero Verde is designed to provide cool conditions in the summer and warmth during the winter — a vast improvement for the low-income and formerly unhoused individuals and families who live there.

Barriers and potential solutions

Even without large upfront building cost premiums and with the increased impact of economies of scale, improved technology and materials, many developers still feel constrained to cut costs, Farr said.

“There’s entire segments of the development spectrum in housing, even in multifamily housing in Chicago, where if you’re a developer of rental housing time and again …  they feel like they have no choice but to keep things as the construction as cheap as possible because their competitors all do. And then, some architecture firms only work with those ‘powerless’ developers and they get code-compliant buildings.”

But subsidies, such as federal low income housing credits, IRS tax breaks and resources from the Department of Energy also provide a means for developers to square the circle, especially for projects aimed toward very low-income residents. 

Nonetheless, making the numbers work often requires taking a long-term view of development, according to Brian Nowak, principal at Sweetgrass Design Studio in Minnesota. Nowak was the designer for Hillcrest Village, an affordable housing development in Northfield that does not utilize Phius building metrics, but does incorporate net-zero energy usage standards.

“It’s an investment over time, to build resilient, energy-efficient housing,” he told the Energy News Network in June 2023.

“That should be everyone’s goal. And if we don’t, for example, it affects our school system. It affects the employers at Northfield having people that are readily available to come in and fill the jobs that are needed.

“That’s a significant long-term benefit of a project like this. And that is not just your monthly rents on the building; it’s the cost of the utilities as well. When those utilities include your electricity and your heating and cooling that’s a really big deal.”

Developers like Patton are determined to incorporate sustainability metrics into affordable housing and commercial developments both because it’s good business and because it’s the right thing to do.

“I’m not going to solve every issue. I’m going to focus on clean air, clean water, and lowering people’s utility bills. That’s my focus. I’m not going to design the greatest architectural building. I’m not even interested in hiring those type of architects. 

“I had a lived experience of having my heat cut off in the middle of winter. I don’t want that to ever happen to anybody I know ever again,” Patton said. “So if I can lower somebody’s cost of living, that’s my sole focus. And there’s been a boatload of buy-in from that, because those are historically [not] things [present] in the communities I invest in.”

No longer a niche, Passive House standards becoming a solution for highly efficient affordable housing is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Editor’s note: Miles Braxton’s company is Okovate Sustainable Energy. A previous version of this post misspelled the company’s name.

Agrivoltaics — co-locating solar arrays with farming operations — is generating enthusiasm among both farmers and clean energy advocates as a way to promote sustainability in agriculture. 

When implemented correctly, agrivoltaics provides a vital dual income stream for farmers — in solar energy generation, but also as a means of providing an optimal growing environment for compatible crops and herds. The added revenue may allow more farmers to retain their land for themselves and future generations. 

While pilot projects around the country are identifying best practices, not all have been successful, and practitioners say that advancing the technology will require an equitable approach that centers farmers’ needs first.

A discussion during the recent Solar Farm Summit in Rosemont, Illinois, directly addressed the issue, featuring a majority-Black panel of practitioners and service providers. Three major themes emerged during the discussion: maximizing compatibility of solar arrays with existing land use, demonstrating the financial benefits of agrivoltaics, and addressing how solar power can help BIPOC farmers hold on to their land.

“I think one thing that, through our work in this technical assistance, has become very, very clear [is] that people don’t just want to build an agrivoltaics project for the sake of building an agrivoltaics project,” said Jordan Macknick of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), who also served as moderator for the discussion. “How does agrivoltaics enable you to take that next step and focus on things like succession planning or farmer training?”

Benefits for farmers

Miles Braxton started his company, Okovate Sustainable Energy, to work exclusively on “farmer-focused” solar development.

Braxton said after several years of developing community solar projects, he “really saw the inefficiencies” of taking farmland out of production for solar projects. “That’s a problem that is just going to keep piling on top of itself until it gets to the point where we can’t develop anything.

“We target crop farmers who are growing a very specific suite of crops that we know works well with our design,” Braxton said.

Cetta Barnhart, owner of Seed Time Harvest Farms in Florida, also cultivates her own plot of fruits and vegetables, and cited her background in food and wellness in promoting the compatibility of solar and agriculture to benefit the bottom line for farmers.

“This is more hands-on of what a farmer can really do in their current practices. If they’re raising cattle, there’s a way that they implement solar with that. If they are having bare land, the pollinator is another way that they can benefit from that,” she said. “So how these solar projects are developed and created for real farmers is still a big conversation to be had.“ 

Ena Jones, owner of Roots & Vine Produce and Café, and president of Community Partners for Black Farmers, cited her dual role as a working farmer and an advocate as an advantage in promoting the potential compatibility of agrivoltaics and cultivation — especially for Black farmers.

“We advocate and we also lobby for farmers at the state level for the state of Illinois and the state of Georgia. And I’m here to kind of segue to help farmers understand … how different solar opportunities can help them with production on their farms, and be an asset to the production on their farms. And also, to help solar developers understand farm[ing],” Jones said.

Noting that solar projects can help cut energy costs, Jones said “Energy use is one of the farmer’s [major] expenses outside of diesel, and of course seed. So, if they can reduce that cost dramatically, even by a third, that would impact their bottom line in revenue extensively. It is very important, especially for BIPOC farmers, to be ushered into this technology so that they won’t be left behind in the process.”

Making connections

Agrivoltaics can be a valuable tool to reduce overall costs, expand potential revenue – or both – as a means of promoting optimal use of farmland. A both-and approach can work to address what is often an inherent tension between the best use of large, flat plots of land for large solar arrays – parcels that also frequently comprise some of the richest soil for cultivation. 

For example, the 180 MW Madison Fields project in Ohio represents a test ground for large-scale agrivoltaics – farming on 1,900 acres between the rows of a utility-scale solar array. One of the project’s focuses is determining which crops and herds are the best prospects to coexist with large-scale solar developments.

“People have a lot of questions with regard to energy development going forward in this state … Finding a balance where you can do a number of things on the same ground — in this case energy production as well as agricultural production — is obviously huge,” Dale Arnold, director of energy policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau told the Energy News Network in July.

Macknick highlighted another project where NREL and Clean Energy to Communities (C2C), along with the Black Farmers Collaborative, worked on a proof of concept project which incorporated solar panels on a demonstration farm cultivated by Barnhart that features citrus trees, leafy greens, and other produce.

“I had already looked into doing solar on my property and was just looking at it to have solar as the backup,” Barnhart said. “But when we started talking as a team and then we found out about the agrivoltaics portion [and] how that can be incorporated into farming, it really brought forth a bigger and better opportunity to not just benefit by having it but also sharing that with other farmers,” Barnhart told NREL in 2023.

Mike DellaGala of Solar Collective said taking a farmer-centered approach can also be beneficial to product and service providers.

“I think a lot of the conversation … has been the difference between farmers and developers, and how we are or [are] not communicating and getting projects over the finish line or not. And I think… if you’re farmer-first or farmer-centric, I think that’s the way to success for everybody… allowing [farmers] to dictate a lot of the project details has been really successful for us. And it makes our job easier, frankly,” DellaGala said.

A farmer-centric and collaborative approach is especially vital in ensuring equitable access to the benefits of agrivoltaics for BIPOC farmers, Barnhart said.

“I stand in the gap somewhat between having conversations with [BIPOC] farmers and having conversations with project developers because you need someone in the middle. I’m a community advocate. I hope there are more of us in the room than not. They have to be in place in order to bridge the conversation as to how this really works well in real-life time,” Barnhart said.

Braxton cited the need to rein in the power of utilities, which he says frequently raise roadblocks to community-level projects to protect their own interests. 

“Utilities have too much power. They have too much money to lobby. They don’t want you to sell power back to your community because [of the impact to] their own rates that they can control. So that’s a risk. The root of those problems is that here in the U.S. … we have 50 little countries [states] that make up their own policies and do their own thing… I think there needs to be a policy to incentivize solar to be developed innovatively. I don’t think policy makers at the state level understand the importance of that,” Braxton said.

Jones noted that policy change will likely be driven by farmer demand, which by extension benefits the larger community.

“In my opinion, once the farmers understand [how solar can] help them on their farms, I can’t say this enough, they will force politicians to comply. The money will be there; the funding will be there. But the engagement needs to happen. It desperately needs to happen,” she said.

Land retention for BIPOC farmers

Loss of land –through racism and other factors, has long been a contentious topic among BIPOC farmers – and Black farmers in particular. According to a 2022 study, discriminatory federal policies contributed to Black farmers losing roughly $326 billion worth of acreage during the 20th century. In July, the Biden-Harris administration announced a distribution of $2 billion to thousands of Black and other minority farmers, created through the Inflation Reduction Act as a means to begin to address this inequity.

Agrivoltaics may not intuitively track as a relevant strategy for land retention; but Barnhart touted its value, especially for Black farmers. 

“[Black farmers] have lost a lot of land because we just couldn’t afford to keep it… We didn’t just lose land because it was confiscated… What solar does is add an income stream or a reduction in your expenses so that there’s more you can do on your farm and create an opportunity for the next generation. 

“It gives us a reason to keep the land going, and it gives us, in our community, resiliency we are experiencing through our climate change storms. For the families that can have that piece of land, that builds a resiliency to protect them in their neighborhoods, protect their own backyard, and protect the future generations, give the future generations something they can look forward to that makes sense to them. Then we build into something that takes care of our wealth building opportunities, our succession planning, and our look into the future to make a change,” Barnhart said.

How a ‘farmer-first’ approach could lead to more successful agrivoltaics projects is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Annamaria Leon was initially enchanted by the lush greenery of Douglass Park and the handsome greystone homes of North Lawndale, located on Chicago’s West Side. But it wasn’t until after she moved into the greystone she first rented and would eventually purchase that she realized what lay beneath the surface of the stunning architecture of the neighborhood and its showplace park: the ravages of decades of redlining, disinvestment and racial unrest. 

“I got off the highway and I ended up in North Lawndale. I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world. Douglass Park, you know, and being a feng shui practitioner, you had the curved streets and the old houses with the big doors. I said, ‘oh my gosh, I want to live here,’” Leon said.

She also discovered that her new neighborhood had transformed from a predominantly Jewish enclave to an almost all Black area. This transformation is reflected in the naming of Douglass Park, visualized by architect William LeBaron Jenney and reimagined by world-renowned landscape architect Jens Jensen. 

The park was originally Douglas Park, with one “s,” named for Stephen A. Douglas, who was instrumental in bringing the Illinois Central Railway to Chicago and famed for his debates with Abraham Lincoln. Due to his pro-slavery stance, the park was renamed in honor of abolitionists Anna and Frederick Douglass in 2020.

Leon, whose family origins are Filipino, dug in, and committed herself to applying her extensive knowledge in sustainable urban agriculture and permaculture to cultivating much-needed green spaces, enhancing resiliency against the effects of climate change, and improving the overall quality of life in the place she now considers her home.

Digging in

As the co-founder of both Permaculture Chicago Teaching Institute and Homan Grown, L3C, Leon applies her experience and expertise as a certified permaculture designer and dynamic educator. She also draws on years of experience with her former employer, Christy Webber Landscapes, where she developed a reputation for creating community gardens, including work on high profile commissions for garden installations in downtown Chicago’s Millennium Park. 

Leon has forged a number of collaborative relationships and built a deep reservoir of trust, establishing herself as a resource for enacting social change. She is recognized as a leader, and respected for her willingness to engage with other community stakeholders.

Her determination to grow roots in North Lawndale is consistent with that overall world view.

“When I look at the condition of the groups in my community, if they’re in need, if they’re hurting, I need to do something about that. Because my life is the groups that make up my community. I’m a connector…If you don’t share your ideas with the people in your community, it doesn’t work; it’s only like you talking into the mirror. Those bonds of trust are what makes a community happen,” Leon said.

For Leon, environmental elements such as abundant green spaces are essential to the overall health of any community, including to provide a cooling effect as climate-fueled heat waves threaten urban areas. North Lawndale, she believes, is not and should not be an exception. 

She is outspoken about calling out bad actors as opportunists seeking to exploit the community for their own political or financial gain — or both.

“If I see that all you’re doing is using the community, and to use a phrase, being a ‘poverty pimp,’ no, I’m not going to be with you. I’m not going to help you. Because unless you alter and transform how you see my community, why would I engage with you?” Leon said.

At the same time, she also looks to allies to facilitate acceptance among community members who trust them, but who do not yet know her. 

“Even though I’ve been there [for years], I haven’t been there [for] generations. And I’m also not African American. If I can’t be effective in [communication with stakeholders], I want somebody else who can be effective in that, and I want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. But I am also not going to dictate how they express that.

“I need to find somebody who can break down those barriers for me… My commitment is to have North Lawndale thrive, to have people find beauty wherever they are, and for them to be self-expressed. That’s what guides me in my work. If it’s about architecture, if it’s about biking, if it’s about healthcare, is that providing beauty? Is it having people be self-expressed in their life? Then I’m for that,” Leon said.

Frustration and municipal red tape

Like many Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, North Lawndale suffers from disinvestment, including a paucity of green spaces. But the community’s reception of Chicago Department of Planning and Development proposals was initially lukewarm, Leon said. Leon persuaded community members to attend subsequent meetings and take an active role in executing various green space initiatives.

“We had a lot of people come because they trusted me. Like, if Annamaria is asking us to do something, let’s go,” Leon said.

But Leon also expressed frustration with dealing with the territorialism that often occurs with municipal politics.

“If our federal government, our local government, our city government, our alderpeople, when they say ‘Hey, I’m going to assist you with this project’ and they actually assist you with the project, and [if] they created it in a way that it is planned to succeed versus planned to fail, then this becomes stronger and stronger and stronger,” Leon said. “But there’s so many agendas out there. We can’t work like that anymore.” 

For instance, a number of proposed greening projects in North Lawndale have run into significant hurdles, some of which Leon suspects were integrated by design. She highlighted one instance where a contract for green space maintenance in various lots was given to an organization with no experience doing that work.

“Why does the city then put it on the community? And then the community fails. Then they say, see, ‘we tried and they couldn’t take care of it.’” 

Another project, Leon says, was a plot that featured pollinator-friendly plants that instead have simply been mowed, defeating the purpose of the original design.

“I’m part of the tree equity collaborative. I’m part of the urban heat island watch. And trees are great. But if you look at the heat index, it’s still high. And so, you have to have deep roots in the soil to bring up that water up. And [the greenery] becomes like an air conditioner.” 

Making an impact

Despite dealing with red tape and other hurdles, Leon and her allies have made significant headway with adding green spaces, both for recreation and as a vehicle for facilitating community and economic development in North Lawndale.

For example, the North Lawndale Greening Committee recently expanded their portfolio of edible community gardens from 14 to 20, utilizing a city program to develop vacant lots while providing paid employment to residents of the community, Leon said.

During a recent presentation at the Morton Arboretum, located in the Chicago suburb of Lisle, Leon also described several projects administered by Stone Temple Baptist Church, a former Jewish synagogue located in North Lawndale, including a vacant lot that has been converted to a community garden and performance space. The church has also created a free community store stocked with donated furniture, Leon said.

A new cafe and flower shop is also scheduled to open in the near future, operating on a donation basis to avoid paying hefty zoning fees, Leon explained during her presentation.

And while grants have been a significant source of funding for various green space projects in North Lawndale, Leon and her collaborators are working toward greater community autonomy in furthering their mission of improving the neighborhood and its green spaces.

“We’ve received almost $2 million in grants, but we’re weaning ourselves off of the grants. I don’t think we can fully, but you know grants are fickle and you have to fulfill what the grantor wants. Sometimes it takes people off of their mission.”

For Leon,  good management of green spaces provides a potentially useful blueprint for improving the overall quality of life — for North Lawndale, for the city and beyond.

“It’s land tenure. It’s the way you manage your resources. It’s also societal, how you create your society. Is it hierarchical? Is it linear? You could just look at the soil. What makes a soil fertile is there’s a lot of the little organic microorganisms in there,” Leon said. “But those microorganisms live because they have air and they have good shelter that’s not poison, which is the soil. And it has good maintenance, and they respect each other’s boundaries and they collaborate.

“So that’s what makes a good society as well.”

A Chicago advocate builds climate resilience, one green space at a time is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.