As more and more communities and individuals become aware of the need to shift our energy sources to lessen the impacts of climate change, neighbor-driven action is key — as is the energy, commitment and creativity of young people. This story of two teens who launched a game-changing initiative to lower the cost of solar panels while building neighbor-to-neighbor cooperation around securing this form of energy.
In our time of climate crisis, there is an increasingly urgent need to quit using fossil fuels and adopt renewable energy sources.
“[T]he release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels is warming our planet faster than anything we have seen in the geological record,” notes a 2020 report by Brookings. A report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that “90 percent of the world’s electricity can and should come from renewable energy by 2050,” points out the United Nations.
On Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, 2024, the Biden administration announced 60 recipients who received $7 billion in a solar power grant competition called the Solar for All program. The awardees were selected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the program will help bring residential solar projects to more than 900,000 households in the U.S.
The nonprofit Solar United Neighbors (SUN) worked closely with 12 applicants of the Solar for All program and will continue the process with grant recipients as funds are dispersed. In an interview with me for the Independent Media Institute on April 26, SUN’s communications director, Ben Delman, said that it had been an “exciting week” as their organization put significant work into the Solar for All program. He says this will “infuse money to local governments to help expand solar access” to low-income communities.
“We’ve been working specifically on expanding solar access and helping low-income families go solar for about half a dozen years or more now. Developing a series of pilot project models has really served, I think, as proof of concept for what we’re going to end up seeing here down the road now,” he says.
SUN works to help communities around the U.S. move away from fossil fuels and toward solar power. They do so through public education and by establishing neighborhood-based cooperatives, which can help to bring the price of installing solar panels down significantly through group purchasing and negotiation support.
The project was started by two preteen friends who were moved to action after watching the documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” in 2007. Twelve-year-old Walter (the son of Anya Schoolman, SUN’s founder and executive director), and his friend of the same age, Diego, decided to go door to door in their neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant in Washington, D.C. In two weeks, the boys gathered about 50 neighbors together who also wanted to go solar. This was the foundation of Mt. Pleasant Solar Cooperative and the start of what would become SUN. From there, the kids—supported by Anya Schoolman—worked to get legislation passed to improve solar policies in the Washington, D.C., area.
Originally published by Resilience.org.
Image source: Solar United Neighbors.org.
Going Further:
- Cities Facing Climate Emergencies Need All Hands on Deck (Blaustein)
- The Story of the Clouds and the Forest (Roberts)
- Community Capacities and Community Necessities (McKnight)
