The solar industry is composed of “largely white men,” with one study showing the solar workforce to be 73 percent white, while 88 percent of senior executives are white.
It’s not surprising that affluent people have more access to solar energy. However, a study published this year in Nature Sustainability shows something more unexpected—that African Americans and Hispanics have less access to solar even at the same income level.
This revelation has provided “an incredible wake up call that we need to think about broadening our focus,” says Melanie Santiago-Moser, program director at Access & Equity at Vote Solar, which works to make solar energy affordable and accessible across the states. Like others in the solar industry, she had assumed that low-income access was key to solving the equity problem, and had not accounted for race and ethnicity.
The disparity is extreme. Black-majority areas have installed 69 percent less rooftop solar than similar income mixed areas, that is, areas without a majority racial or ethnic group. For Hispanic-majority areas the difference is 30 percent. Meanwhile, majority white areas have 21 percent more solar than do areas with a mix of ethnicities. This is true even after accounting for the larger proportion of home ownership in white areas.
What causes this discrepancy? Given that black and Latinx Americans strongly support clean energy, this is the more difficult question, and the study doesn’t say.
“I don’t think we actually know all the reasons; I think we can guess at some,” says Melanie Santiago-Moser, program director at Access & Equity at Vote Solar, which works to make solar energy affordable and accessible across the states.
She points to a lack of diversity in a solar industry composed of “largely white men.” Indeed, one study shows the solar workforce to be 73 percent white, while 88 percent of senior executives are white. Jamez Staples, founder of the Minnesota-based group Renewable Energy Partners, attributes the gap to “a lack of exposure and engagement by the industry at large.”
When engagement happens, Staples explains, in an interview, too often it is “someone coming in from outside saying that this is good for you.”
Robert Bullard, a Houston-based scholar who did pioneering work on environmental racism, argues that race is more important than social class in determining what neighborhoods suffer exposure to toxic waste and other environmental hazards. Similarly, it seems, racial and ethnic minorities have less access to clean solutions to environmental problems.
“The environmental community has not done a good job engaging communities of color, at all,” Staples says. Mainstream environmental groups in America are traditionally comprised of mostly white, relatively affluent members.
But solar equity is not just a social justice matter—it’s vital to addressing the urgent climate crisis. Bringing solar power and energy efficiency to overlooked neighborhoods is crucial to cutting fossil-fuel emissions and to voter support for policy change.
As Kelly Lynch with the Sierra Club’s Ready For 100 Campaign puts it, “When the clean energy movement, and people working on the environment and on climate change, do not properly address economic and racial equity, fossil fuel companies and energy companies pounce.”
She points to a 2006 proposed oil extraction tax in California that would have funded clean energy research. It failed in part because of a misinformation campaign by the oil industry targeting people of color.
To help address long-term blind spots and build more inclusive environmental coalitions, the Sierra Club held a forum in April on racial justice in solar energy. The goal, says Lynch, is “to fight structural racism and to work towards racial justice.” In a parallel effort, the Solar Energy Industries Association and the Solar Foundation have launched a diversity challenge, supported by Vote Solar, to increase diversity recruitment and to partner with local organizations.
Staples believes that “larger environmental organizations can financially support” small, local groups organically rooted in the communities they serve. Lynch agrees, saying that the Sierra Club “doesn’t want to be a centerpiece, given that we still are majority white. We want to ally with the groups that are already there.”
Staples’ organization, Renewable Energy Partners, helps train the future solar workforce in Minnesota’s communities of color. These workers, he hopes, will then spread the word across their communities that solar is, indeed, a good investment.
Renewable Energy Partners is developing a workforce training center on Minneapolis’s north side, “in the heart of the most economically challenged neighborhood,” says Staples, and along a major bus line.
The community of Uniondale, New York has successfully brought solar to black and Hispanic households, partly due to determined marketing and policy commitments that make residential solar more affordable. And Lakota Solar Enterprises is working to build solar air furnaces and provide green jobs training at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation and other Native American communities throughout the United States. Success is possible.
Another key strategy to serve low-income neighborhoods is community solar, which allows groups of electricity consumers to join together and develop a larger solar project at lower cost. With community solar, the equipment is not on a residential roof or property, but may be on a large commercial or institutional building rooftop nearby, a solution that fits well for renters and people who don’t have money or credit to install solar on their roofs.
Yet, Lynch notes that the racial gap persists independent of efforts to reach out across income levels. “The road to a more equitable clean energy future is a little bit winding,” says Santiago-Moser. “There’s a lot to do in terms of building awareness.” There is more work ahead.