Rooftop Solar Technical Potential for Low-to-Moderate Income Households in the United States

Sigrin, Ben; Mooney, Meghan

doi:10.2172/1434891

Cited by 40 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…While high rental rates in low-income neighborhoods and the related misalignment between tenant and landlord interests hinder energy renovations (44), the technical potential is high. For example, rooftop photovoltaics are a suitable technology for more than half of residential buildings in low-income neighborhoods in the United States (45).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These systems were constrained to medium-and high-density neighborhoods, where capital costs and distribution losses would be realistic. Two-fifths of homes were outfitted with either photovoltaics or solar water heaters, a moderate estimate for potential US solar coverage (45), with the latter concentrated in the Southwest United States, where solar insolation is highest. We do not explicitly model the proliferation of wind power, although it is implicit in EIA projections for the decarbonizing electricity grid.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The carbon footprint of household energy use in the United States

Goldstein

Gounaridis

Newell

2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

252

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Residential energy use accounts for roughly 20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. Using data on 93 million individual households, we estimate these GHGs across the contiguous United States and clarify the respective influence of climate, affluence, energy infrastructure, urban form, and building attributes (age, housing type, heating fuel) in driving these emissions. A ranking by state reveals that GHGs (per unit floor space) are lowest in Western US states and highest in Central states. Wealthier Americans have per capita footprints ∼25% higher than those of lower-income residents, primarily due to larger homes. In especially affluent suburbs, these emissions can be 15 times higher than nearby neighborhoods. If the electrical grid is decarbonized, then the residential housing sector can meet the 28% emission reduction target for 2025 under the Paris Agreement. However, grid decarbonization will be insufficient to meet the 80% emissions reduction target for 2050 due to a growing housing stock and continued use of fossil fuels (natural gas, propane, and fuel oil) in homes. Meeting this target will also require deep energy retrofits and transitioning to distributed low-carbon energy sources, as well as reducing per capita floor space and zoning denser settlement patterns.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The carbon footprint of household energy use in the United States

Goldstein

Gounaridis

Newell

2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

252

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The second method is precise but time consuming and is hard to replicate on larger study regions. We opt for a data-driven GIS method that was developed by NREL and vetted in the literature [33][34][35]. We use National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) light detection and ranging (LIDAR) estimates of available rooftop space for 16 000 institutions that are included in NREL's dataset (which account for 12% of all educational institutions in the NCES dataset).…”

Section: Available Pv Roof Space (Figure 1 Step 1)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Solar PV as a mitigation strategy for the US education sector

Hanus

Wong‐Parodi

Vaishnav

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Solar photovoltaic (PV) is an important strategy to de-carbonize the energy sector in the United States and to reduce the health, environmental, and climate change damages associated with the production of electricity from fossil fuel sources. While the potential for solar PV in the residential and commercial sectors has been widely studied, the potential in educational buildings is largely unknown. Educational institutions account for 11% of total US building electricity consumption and 14% of building floorspace. These buildings also contribute to approximately 4% of total US CO 2 emissions, thus playing a potentially important role in climate mitigation strategies. We estimate the electricity use for 132k educational institutions across the US and estimate electricity generation, greenhouse gas and health damaging air emissions reductions, and private and social costs and benefits that would result from adopting rooftop solar PV. We find that solar PV in US educational institutions could provide 100 TWh of electricity services annually, meeting 75% of these buildings' current electricity consumption. We estimate the highest generation potential in Texas, California, and Florida with K-12 public educational institutions comprising the bulk of that generation. The provision of electricity services from rooftop solar PV on educational institutions could reduce health, environmental, and climate change damages by roughly $4 billion per year (assuming a social cost of carbon of $40/ton and value of statistical life of $10M in 2018 USD). Two key findings from this study are that: (i) the private costs of solar for educational institutions still exceed the private benefits from reduced electricity consumption across the entire country (unless a third party operation model is used, in which case some locations can have net-benefits), and (ii) with the exceptions of California and New York, the social health, environmental and climate change benefits exceed the levels of current incentives provided by the state and retail subsidies.

show abstract

“…Low-and moderate-income (LMI) residents, nonprofits, and other community-serving entities have been underrepresented in the growing residential solar photovoltaics (PV) market (Barbose et al 2018). Despite significant rooftop PV potential at LMI homes nationwide (Sigrin and Mooney 2018), existing PV adopter incomes average $13,000-$32,000 higher than median income (Barbose et al 2018). This discrepancy is driven in part by the challenges that LMI residents face when pursuing solar, including home ownership status, roof suitability, upfront solar investment costs, and relatively few financing options tailored to this market segment (Cook and Bird 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although roof suitability will ultimately be determined on a case-by-case basis,Sigrin and Mooney (2018) have estimated PV potential, accounting for some building characteristics, including building age, that can help project developers identify census tracts with higher densities of potentially suitable buildings.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%