On a hot afternoon in the East Bay city of Pittsburg, Hugo Salas stands in the middle of the street looking up at the reason why his electric bills are so low.
Salas has solar panels on his rooftop, which he got through a nonprofit program designed for lower-income households. Salas, an ironworker, didn’t pay anything for the panels — except for the cost of the Peruvian food his wife made for the workers who installed them.
“It helps us a lot, those of us with solar,” Salas says in Spanish, “because you actually save a little money.”
The nonprofit that gave Salas the panels is called GRID Alternatives, and it, along with other awardees, is about to get a big boost from the federal government. Later this summer, the Environmental Protection Agency expects to begin distributing $7 billion through its “Solar for All” grants. By funding programs that provide rooftop solar panels, batteries to store solar energy and community solar farms, the EPA expects to help more than 900,000 low-income households reduce pollution that drives climate change and reduce bills.
Across the world, from China to Brazil, solar energy is being used not just to cut planet-heating gases from fossil fuels but also to alleviate poverty. This is increasingly also the case in the U.S.
Electricity bills have risen in recent years — including because utilities are passing along the costs of growing climate-fueled disasters like wildfires to customers. And more frequent and intense heat waves mean more people need air conditioning, which also adds to bills.
Solar programs can shield low-income customers from high electricity bills. However, the new federal program faces challenges, including distrust from some low-income communities who think solar is a scam. And while the EPA aims to get this money out the door in the next few weeks, former President Donald Trump has attacked what he calls the “green new scam” and has campaigned on ending President Joe Biden’s energy and climate policies. A future Trump administration could cut back the implementation of some current clean energy programs, says Costa Samaras, director of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University and a former senior energy adviser in the White House.
Samaras says he thinks Solar for All will be harder to cut. “Taking away the opportunity for people to save money on their electricity bills, I don’t think it’s going to be popular,” he says. “Saving money on electricity is popular.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Rooftop solar, community solar, and batteries
The way rooftop solar works, the solar energy you create can power your own home’s electricity needs, and then any extra power you make goes back to the grid for a credit with your utility. Those credits can reduce a household’s energy bills, says Ben Inskeep, program director of Citizens Action Coalition, an Indiana nonprofit focused on energy and environmental policy.
“The bottom line is a lot of homeowners that have gone solar are now seeing very low utility bills,” Inskeep says.
Rooftop solar adopters still tend to be wealthier than their neighbors. Rooftop solar panels and installation have a median cost of around $30,000 before government incentives, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). But prices for panels and installation are falling, and with more leasing and loan financing programs, there’s “a slow but steady movement” toward more low-income homes with rooftop solar, says Galen Barbose, a staff scientist at LBNL.
The Solar for All grants aim to speed up that shift, says David Widawsky, director of the EPA’s Office of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which manages the program.
