Unfrozen: The $7 Billion Comeback Community Solar Didn't Wait On

Ray: Welcome to Community Solar News! Della, I've got a weird one for you today. Biggest story on the rundown, and it's not even a project.

Della: Not a project? Okay, now I'm nervous.

Ray: Don't be, it's good news, we'll get there. But first, something small and boring, in the best way.

Della: Boring's my favorite kind lately.

Ray: New Jersey. Bridgewater, specifically. A property company called High Street Logistics just finished two megawatts of community solar on one of their buildings, three to five Finderne Avenue.

Della: What kind of building are we talking about?

Ray: Industrial. Two hundred four thousand square feet, been standing since the forties. Used to be a Singer sewing machine plant.

Della: Huh. From sewing machines to solar equipment.

Ray: And it's not a one-off. SolarKal's been their solar advisor since twenty twenty one, this is one of more than ten projects they've done together across High Street's whole portfolio.

Della: So this is a program, not a press release.

Ray: And it's interesting too, because High Street isn't a solar company. They're a logistics real estate owner. This is just how they've decided to run their buildings now.

Della: Which says something on its own, when the landlord becomes the energy player instead of just leasing the roof out to somebody else and staying out of it.

Ray: Right. And it's enrolled through New Jersey's Community Solar Energy Program, so it's actually built for the households who can't put anything of their own up, renters, people in multi-unit buildings.

Della: Which tracks with everything New Jersey's been doing lately. They just made the dual-use solar program permanent a couple weeks back.

Ray: Different program, same instinct. Use every roof and every acre you've already got instead of waiting around for greenfield.

Della: It's a good instinct. New Jersey doesn't have a lot of open land to spare, so if the growth has to come from rooftops and reused sites, that's the honest path forward.

Ray: Right, and it's not glamorous. Nobody's cutting a ribbon on a warehouse roof. But it ships megawatts either way.

Della: Okay, so what are we actually working with numbers-wise?

Ray: Real if modest. Two point four million kilowatt hours a year, enough for about two hundred thirty homes, north of sixteen hundred metric tons of carbon avoided annually.

Della: Two hundred thirty homes off one warehouse roof. That adds up faster than people think once you're doing it on repeat.

Ray: Which is the actual story. High Street owns five hundred forty three buildings. Seventy four million square feet, nationwide.

Della: Seventy four million square feet is an absurd number to say out loud.

Ray: It is. And they've already got six more megawatts under construction in Illinois.

Della: Of course they do. Illinois, sneaking into a New Jersey story.

Ray: I don't even bring it up on purpose anymore, it just happens.

Della: This is the same shape we've been watching all year, though, right? Big property portfolios finding out the rooftop math actually works. ComEd and Public Storage. Prime Group going national with Wunder.

Ray: That's exactly it. I called this back in August, self storage, warehousing, big box, whoever's got the roof and the utility bill, they're going to keep doing this.

Della: You called self storage specifically. High Street's industrial and logistics.

Ray: Same instinct, though. Anyone sitting on that much roof and that much load runs the math eventually.

Della: Fair, I'll allow it as a point in your favor. Not a full confirmation.

Ray: I'll take it. And I'll go one further, real prediction this time, not just a vibe: another logistics or industrial portfolio signs a multi-building deal like this one before year end.

Della: Put it on the list. I'm holding you to a specific portfolio company next time, not just a category.

Ray: Deal.

Della: Okay. Now, the story you've been sitting on.

Ray: The story I've been sitting on. Della, seven billion dollars just came back to life.

Della: Seven billion. Where was it?

Ray: Frozen. This is Solar for All, the EPA program that funds low income and community solar in every state, out of the Inflation Reduction Act's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

Della: I remember this program. Sixty award recipients, right? State energy offices, tribes, cities, nonprofits.

Ray: Sixty, picked back in April of twenty twenty four.

Della: And what was it actually supposed to do, remind me of the scale.

Ray: Projected to put up more than four gigawatts of distributed solar. Reach over nine hundred thousand households.

Della: Nine hundred thousand households is not a pilot program, that's a real slice of the country.

Ray: It's spread across every state too, not concentrated in a handful of markets the way some federal programs end up.

Della: Which is exactly why the freeze stung as much as it did. This wasn't one region losing out, it was the whole map.

Ray: And each one was projected to save something like four hundred dollars a year on their bill.

Della: So what happened to it?

Ray: It got frozen in August of last year. And here's the number that actually stopped me. Of the full seven billion awarded, only fifty three million had gone out the door before the freeze hit.

Della: Fifty three million. Out of seven billion. That's under one percent.

Ray: Under one percent. A program built to touch nine hundred thousand households, and it barely got out of the starting gate before it got iced.

Della: So what changed?

Ray: A federal judge, Mary S. McElroy, ruled the cancellation was unlawful. Said the agency acted contrary to congressional intent and without the authority to do it. Ordered it vacated.

Della: So the money's unfrozen.

Ray: Grant administration resumes. That's the headline for anyone who's an award recipient here, state energy offices, tribal governments, the nonprofits running these programs. The tap's back on.

Della: Does the ruling give an actual date for when money starts moving again, or is it more of an in-principle thing right now?

Ray: No hard date in what we've got. It orders the cancellation vacated and administration resumed, the timeline from there is on the agency.

Della: So don't expect a check tomorrow, but the freeze itself is done.

Ray: That's the honest way to put it.

Della: Okay, here's the part I actually want people to sit with, because it's easy to hear seven billion dollars and tune out the mechanics. Eighty to eighty five percent of every one of these grants has to go straight to the household, subsidies, loans, direct assistance. This was never a fund for administrators to sit on.

Ray: Right, and every project funded through it has to lock in at least a twenty percent cut to that household's bill. That's written into the grant terms, not a marketing line.

Della: Which matters, because this is aimed at exactly the households this whole industry keeps saying it wants to reach. Low income, no roof of their own to put anything on.

Ray: We're not going to get into the back and forth about why it got frozen in the first place. Not our beat, not today.

Della: Agreed. What matters here is simpler. A huge amount of low income solar money sat dead for over a year, and now it's not. If you're one of those sixty recipients, or a developer partnering with one on a subgrant, this is the week to go check your status, not wait for a press release.

Ray: And if you're not one of the sixty but you work with LMI carve-outs in your own state program, it's still worth understanding, because this is the same well a lot of those state programs draw from indirectly.

Della: Right, it's federal money, but it lands on state and local desks. Somebody in your program administrator's office just got a lot less stuck than they were last week.

Ray: And to be clear, none of this changes what a state's own community solar program requires on its end, interconnection is still interconnection, your docket is still your docket. This just means one federal funding source that a lot of LMI work leans on is actually usable again.

Della: Which is worth separating out, because it's easy to lump every LMI dollar into one bucket. This is specifically the federal piece coming back, not a state program changing its rules.

Ray: That's the actual takeaway. Money that was stuck is moving again.

Della: I'll offer a prediction of my own here, and I want it on record because I'm less sure than you'll be. I think it takes most of these sixty recipients into next year to actually get dollars flowing at any real pace.

Ray: That's fair, government money rarely moves as fast as a ruling implies it will. We'll check back on that.

Della: And can we talk about the timing for a second? Because this lands right after a story about a company that just built a project without waiting on anybody's federal money at all.

Ray: High Street and SolarKal, you mean.

Della: Right. Private deal, no federal award, just a roof and a solar advisor and a state program. Meanwhile seven billion in public money sat parked for over a year.

Ray: That's a fair pairing. The private side of this industry didn't exactly wait around.

Della: It didn't need to. Which is honestly the reassuring part of today's rundown, the market kept moving the whole time this fight was happening in a courtroom.

Ray: It's a good reminder for anyone building a project plan around federal dollars right now, too. Have a version that pencils without them, and treat anything federal as upside if and when it actually lands.

Della: That's not cynicism, that's just building a pipeline that survives a bad year.

Ray: Good note to end the two stories on.

Della: Alright, that's it for today. A warehouse in New Jersey quietly proving out a repeatable rooftop model, and seven billion dollars in frozen federal money finally getting unstuck.

Ray: Small deal, big number, same week. Doesn't happen every time.

Della: Quick word before we go, this episode's brought to you by Our Power Co.

Ray: Their whole pitch is one line: you build the solar, we bring the community. If you're a developer or operator sitting on subscriber capacity you haven't filled yet, that's the entire job they do, nationwide.

Della: And if you're listening as someone who actually wants to subscribe to a project yourself, rather than build one, this read wasn't really written for you, but there's still a door. Join community dot solar, to sign up and knock something off your own bill.

Ray: One more thing on them, because it matters to us. This show's made almost entirely with AI, and we're picky about whose tools we use for that. We look for companies that cover their own energy and water costs for the data centers doing the work, instead of quietly pushing that onto somebody else's grid and somebody else's utility bill.

Della: On an energy show, that's really not optional for us.

Ray: And every figure you heard today, the megawatts, the dollars, the household counts, all of it is sourced and linked in the show notes.

Della: Find us wherever you get your podcasts, we're on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and on YouTube if you'd rather watch this one.

Ray: And head to community solar dot news for the newsletter and the full sourcing on everything we covered today.

Della: That's the community in community solar. We'll see you next time.