Government officials from across the country have been pushing for climate legislation over the past decade to try and turn things around before it is too late. The city of Ann Arbor is among those dedicated to reducing carbon emissions locally through A2ZERO, a plan to reach carbon neutrality in Ann Arbor by 2030. One aspect of the A2ZERO plan is Solarize, a community-based program that sources solar panels and infrastructure to make clean energy more accessible in residents’ homes.
Founded by Julie Roth, senior energy analyst at Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations, Solarize connects homeowners interested in purchasing solar panels with contractors to make group buys that reduce the price of solar infrastructure for residents. In late 2019, Roth hosted a group buy and was shocked by the turnout, with over a dozen purchases after a single meeting. Seeing the interest in group buying solar panels, she worked with the Ann Arbor Office of Sustainability and Innovations to start Solarize and make it a city-wide program. Roth told The Michigan Daily that once things got started, the Solarize program just kept expanding.
“I reached out to someone who had been in the first group and asked if they were interested in paying it forward and creating a new group and they were … then there was so much momentum,” Roth said. “It’s just kind of grown and snowballed from there.”
Zach Waas Smith, a Community Engagement Specialist at OSI, also played a big role in the development and implementation of the Solarize program and A2ZERO. Smith was originally cautious about attempting a program such as Solarize, because the federal government attempted a similar program with the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with limited success. Critics claimed the act came too late and didn’t have a broad scope to have any real impact.
“(The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) was proposed by Obama, but it didn’t take off,” Smith said. “So (Roth) just took that toolkit and said, ‘I’m doing this and I’m gonna do it in Ann Arbor,’ and it took off and it’s been wildly, wildly successful, and it’s now an official program of the city of Ann Arbor.”
Smith said though he and his teammates at OSI are still solidifying the details of A2ZERO, they remain dedicated to reaching its goals in innovative ways.
“We expect that we’re going to reevaluate,” Smith said. “We’re going to revisit some of these things. And there are going to be new technologies that emerge that we couldn’t have imagined when we wrote this and we’re going to need to utilize those technologies to help get us to zero net emissions.”
The Solarize program has warranted an overall positive response from local environmental activists. Public Health junior Joseph Cerniglia is the president of the University of Michigan chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a group dedicated to passing climate legislation at all levels of government. In an interview with The Daily, Cerniglia said his group approves of the Solarize program and its goals.
“(In) our opinion, the Solarize initiative is a great initiative and an important part of the renewable energy solution to climate change,” Cerniglia said. “It really serves the goal of making solar more accessible … I think any way that you can make renewable energy more affordable and more accessible is a very important part of the climate solution.”
However, Ceriglia said he believes the Solarize program has its limitations, citing its focus on providing more accessible clean energy access for solely homeowners.
“It still leaves renters, for example, which are a large portion of the population here in Ann Arbor, out of the equation,” Cerniglia said.
Smith said he believes Solarize has been a huge overall success in Ann Arbor thus far.
“Solarize has been really successful in Ann Arbor,” Smith said. “We just passed four megawatts of installed solar on rooftops throughout the city, which, for the layperson, is a lot of solar.”
Solarize meetings are not only for people interested in participating in a group buy; they also serve as learning opportunities for people interested in the environment and how they can reduce their carbon footprint. Roth said she welcomes any Washtenaw County resident interested in clean energy to get involved with Solarize.
“There’s absolutely no obligation or pressure (to buy solar panels) or anything,” Roth said. “You could just come and learn about solar and how it works and your energy grid and electrification and greenhouse gas emissions. The meetings are a lot of fun, they’re extremely informative and anybody can come.”
Daily Staff Reporter Mary Corey can be reached at mcorey@umich.edu.