[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Jaron.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: And I'm your other co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: And today we're continuing our Right Direction miniseries by talking about solar energy with Stephen Roundtree from Vote Solar. But before we get into the fun stuff, Lonnie, can you share WEAC's mission?
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Absolutely. We ACT's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring people of color and low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Thank you. So this is our second episode in our miniseries. Hopefully you had a chance to listen to the first one. If not, recommend you go back and listen to it. It's a really great episode. But we're excited to have Stephen back on the show for this episode. Some folks may remember him from one of our first episodes ever, way back where we talked about energy democracy. If you haven't listened to that episode, definitely recommend you go back and check it out. It's a really good one as well.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: And for those of you who have not listened to the episode, we were courteous enough to give you a little snippet of our favorite quote from Stephen. And here it is.
Is there one ultimate goal?
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Yeah, no drills, no bills, baby.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: If that doesn't motivate you to go back and listen to that episode, I don't, I don't know what will. But anyway, our conversation today is about solar energy. And I think most of us are familiar, at least at a very basic level, what solar energy is. It's been around for a while and you likely have seen it somewhere, you know, out in the world, on someone's roof, in someone's yard, on a solar farm, all over the place. You know it's out there. But why is it an important part of a just transition? That's what we're here to talk about today.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: And for one, we can just start with. Solar energy has helped address energy affordability here in New York City. That's one of the reasons that we kind of included it in this series. But in New York City, low income tenants can spend up to 13% of their income on energy, most likely sourced from fossil fuels. Ideally, you should spend no more than 6% of your income on energy costs and we would want that energy to be clean and renewable. Right? So we act launched Solar Uptown now in 2016 to bring solar to Housing Development Fund Corporation or HDFC Co Ops. And these are affordable resident owned housing. And in 2020, solar was installed in 11 buildings, cutting emissions, saving money and creating local green jobs.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get into some more examples of some of the benefits of solar with Stephen. But another reason that we are excited to talk about solar in this episode is that installing solar energy in New York City has actually helped create a lot of jobs. We act alone has trained 63 people in solar installation since 2023. We act also leads the Manhattan Clean Energy, which connects tenants, nonprofits and small businesses to no cost solar upgrades and clean energy career pathways. So kind of catching it on both ends, helping to move solar forward in the city.
[00:03:22] Speaker C: You may have also heard about other major initiatives in New York City to support solar energy. For example, we ACT helped pass the Renewable Rikers act, which transforms the former jail site into a solar energy hub, which can be seen as a model for urban just transitions.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah, those are just a few examples again that we wanted to highlight, but in our conversation with Steven, we get into a little bit more detail about why solar energy is so important for New York to meet its climate goals. So with that, let's go ahead and jump into our interview.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: Let's get into it.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Stephen. We're excited to have you back two years after your first appearance. You were one of our first guests on the show and I think maybe it's been a little. We've taken a little too long to get you back on the show, but we're glad to have you. Before we get too far in, we'll just have you briefly introduce yourself for folks who didn't have a chance to listen to your first episode, which if you haven't, you should definitely go back and listen to it. But yeah. Stephen, can you give us a quick introduction?
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. I'm delighted to be back. Thank you both for having me. My name is Stephen Rountree. I use he him pronouns, and currently the deputy program director for the Northeast and Mid Atlantic regions with Vote Solar. Vote Solar is a 501c3 nonprofit working toward an abundant and fair solar economy. We envision solar generation being a key component to the energy grid of the future and really our best shot at a fairer, more democratic energy system. We work on campaigns and energy commission dockets all over the US to make make that vision of reality. I'm from New York. I live in Brooklyn. Well, I'm from New York. I'm from Massachusetts, but I'm in New Yorker now because I've been here for 10 years.
Yeah, that's neat.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: So that makes you the absolute perfect person to talk about solar and solar energy and what's going on in that space right now. I think a lot of folks who listen probably, I think solar energy is probably the most understood in some ways of visuals and being able to see it. And some people have a lot more experience with, with solar when it comes to renewable energy. But you never really hear about much about kind of like in advancements of solar, you know, since we started solar, using solar until now. Can you talk a little bit about like if there have been any advancements or in solar technology over the past few decades?
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Sure, yeah.
You know, solar, we like solar for so many reasons. But one of, one of them is it's a bit of a mature technology. Like I liken it to the bicycle. I'm an avid cyclist. I like cool tech advancements in bikes. But like bikes are bikes, they've got the main components. So most of the time we're talking about solar. We're talking about solar. Solar photovoltaics, which is like when you have the panels that are made out of, you know, silicon, glass, aluminum that, you know, convert the sun's light to electricity. That's sort of the main tech. And that, that tech is, you know, while they're making it more efficient, sort of little by little, that's, that's basically, it's a mature tech that, that is really fundamentally what we need to decarbonize and get the future we want, as is today. Now there are, you know, there are a few sort of interesting emergent texts. There's like bifacial panels that convert energy from the sun. On both sides of the panel there's thin film panels look like, you know, can let light pass through them. There's what's called perovskite panels which have a different sort of chemical makeup that are a little bit more efficient but a little bit worse the environment. So those are some, some of the tech advancements. Also some ways you use solar, the so called photovoltaics, which is a play on photovoltaics. Basically just when you lay solar panels out in a body of water that can be, you know, an easy way to install it and also can, you know, stop evaporation if that's what you're trying to do in a reservoir. Agrivoltaics. We're thinking about pairing solar fields with another agricultural use to save spaces. Other sort of innovations that are sort of the nuts and bolts of what solar does. But yeah, we think of solar as a tried and true technology and Resource more than, more than something that's like dynamically and fundamentally changing.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: First of all, the creativity people get with, anytime it comes to naming things, throw a term just in front of something, it immediately changes what it's about. Agrovoltaics. But really it seems like you said the technology very established, very consistent, just really thinking about different ways to deploy it. Where can we, where can we put this technology to really take advantage of space, space that we have, being able to put it. And I think that that touches on one of the goals with the point it's just like finding places that we can put and having, having, scaling it up as much as possible in places where it makes sense. And I know that New York is doing a lot of that right now, trying to, trying to build out solar technology across the state to help help meet the state's climate goals. And I know that a lot of that deployment has happened and I would love to hear more about what, what that's looked like, what is kind of going on right now in New York in terms of solar energy production and how that's being deployed across the state in all those different ways, whether that's agrovoltaics or whatever form it's taking.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, happy to speak to that. The story of solar in New York is one of some success, but really what I call a mixed bag. Firstly, there is a lot to be proud of. Clcpa, which is New York's climate justice law that was passed in 2019, laid out, among other things, like a decarbonization timeline, but it also laid out a build target for 6 gigawatts of local solar. When I say local solar, I mean soar that you interconnect to the local grid, like the Con Edison grid where you live. So they said we need 6 gigawatts of local solar by 2025 and in fact we're going to hit that target this year. This is currently enough built and about to be sort of completed. So we're actually going to meet that milestone, which is really exciting and a credit to both folks building this stuff and to the policy levers that were put in place by nyserda. So on top of that, we currently have state programs that will support up to over 10 gigawatts of solar. And that's not nothing for, for reference, I think it's about, I think a New York apartment will use about a megawatt a year. And so if you sort of scale that up to the thousands of thousands of times, that's what sort of what ballpark you're thinking about when you talk about 10 gigawatts. So, so not nothing. New York is also the nation leader in what's called community solar, where you treat a solar farm as like a farm share. So a lot of people can subscribe to the output that that solar array is making and sort of share the benefits in exchange for sort of paying into it, which is really exciting and I'll talk about it later. But it's one of the sort of many ways that solar can drive social equity in the transition. But New York is sort of tippy top when it comes to building community solar with around 2 gigawatts of solar. I also think in terms of employment. New York employs about 15,000 people in the solar industry, which is, you know, people who are building it on roofs, but also folks who are doing things like sales, office management, policy, computer science. It's a really, you know, it's a multidisciplinary industry in that regard. And it's, you know, it's still growing in New York so that's something to be really excited about. However, there's a lot of room to grow and a lot more that's needed to meet our climate commitments. Both solar conducted an energy modeling study a few years back and it consistently told us that New York's sort of cheapest path to attain our climate goal of 100% emissions free electricity includes about 80 gigawatts of solar. So we have, we're looking for, we have about, you know, 10ish, but really looking for 80, which is talking about solar at all sort of scales. So we're way off from, from what our sort of, our best vision of the future is. Another sort of factor is we're also seeing steady installations of local solar right now. But there's a marked drop off in the actual origination of projects which is telling us that that number is going to sort of peer out or tail off in the next couple of years. You know, obviously we're talking about instability at the federal level and with international trade. That's definitely not what you dream of and it's, you know, you expect some negative impacts there as well.
[00:11:35] Speaker C: So I guess that does lead into the next question.
You know, getting to that goal of 80 gigawatts and we're at 10. That means that we have to scale up and we have to try to put it wherever we can put solar kind of, that kind of concept throughout the state. But what are the barriers to kind of expanding solar to, to get into, achieve the goal of, of that 80 gigawatts.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a couple of, of key ones and then, well, it's sort of like two and a half and I'll hit on them. I mean the biggest barriers really that we see are interconnection to the grid and siting and siding can mean a lot of things. But we'll start with, with interconnection. So to talk about interconnection you got to talk about the grid a little bit. So the electric grid is this super complex system for delivering electricity to where it's neat, from where it's generated to where it's used.
And to really simplify it, there's limits on how much new electric generation you can connect to the grid at a given location safely because it's an architecture of wires. Just like you can't, you know, plug in all your appliances at the same time, you know, short something out in your house. It, it works sort of roughly. You can think about it the same way on the grid. You know, on top of this, utilities have a pretty opaque power to assess interconnection suitability of a project and to charge project developers to interconnect, charge money to interconnect based on, you know, what they say they are going to need to do to upgrade the local grid to accommodate that new power. So it's not as simple as saying like oh here's a nice field, like we, let's just do it. Build solar because it has to be the right place. Place or if it's not the right place, you have to sort of, you know, beg the, you know, ask the utility how much it's going to cost and they might be like too much. And so then you're, you're out of luck. So what we found is like a lot of like the real prime spots that also have like a willing landowner. Like those are sort of spoken for. They're, they've been developed and so it's not, you know, as easy. Some of the low hanging fruit has sort of, sort of been taken. So that's one sort of main barrier to, to real expansion. The other part of this is like, okay, any sort of place where you're going to build something like that that has grid implications but also has like locality implications. Like that's, it's going to be located in a city, town or village in New York if you're doing this. And so those cities, towns and villages have power over local land use sort of in general. And in some places we found that there are what's called restrictive land use laws will have, like, really kind of really intense restrictions on, like, where you can build solar. And like, well, if you want to have a solar farm, it's got to be protected by a wall of mature trees, or like, nobody can see it from the road. Or it needs to have, like, kind of unreasonable setbacks from other properties or things like that. Or there's outright moratoria, meaning, like, you just straight up, like, we just, we don't want any solar in our town. And so it's like, you can't build my town until that's changed. And these can be like, you know, like I said, for aesthetic reasons or political reasons or truly nonsensical reasons. So there's like, between that sighting, that sighting piece and that land use piece, there's sort of a double headwind. Now, if we're talking about a dense urban environment like New York City, the, you know, interconnection issue is an issue, but it's also like, space, like, part of it is like, you know, it's hard to make those projects sort of make sense if you can just put like a, you know, a tiny solar panel on top of a very tall building, because that profile is not going to make enough electricity to be sort of worth the investment. Also, there's issues of like, you know, how old are these roofs? If you're building solar, you've got to build it on a roof that's, that's safe and ready to go, and if your roof is old, needs to be replaced. It doesn't really make sense to do solar if you've got to replace the roof first and sort of do all that, incur all that cost at the same time. So, so those are issues we see that sort of correspond to that too.
[00:15:25] Speaker C: Do you know if there are there, like, any kind of cost estimates? Like, if we were to do this to scale up to our goal for solar, is there, like, how much would that cost? Do you have that number?
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, the real interesting thing is, like, it's not so much like what it would cost, it's almost like what it would ultimately save us. So, like, when you think about doing business as usual and just sort of expanding, expanding our energy system and continuing to build our energy system in sort of like a. Not, not turning towards solar. Your. Your costs are actually higher because of all the, the sort of resources and money that's saved by, you know, switching to sort of energy with free fuel that really regulates the grid. So what we found is that, like the Decarbonization path. And I guess this is maybe slightly different than you're asking, but I'll just state this fact. The decarbonization path for New York that involves this. This 80 gigawatts of solar actually, like, saves about $28 billion to 2050 versus not just not doing it, versus, versus, not decarbonizing. Decarbonizing with a high solar profile. So. So it's really like, you know, there's cost to everything you do, but it's really just like, it's really just cracking and cracking eggs. Make an omelet. And it's not like it's. It's not extra money, really. Like, there's so many savings. And this is like, really the sort of upshot of this is like, we don't. It's hard to fully encapsulate the health benefits of doing all this stuff when you, like, eliminate local air pollution and those sort of COPD asthma impacts. It's just what difference that can make is, like, just really hard to grapple with, like, the upper end of what a difference it makes as far as, like, human suffering and like, the need for care and all these different things. So. So yeah, I, I really don't think of it in terms of like, oh, how much does it cost? Like, that's.
It's really about how much you can save and how much benefit you can glean from doing this stuff.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: That's interesting. I mean, that's a huge number, and I feel like that's a huge selling point that probably I can see that changing a lot of people's minds, hearing that number, like, okay, at least from the policymaker perspective, like, okay, that in a time where lots of people are thinking about budget and trying to save money, like a huge cost savings like that, I feel like it can really make a difference for a lot of people. But yeah, hopefully there's some local city managers out there in the state who tune into our podcast will hear that number. Wow. Okay, let's. Let's do some savings. But I don't know. I don't know how much of a listenership we have among city managers across the state or local administrators, but that's neither here nor there. But I do think what is interesting is to talk a little bit more about some of the solutions to those challenges. What work is actually happening to address those barriers or in spite of those barriers, to continue to scale up solar energy across the state and also including in New York City. You know, you touched on some of the challenges in urban setting but what is that looking like to, to continue to scale up to meet that 80 gigawatt number despite some of those, those challenges?
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So the real leadership on advancing solar, I think in New York is coming from advocates and there are a couple of, couple of main thrusts that I think are worth talking about. The first is, is a group coalition of folks is headlined by the industry association, the Solar Industry Association New York, of which I'm a part of, a member of the board directors and so really excited about this. This piece is basically plan called 20 by 35, which is a vision for 20 gigawatts of local solar. This is up from the six that was in law, 20 gigawatts of local solar by the year 2035. And then within that sort of vision there are a couple of sort of important policy pieces that are sort of a part of that package. And the one that I want to talk about is the ASAP act, which the acronym always gets Accelerating Solar for Affordable Power, the ASAP Act. This is the sort of central piece basically that would do the thing, raise the distributed solar target to 20 gigawatts by 2035, advance interconnection reform, which is what I hinted at earlier, and extend New York State's sort of premier incentives program for solar. I want to talk a little bit more about that. So basically what this would do or what it means is setting a goal in statute really means you can work long term to meet that goal as a state and as an industry of folks who are doing the building. It aligns the state's resources and efforts and also gives businesses some certainty that the state's going to support what they do. And that's sort of the heart of it. Like if you say, hey, we're going to do this, like show up, buy a pickup truck in New York because there'll be work.
And it really is as simple as that. If you build it, they will come to some degree. So we think that's really important. The interconnection form reform aspect of this is really important too. There's several reforms to the current interconnection process that are included in the bill, including requiring greater transparency when utilities build new transmission lines. Really just getting to the heart of like, what are you guys up to and what benefit does this provide? Which right now they have a lot of freedom to just sort of, you know, build what they want and then charge the people for it. And it's maybe, it's maybe is helpful for the public or for advancing our clean energy future or Maybe not. And so just having some insight into this would, would be really important. And that's, that's in the bill also sort of change behavior if they're being watched. So, so there's that. The bill would also allow solar companies to build their own transmission lines. So, like when I talked to earlier about choosing a place and then getting a bill from the utility saying, this is what, this is what it's going to cost to build this wire from here to there, it allows the builders to just say, actually we'll just do it ourselves and we can pay what it takes versus what we're being told it takes. So it sort of skirts that issue. And I think really importantly, the bill also asks or sort of requires the utilities to get working on what's called flexible interconnection, which. Oh, boy, like, it's one of my favorite things to think about. Flexible interconnection is a concept that's sort of popularized in the UK and it's also been piloted here in New York already. But it's basically a set of conditions saying, okay, you've got a solar array that technically, by the really sort of rigid standards, is a little too overpowered to interconnect at a certain place. So you can't build solar here. No solar. But what that's really, what they're really saying is maybe a couple hours of the year, that thing's going to put out too much electricity to safely interconnect to the grid. And so by that measure, like, we were playing it real safe. You can't build it here. But what. Flexible interconnection is sort of what this is asking for, saying, okay, like, what if we are allowed to curtail this project? Basically just switch it off. It's like, okay, it's. It's a sunny day, we're not using a lot of electricity, but like, the sun's cranking, we're making a ton of electricity. And this thing is maybe a threat to the grid. Say, hey, for a couple hours a year, we can just literally turn it off. So then you still maintain the safety, but you get way more solar. You're able to interconnect way more solar projects that can then, you know, do the decarbonization work that we need and, and provide the benefits that solar can. You know, there's. There was a report put out, it was a Solar Industries. It's basically the research wing of the Solar Energy Industries association that put up this really interesting report on flexible interconnection. Basically just says if you can curtail these projects 5%. It's going to dramatically, dramatically increase how much solar you can build around the country. And in New York we're working on some more fine tuners for that. But it's like really encouraging and really sort of, you know, along the lines of what we're asking for with 20 by 35. So there's just, there's ability to open up a ton more capacity for New York with that. So that's what that bill does. And so that, that's something that we're really excited about, hopefully passing this year, if not part of the budget, then elsewhere. Also note public power in New York and the groups of folks who are still working to pressure the New York Power Authority to build more clean energy. Now, the New York Power Authority is the public authority that like owns Niagara Falls. It owns a lot of the high, high voltage sort of transmission wires around the state. And, and it's a public entity. They now, under the 2023 law, have an expanded authority to build and own renewable energy. That's really just saying the state can really put its money where its mouth is, meet its own mandates and build. NYPA has sort of agreed. Their initial plan was to build about 3 gigawatts of energy in sort of solar and wind primarily. And the coalition wants 15. And I think that's something that, that is doable, especially if NYPA is sort of getting to business the way it can based on all these factors, like it has a really good bond rating, it has refundability of some of its tax incentives for doing renewable energy as a nonprofit entity. So there's, there's that. So those, those two big pushes I'm really excited about. There are two others. In New York City votes or is is working a running point on a renewal of the solar tax credit. So right now you get a little tax credit if you install solar in New York State. This is sort of really important for New York City. But what the bill would do is double the first of all, double the tax credit to actually get it in line with the times. So that's actually sort of commensurate with what the benefit is and what its value should be to the state that you're doing this. It also does a couple other things include storage in that. So this, so storage, storage can be included. The cost of putting a battery in your building can be part of this. It also becomes refundable so that you don't have to pay out of pocket and then get a tax benefit. It just sort of reduces your Tax burden from the jump which allows folks who are on fixed income to take advantage and things like that. There's also a so called condos and co ops provision which changes the size of the array or increases the size of the array. That's covered by this basically saying, well if you've got, you know, condo or co op, you need a bigger solar array to make this work for you all. And so it would make sort of larger arrays eligible. So we're really excited about that. That's in both the Senate and House one House bills. So we're hoping the governor can jump on board and make that happen this year. That's a really sort of easy way to really get solar compensated the way it sort of deserves to be and help grease the skids for folks, especially in like in dense urban areas to, to go solar. One other thing I'd mention is in the city with batteries. So batteries are not solar, but they're sort of like the, they're sort of the jelly to solar's peanut butter. They work, they're technologies that work really well together because solar is variable, it produces some of the time and if it's not energy's not needed that time, it doesn't get used. Batteries, obviously you can store electricity for when you need them the most and so there's a lot of efficiencies you can gain there.
Right now the city council batteries were sort of functionally outlawed because of the strictures of the, the rules to install them in homes. But we're working and I say we really mean Nicaea are working with the city council to build a bill that sort of works for everyone, works for the fire department, it works for the buildings people, works for the solar developers to make sure we can get batteries into homes that can really like help regulate and sort of like even out New York City's energy profile. I don't know if you guys remember a couple years ago there were sort of almost blackouts where people were using a ton of electricity on a hot day and they really were worried they weren't going to have enough electricity to keep everyone's lights on. And at the same time you've got the local peaker plants which the power plants that are responding to local need like that. But they're the most expensive and the dirtiest batteries paid with solar. Obviously it's a hot day, your solar's cranking and so that gets a blunt that spike in energy use whenever it's using their air conditioners and also you know when you can also Store extra batteries. You can use it sort of that evening as the sun goes down, but everyone's still air conditioning. So we see that as a really important climate solution, a really important social equity solution as well.
[00:27:18] Speaker C: Wow, it's great to hear, you know, all of the different facets of how you're addressing barriers. You know, I've heard infrastructure related things. There's political ways with bills that are there, but there's economics with the tax credit incentive, the jelly to the peanut butter that is battery storage. And so it's good to hear that. And as we kind of do that and scale up, we opened our miniseries episode talking to Shalanda Baker about a just transition and what that means and what that looks like. And so one of the questions that we have here is like, how is solar energy a part of the just transition in your, in your, in your mind? You alluded a little bit to, about some of the benefits of solar that maybe we can't capture fully some of the health benefits. But then you also talked about getting a truck ready, a pickup truck, because there's going to be jobs available as well. But what are some of the other aspects of solar energy that provided just transition?
[00:28:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I think solar is the really the top tech and the top sort of means in a lot of ways that you can achieve sort of more, more robust social equity and reparative justice in the transition. I mean, I think part of, part of what's really exciting about local solar and really why I do what I do is the connection that those projects have with regular people. Now if you're building, if you're building a nuclear plant somewhere like, you know, or say a wind even just like, you know, a wind project, those are, those are really awesome projects. They're also like heavy industry. They're like originated a lot of times by overseas, you know, heavy industrial companies.
And the benefits of those, of those projects are a little bit more diffused, even though they're so important, so important to have wind. But the benefits are a little bit more diffused and the sort of barrier to entry into that type of industry is really, really high. Whereas with solar, I was going to say earlier but like, you know, it's so modular. You can be built, you can build it at any scale. It can be in your pocket calculator and it can be in like an endless field of solar. And it's the same technology, it's just like sort of proportionally scaled up. And because of that there's the two things. So one, like if you have solar on your roof or you're participating in a community solar project, you have like a direct relationship with that solar panel. That solar panel is like making a thing for you and you're getting a payment off it. You're getting a financial benefit that can help you defray costs in other areas of your life. Make sure you can eat well, make sure you can keep your lights on, make sure you can get the medicine you need because you have that, that direct relationship with it, which I think is, is really key.
It's also the kind of thing where you and your friends or you people that, you know, you and your church can't like sort of all agree or like do a bake sale to like buy a nuclear plant. But you can, you know, raise the money to go solar and you can go into business with like without, you know, having to raise a bazillion dollars. So, so it really lends itself to sort of alternative business models like worker cooperatives, things like that, where, where the workers are really reaping the benefits of their own labor.
You know, for me, for, for like governments to think about, we have CLCPA which says we need to decarbonize, we need to build this much solar, but we also need to make sure that disadvantaged communities around the state are being treated fairly by government investment. This is a really important way to do that because it says if we're investing in a worker led person of color owned enterprise, that's returning more benefits to that community and more sort of full throatedly fulfilling that part of the law. So that's always been something that Votes Solar has advocated for, is more support for programs that are really keeping the benefits with communities of color. And solar has a really important role to play in that.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: I always appreciate the connection of the closer someone is to a thing that's providing a benefit, the more of that benefit they receive. When you were talking about that with people who are benefiting from a solar project in there, either on their building or in their community directly, they're really close to it and being able to scale that up. The immediate connection I made in my head is thinking about a community garden. The closer you are to the source of food production, the more of the benefit that you're receiving out of that. You know, you're, you are, have more control over it, you have less distance, less things that can happen between the thing being made and you actually benefiting from it. So I feel like there's lots of pieces in there, in there to unpack, but really like in a nutshell like the closer you are to a thing, the more you are able to to benefit from from that. And that includes with, with solar production too. But we sent a lot of questions at you and before, before we wrap up, we want to just turn it back to you and give you a chance to share anything else that you wanted to mention. Any plugs or anything that you want to make or anything else that you wanted to address that we didn't have a chance to cover.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: No, I mean I think I was able to weave in everything I wanted to say. I mean my only plug would be to support your local community based organization. If you're, if you're listening to this podcast just because you know about the great work that we act does and I was not put up to this, but I, I really think it's important that you understand what a difference community based orgs can make and really sourcing the solutions from the folks who are closest to the problem.
Yeah. Use your time. Use your pocketbook.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out the next episode in our Right Direction miniseries coming out on May 12, where we talk to Jordan Bonomo from NYCHA about how they've been piloting heat pumps throughout the city.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: If you like this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts about the show, we encourage you to reach out to us with your thoughts and
[email protected] and.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Check out React on Facebook at react4ej. That's W E a c t F O R e J on Instagram x bluesky and YouTube @react4ej. That's W E A C T number 4ej and check out our website react.org for more information about environmental justice.
Until next time.
