Illinois has $30 million in incentives available for solar installations on multi-family buildings. 

So far, though, the state program has not received any applications for such projects, according to Jan Gudell, Illinois Solar for All associate director at Elevate, the organization tasked with running the state program. 

In urban areas like Chicago, residents of environmental justice and lower-income neighborhoods are highly likely to live in multi-family residential buildings where it is extremely difficult to install rooftop solar. 

There is little incentive for a landlord to invest in solar that will provide cost savings to the tenants, and rooftops may need significant upgrades to handle solar. In condo buildings, homeowners association bureaucracy and other concerns must be navigated.

There’s also a lesser-known logistical and structural barrier — if solar is to be channeled to individual residential units behind the meter, a separate solar system is essentially needed for each unit — with separate inverters and wiring.

“That’s a lot of hardware, space and cost,” said Aliya Bagewadi, US director of strategic partnerships for Allume Energy, an Australian startup company that says it can address at least this part of the puzzle, by sending energy to individual units with only one inverter and system. 

The company has served thousands of customers in Australia, New Zealand and Europe with its SolShare technology. Now it is rolling out in the U.S., in sunny southern states as well as Illinois, because of the state’s robust solar incentives. 

“It’s inherently an energy equity issue,” said Bagewadi, who is based in Chicago. “We know [multi-family building residents] are much more likely to be lower-income, longer-term renters. We want to make sure those savings flow to people who can really benefit the most.”

Direct benefits 

Illinois isn’t alone in the lack of multi-family solar arrays. Solar developers and advocates have long noted the challenge nationwide, especially for affordable multi-family rental buildings. A 2022 study by Berkeley lab noted that in 2021, about 3% of solar installed in the U.S. was on multi-family buildings, mostly owner-occupied condos. 

“Solar may be a non-starter in a rental multi-family property because the owner may be looking at a complex, expensive and time-consuming process, where they would have to consider the design, permitting, installation, interconnection, and cost for multiple systems,” said Gudell. “For many property owners, this may be unaffordable and unimaginable.” 

A 2018 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the majority of potential capacity for new solar serving low- and moderate-income customers is on renter-occupied multi-family rooftops. California passed a law in 2015 specifically to address the dearth of solar on multi-family buildings, promising to invest up to $1 billion by 2031.

There are typically several ways to handle rooftop solar on multi-family buildings. 

In rental properties, the building owner can own the array, and use the energy to power common areas, like hallways, a pool or gym. Owners can also allocate a portion of the energy savings to tenants, by charging an amenity fee or otherwise collecting some revenue themselves. 

Alternately, the energy can all be sent back to the grid, in areas with viable net metering policies, and the compensation can be shared with tenants or among condo owners, often referred to as virtual net metering. Community solar offers a similar situation — where the solar isn’t onsite at all, but residents can subscribe to partake in savings. 

Solar advocates, developers, lenders, and policymakers have all been working at state and federal levels to improve opportunities for virtual net metering and community solar. 

These arrangements, however, can still be unattractive or impossible depending on state and utility policy. Community solar isn’t even legal in some states, and virtual net metering depends on utility participation. 

The California law requiring solar on new multi-family construction up to three stories high exempts areas served by utilities that don’t offer virtual net metering.

SolShare avoids these challenges by sending electricity directly from the solar array to individual users, without involving utilities or the grid.

“You can do behind-the-meter with direct benefit to tenants,” said Bagewadi. “We’re physically pushing the electrons to multiple meters.”

Possibilities 

Allume partners with solar installers and developers to help deploy rooftop solar on multi-family buildings, including by working with landlords to design financial structures that benefit both the building owner and tenants. In some cases, Allume acts as the solar developer itself. 

With SolShare, a building owner or manager can allocate energy from a shared solar system, based on unit square footage, in equal amounts, or however they choose. 

Where the technology is deployed in Australia and the UK, energy can be sent to different units on demand, Bagewadi explained. In the U.S., the rollout in Florida and Mississippi is being done with preset amounts that can be changed with 24 hours notice. 

An Allume case study from a 64-unit Orlando apartment building with SolShare notes that a 392-kilowatt rooftop system resulted in savings of almost $100 per month for each unit, with electricity purchased from the grid reduced by almost 60%. While the idea is for residents to use solar behind the meter, excess solar can be sent to the grid. Adding an on-site battery to the mix lets residents use all the power on-site behind the meter, and makes solar power available when the grid is down.

Solar advocates hope the EPA’s $7 billion commitment to the federal equity-focused Solar for All program — separate from Illinois’s state program — will “further unlock multi-family solar,” in Bagewadi’s words.

Gudell said Elevate and other experts know there are many Illinoisans living in multi-family rental buildings that would qualify to have solar installed through Illinois Solar for All. They hope policy and technology evolve to match the available funding. 

“We’ll need a solution that addresses the split incentive problem for rental situations, where the building owner cannot or will not subsidize solar for tenants; and the complexity of bringing solar to multiple electrical accounts at one building,” Gudell said. 

“Adoption of a technology that allows for a single system to be split into shares, for use by multiple electrical account holders, could help in that it would simplify the design, permitting and installation process.”

Startup pitches new model to unlock solar for multi-family buildings, in Illinois and beyond is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The leader of a local anti-solar energy group admitted to Ohio regulators last week that a well-connected natural gas executive is among the group’s largest donors.

The testimony by Jared Yost, founder of Knox Smart Development, offered the fullest view yet of the group’s ties to fossil fuel interests, undercutting its claims to be a “grassroots” advocate for local farmers and other residents.

“It changes the story quite a bit,” said David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group that recently published a report on the fossil fuel industry’s long history of using money and misinformation to stoke local opposition to renewable energy projects.

Knox Smart Development emerged late last year as a high-profile local opponent of the proposed 120 megawatt Frasier Solar project, located near Mount Vernon, Ohio. Questions emerged about its funding source after it hosted a town hall meeting at a local theater with complimentary food and drinks for approximately 500 attendees.

Yost disclosed during an Ohio Power Siting Board hearing last week that one of its largest donors is Tom Rastin, the former vice president of Ariel Corporation, which makes compressors for the oil and gas industry. The Washington Post reported last year that Rastin is also a leader of The Empowerment Alliance, a dark money nonprofit that advocates for the natural gas industry.

Yost said he did not have knowledge about Rastin’s work with The Empowerment Alliance, but said the fossil fuel group provided “non-financial” resources to Knox Smart Development to help oppose the Frasier Solar project.

Yost denied being swayed by corporate interests and said his group has not received corporate funding. “The Empowerment Alliance has nothing to do with me or [Knox Smart Development],” he told the Energy News Network via email. “I have reached out to them and asked questions on a couple of occasions, as can anyone, and as I have done of others.”

Multiple links

When asked in his hearing testimony if Knox Smart Development was “funded by any individuals or entities having any interest or providing any goods or services to the fossil fuel industry,” Yost answered, “No, not directly to the best of my knowledge.”

On cross-examination, however, Yost admitted Rastin was one of the group’s largest funders. Yost is a former IT specialist at Ariel Corporation, and his work supported Rastin’s department. Rastin’s wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, is a former president and CEO of Ariel and continues as board chair. Her son Alex Wright succeeded her in 2021 as CEO.

A July 2024 report from the Energy and Policy Institute includes links to recently produced public records. A September 2023 email shows Rastin was slated to speak to the Ohio General Assembly’s Business First caucus in October. The email attached a copy of Rastin’s biography with The Empowerment Alliance logo on top.

Mitch Given, who was identified in a meeting with Ohio lawmakers last year as The Empowerment Alliance’s Ohio director, spoke at a Knox Smart Development town hall meeting last November. There he was introduced as someone who travels across the state to help farmers and others “find their voice” and push back against solar projects.

The emcee for that town hall event, Tom Whatman, is a chief strategist for Majority Strategies. The Empowerment Alliance’s Form 990 filing for 2023 shows it paid the political consulting firm more than $620,000 that year, making it the group’s highest paid contractor for five years in a row.

Yost last week also discussed a dinner meeting last summer about the Frasier Solar project where the attendees included Rastin, Given, Whatman, Ariel employee Trina Trainor, and Lanny Spaulding. Spaulding is listed as a contact person for The Empowerment Alliance on an Ohio lobbyist registration form. Yost’s dad and others also attended. Yost had earlier said he did not organize the meeting.

Yost denied being influenced by The Empowerment Alliance or other corporate interests.

“No one has ever tried to direct me in any way with my opposition to this project. I am nobody’s ‘puppet’,” Yost told the Energy News Network. “I am doing this for me, my family, my township, and my neighbors.” He also said it was “insulting that people try to question my intentions, integrity, and intelligence. Frankly, it hurts.”

Misinformation at work

Nolan Rutschilling, managing director of energy policy for the Ohio Environmental Council, said arguments presented by behind-the-scenes special interests can be more believable if they seem to come from a grassroots effort. 

“People trust their neighbors because they are often believed to not have any outside agenda other than the best interest of their community,” Rutschilling said. “Unfortunately, this allows misinformation to spread quickly, and communities have stopped renewable energy projects from moving forward.”

The stakes are significant, he said, because local public sentiment is among the factors the Ohio Power Siting Board considers in judging whether a project is in the public interest, along with statewide interests.

“If the fossil fuel industry wants to oppose solar projects, they should intervene in the open — not by amplifying misinformation in communities,” Rutschilling said.

“The Empowerment Alliance prefers to stoke fear in hopes of snuffing out perceived competition from clean, cheap, local renewable energy,” said Craig Adair, a vice president for Frasier Solar’s developer, Open Road Renewables. “As always, Frasier Solar stands ready and willing to address local residents’ legitimate concerns about potential impacts of solar development.”  

Statements at Knox Smart Development meetings and in ads have included multiple examples of misinformation. For example, Yost admitted during cross-examination he was unaware that a photo showing damaged solar panels was taken in St. Croix after a strong hurricane — a highly unlikely event in central Ohio. 

“This was intended to show what I believe could happen,” Yost said. 

Other examples include unsupported claims about solar panels and other components releasing toxic chemicals. Steve Goreham, a speaker at the group’s November 2023 town hall, made unsupported claims about climate change. Goreham also drew spurious correlations between electricity price rises and high levels of renewable energy in California and Texas. In fact, wildfires, extreme heat and transmission upgrades were the driving factors.

Misinformation was rife in opposition testimony people gave at three local public hearings held by the Ohio Power Siting Board in Knox County.

Half of more than 100 unique arguments made by project opponents at those hearings were not supported by the facts, said Heidi Gorovitz Robertson, a professor at Cleveland State University College of Law, in her August 22 expert testimony for the Ohio Environmental Council.

“In the aggregate, the arguments do not present credible or compelling opposition to the proposed project,” Robertson said.

Connections confirmed between ‘grassroots’ Ohio solar opposition and dark-money natural gas group is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

An array of critics came out swinging in January when Duke Energy first filed its plans in North Carolina for one of the largest fossil fuel investments in the country.  

But as the months have dragged on in the development of the company’s biennial carbon-reduction plan, some notable detractors have relented. 

Just before expert witness testimony was set to begin in Raleigh late last month, the state-sanctioned ratepayer advocate, Public Staff, and Walmart endorsed a settlement with Duke on its blueprint, which includes building 9 gigawatts of new natural gas plants that the utility says could be converted to run on hydrogen in the future.

A few days later, the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association, a consortium of solar and wind developers, announced it had signed on too.  

The agreement, which contains some small concessions from the utility, led to low-key hearings that ended in less than two weeks. It makes it more likely that Duke will get what it wants from regulators by year’s end, including a greenlight, if not final approval, for three large new natural gas plants in the near term.

Chris Carmody, executive director of the Carolinas Clean Energy Business Association, says the proposed compromise also helps lock in forward progress on solar energy and batteries, however incremental. 

“It’s a more aggressive solar spend. It’s a more aggressive storage spend,” he said. “Certainly, we would like to see more. But first of all, we like to see it going in the right direction.” 

Clean energy advocates believe Duke’s push for new gas plants will harm the climate, since the plants’ associated releases of planet-warming methane will cancel out any benefits of reduced carbon pollution from smokestacks. At the same time, they say the investments could become useless by midcentury or sooner, before their book life is over, saddling ratepayers with costs that bring no benefits.

“There’s not much in it for their customers except unnecessary risk, cost, and more pollution,” Will Scott, southeast climate and clean energy director for the Environmental Defense Fund, wrote in a blog last month. 

But Duke’s gas bubble has proved hard to burst. For one, the company’s predictions of massive future demand from new data centers are based in part on confidential business dealings that are challenging to rebut from the outside. 

Unlike two years ago, when Duke proposed its first carbon reduction plan, no groups produced an independent model showing how Duke could meet demand without building new gas. 

“We can talk about costs, or market conditions,” said Carmody. But, he said, “we did not do any modeling.”

Public Staff ran its own numbers and has urged more caution on new gas plants than Duke proposes. But the agency is unwavering that at least some are needed.

New Biden administration rules haven’t yet proved the death knell for gas that some expected. Duke is suing to overturn the rule, but it insists that building new plants that will run at half capacity is the most economical plan for compliance.

And even as Duke is proffering more gas, it’s also undeniably proposing more solar.

Clean energy backers still object to annual constraints on solar development the utility says are necessary. But the limits have increased from less than 1,000 megawatts per year in 2022 to over 1,300 megawatts. And the settlement would result in another 240 megawatts of solar than Duke had first proposed.

“It’s an iterative improvement,” said Carmody. 

What’s more, the settlement opens a discussion with Duke about the scores of 5-megawatt solar projects across the state whose initial contracts will soon expire. A proposal for how to refit them could come in April of next year. 

“This is a really important issue to our members,” said Carmody.  “These are projects that could be repowered. They could be upgraded with storage. They could have significantly more efficient solar technology than was on them 15 or 20 years ago.” 

Still, Carmody said his group tried to word the settlement in a way that left room for clean energy advocates to continue to advocate for less gas and steeper emissions cuts sooner — and that’s certainly their plan. 

“Three power plants that will be really expensive to build and then operate for only a few years is just a ridiculous proposal,” the settlement notwithstanding, said Maggie Shober, research director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. 

“We remain hopeful that there’s a lot that the [commission] can do in this carbon plan proceeding and in their final order, to move us forward on a clean energy trajectory.”

Nick Jimenez, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, acknowledges the settlement stacks the deck somewhat against his clients. 

“Historically, the commission approves a lot of settlements,” he said. “It likes to see parties settle, especially when Duke and the Public Staff are involved.”

Former critics start to coalesce around Duke Energy’s plans for more gas, solar in N.C. is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Editor’s note: Miles Braxton’s company is Okovate Sustainable Energy. A previous version of this post misspelled the company’s name.

Agrivoltaics — co-locating solar arrays with farming operations — is generating enthusiasm among both farmers and clean energy advocates as a way to promote sustainability in agriculture. 

When implemented correctly, agrivoltaics provides a vital dual income stream for farmers — in solar energy generation, but also as a means of providing an optimal growing environment for compatible crops and herds. The added revenue may allow more farmers to retain their land for themselves and future generations. 

While pilot projects around the country are identifying best practices, not all have been successful, and practitioners say that advancing the technology will require an equitable approach that centers farmers’ needs first.

A discussion during the recent Solar Farm Summit in Rosemont, Illinois, directly addressed the issue, featuring a majority-Black panel of practitioners and service providers. Three major themes emerged during the discussion: maximizing compatibility of solar arrays with existing land use, demonstrating the financial benefits of agrivoltaics, and addressing how solar power can help BIPOC farmers hold on to their land.

“I think one thing that, through our work in this technical assistance, has become very, very clear [is] that people don’t just want to build an agrivoltaics project for the sake of building an agrivoltaics project,” said Jordan Macknick of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), who also served as moderator for the discussion. “How does agrivoltaics enable you to take that next step and focus on things like succession planning or farmer training?”

Benefits for farmers

Miles Braxton started his company, Okovate Sustainable Energy, to work exclusively on “farmer-focused” solar development.

Braxton said after several years of developing community solar projects, he “really saw the inefficiencies” of taking farmland out of production for solar projects. “That’s a problem that is just going to keep piling on top of itself until it gets to the point where we can’t develop anything.

“We target crop farmers who are growing a very specific suite of crops that we know works well with our design,” Braxton said.

Cetta Barnhart, owner of Seed Time Harvest Farms in Florida, also cultivates her own plot of fruits and vegetables, and cited her background in food and wellness in promoting the compatibility of solar and agriculture to benefit the bottom line for farmers.

“This is more hands-on of what a farmer can really do in their current practices. If they’re raising cattle, there’s a way that they implement solar with that. If they are having bare land, the pollinator is another way that they can benefit from that,” she said. “So how these solar projects are developed and created for real farmers is still a big conversation to be had.“ 

Ena Jones, owner of Roots & Vine Produce and Café, and president of Community Partners for Black Farmers, cited her dual role as a working farmer and an advocate as an advantage in promoting the potential compatibility of agrivoltaics and cultivation — especially for Black farmers.

“We advocate and we also lobby for farmers at the state level for the state of Illinois and the state of Georgia. And I’m here to kind of segue to help farmers understand … how different solar opportunities can help them with production on their farms, and be an asset to the production on their farms. And also, to help solar developers understand farm[ing],” Jones said.

Noting that solar projects can help cut energy costs, Jones said “Energy use is one of the farmer’s [major] expenses outside of diesel, and of course seed. So, if they can reduce that cost dramatically, even by a third, that would impact their bottom line in revenue extensively. It is very important, especially for BIPOC farmers, to be ushered into this technology so that they won’t be left behind in the process.”

Making connections

Agrivoltaics can be a valuable tool to reduce overall costs, expand potential revenue – or both – as a means of promoting optimal use of farmland. A both-and approach can work to address what is often an inherent tension between the best use of large, flat plots of land for large solar arrays – parcels that also frequently comprise some of the richest soil for cultivation. 

For example, the 180 MW Madison Fields project in Ohio represents a test ground for large-scale agrivoltaics – farming on 1,900 acres between the rows of a utility-scale solar array. One of the project’s focuses is determining which crops and herds are the best prospects to coexist with large-scale solar developments.

“People have a lot of questions with regard to energy development going forward in this state … Finding a balance where you can do a number of things on the same ground — in this case energy production as well as agricultural production — is obviously huge,” Dale Arnold, director of energy policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau told the Energy News Network in July.

Macknick highlighted another project where NREL and Clean Energy to Communities (C2C), along with the Black Farmers Collaborative, worked on a proof of concept project which incorporated solar panels on a demonstration farm cultivated by Barnhart that features citrus trees, leafy greens, and other produce.

“I had already looked into doing solar on my property and was just looking at it to have solar as the backup,” Barnhart said. “But when we started talking as a team and then we found out about the agrivoltaics portion [and] how that can be incorporated into farming, it really brought forth a bigger and better opportunity to not just benefit by having it but also sharing that with other farmers,” Barnhart told NREL in 2023.

Mike DellaGala of Solar Collective said taking a farmer-centered approach can also be beneficial to product and service providers.

“I think a lot of the conversation … has been the difference between farmers and developers, and how we are or [are] not communicating and getting projects over the finish line or not. And I think… if you’re farmer-first or farmer-centric, I think that’s the way to success for everybody… allowing [farmers] to dictate a lot of the project details has been really successful for us. And it makes our job easier, frankly,” DellaGala said.

A farmer-centric and collaborative approach is especially vital in ensuring equitable access to the benefits of agrivoltaics for BIPOC farmers, Barnhart said.

“I stand in the gap somewhat between having conversations with [BIPOC] farmers and having conversations with project developers because you need someone in the middle. I’m a community advocate. I hope there are more of us in the room than not. They have to be in place in order to bridge the conversation as to how this really works well in real-life time,” Barnhart said.

Braxton cited the need to rein in the power of utilities, which he says frequently raise roadblocks to community-level projects to protect their own interests. 

“Utilities have too much power. They have too much money to lobby. They don’t want you to sell power back to your community because [of the impact to] their own rates that they can control. So that’s a risk. The root of those problems is that here in the U.S. … we have 50 little countries [states] that make up their own policies and do their own thing… I think there needs to be a policy to incentivize solar to be developed innovatively. I don’t think policy makers at the state level understand the importance of that,” Braxton said.

Jones noted that policy change will likely be driven by farmer demand, which by extension benefits the larger community.

“In my opinion, once the farmers understand [how solar can] help them on their farms, I can’t say this enough, they will force politicians to comply. The money will be there; the funding will be there. But the engagement needs to happen. It desperately needs to happen,” she said.

Land retention for BIPOC farmers

Loss of land –through racism and other factors, has long been a contentious topic among BIPOC farmers – and Black farmers in particular. According to a 2022 study, discriminatory federal policies contributed to Black farmers losing roughly $326 billion worth of acreage during the 20th century. In July, the Biden-Harris administration announced a distribution of $2 billion to thousands of Black and other minority farmers, created through the Inflation Reduction Act as a means to begin to address this inequity.

Agrivoltaics may not intuitively track as a relevant strategy for land retention; but Barnhart touted its value, especially for Black farmers. 

“[Black farmers] have lost a lot of land because we just couldn’t afford to keep it… We didn’t just lose land because it was confiscated… What solar does is add an income stream or a reduction in your expenses so that there’s more you can do on your farm and create an opportunity for the next generation. 

“It gives us a reason to keep the land going, and it gives us, in our community, resiliency we are experiencing through our climate change storms. For the families that can have that piece of land, that builds a resiliency to protect them in their neighborhoods, protect their own backyard, and protect the future generations, give the future generations something they can look forward to that makes sense to them. Then we build into something that takes care of our wealth building opportunities, our succession planning, and our look into the future to make a change,” Barnhart said.

How a ‘farmer-first’ approach could lead to more successful agrivoltaics projects is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

DALTON, Ga. — Growing up in Cartersville, Georgia, Lisa Nash saw what happens to communities when factory jobs disappear. It was the 1980s and corporations were offshoring production to reduce costs and raise profits. The jobs that remained in this northwest corner of the state were typically lower-paying ones that didn’t offer the same ladder to the middle class.

“My parents and grandparents were in manufacturing, and they were the ones saying, ​‘Don’t do it,’” Nash recalled.

Nash disregarded their advice, embarking instead on a long career in manufacturing — first in textiles, followed by stints in aviation, automotive, and steel. Now she’s helping to bring higher-tech, higher-paying factory work back to the corridor between Atlanta and Chattanooga. 

Nash is the general manager of the Qcells solar panel factory in Dalton, a town of 34,000 located 50 miles up I-75 from her hometown. It opened in January 2019, after the Trump administration imposed a fresh round of tariffs on Chinese-made panels. The Korean conglomerate Hanwha owns Qcells, and initially planned to hire several hundred people at the site, Nash told me on a recent visit to the factory. By the end of 2019, it employed more than 800. 

Then, in 2020, Georgia helped elect President Joe Biden and sent two Democrats to the Senate, clinching a thin majority. Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock got to work crafting detailed policies to promote domestic manufacturing of clean energy technologies, which China had dominated for years; they wanted solar panels and batteries made in America — specifically Georgia — instead of in China, a geopolitical rival.

Those measures made it into the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in August 2022 — two years ago this week. The legislation created the nation’s first comprehensive policies to support domestic clean energy manufacturing. Qcells broke ground on a second facility in Dalton in February 2023. Completed that August, the expansion added two football fields’ worth of manufacturing space with four new production lines — which produce 1.5 times more solar panels than the original three lines, thanks to technological advances. Now the whole complex employs 2,000 people full time and makes 5.1 gigawatts of solar panels a year, more than any other site in the U.S.

Politicians have been promising for decades to retrain American workers and revive long-lost manufacturing, with little to show for it. Now, though, the U.S. has entered a new era on trade: Leaders of both parties have rejected the long-standing free-trade consensus and its penchant for offshoring jobs. Biden married that reshoring impulse with a desire to boost clean energy production, to both stimulate the economy and fight climate change. 

This grand experiment remains in its infancy, and the success of the clean energy manufacturing revolution is by no means guaranteed. Cheap imports could outcompete even newly subsidized American products. 

And if Republicans win the presidency and retake Congress, they’ve threatened to stop subsidizing low-carbon energy resources and instead double down on fossil fuel production. House Republicans — including Dalton’s representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene — have voted repeatedly and unsuccessfully to repeal the domestic manufacturing incentives in the IRA. (Greene’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

“Donald Trump and his Republican allies promised to gut the Inflation Reduction Act if he’s reelected, so there’s a lot at stake here,” Representative Nikema Williams, who leads the Georgia Democrats, told me.

Since the IRA passed, Georgia has received $23 billion in clean energy factory investment, much of it flowing to northwest Georgia. I wanted to see what impact this is having on communities formerly hit hard by industrial decline, so I followed the money trail to Dalton earlier this summer. 

I found a population that seems to like having advanced solar manufacturing in their backyard. Dalton’s solar jobs are boosting wages, invigorating the historic town center, and employing local high school graduates. Those benefits are starting to spread to nearby communities, where new solar factories are springing to life. In November, voters will weigh two very different visions of America’s energy future on the ballot, but Dalton is already reaping the rewards from slotting solar into its storied history of industrial production.

From carpets to solar

Both CSX and Norfolk Southern run Class I rail lines through Dalton, a testament to its industrial legacy, and freight trains bellow day and night.

That legacy harks back to 1900, according to local historians, when Catherine Evans Whitener sold a hand-tufted bedspread from her front porch for $2.50. The cottage industry took off in this land of forested ridges and stream-crossed valleys, and over time, local factories consolidated into global carpeting giants Shaw Industries and Mohawk Industries.

“The carpet industry was born here,” Carl Campbell, executive director of economic development at the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce, told me when I visited the Chamber. The New Georgia Encyclopedia states that 80 percent of America’s tufted carpet production happens within 100 miles of Dalton.

The conference room where we spoke sported large-format aerial photographs of the major factories nearby: the largest Shaw site, 650,000 square feet; and the new Engineered Floors colossus, 2.8 million square feet. 

“You feel like there’s enough carpet in that building to cover the whole world,” said Campbell, who grew up in Dalton. 

Dalton employment numbers peaked at 80,200 in 2006, per the Chattanooga Times Free Press. But the Great Recession crushed the homebuilding industry, cratering demand for Dalton’s carpeting products. 

Dalton ​“was a ghost town in 2011, nothing going on because everybody was hurting,” Campbell added. From June 2011 to June 2012, Dalton notched the dubious distinction of most jobs lost of all 372 metro areas surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By that point, one-quarter of Dalton’s pre-recession jobs had vanished, and unemployment surged to 12.3 percent. 

Since then, the industry has recovered somewhat. Engineered Floors, Mohawk, and Shaw still dominate local employment, with some 14,000 jobs among them, Campbell said. Those companies have had to adapt to evolving consumer tastes, shifting from wall-to-wall carpets to hardwood and other flooring materials. They’ve also automated aspects of production, reducing the number of workers needed.

In the wake of the Great Recession, local leaders sought to diversify Dalton’s industry. The county acquired an undeveloped lot south of town, and Campbell later pushed to clear and level the site, so it was shovel-ready for some future tenant. When Trump’s solar tariffs kicked in, Campbell’s counterparts at Georgia’s Department of Economic Development sent Qcells his way. 

Qcells showed up in February 2018, looking to spin up its first American solar-panel factory in less than a year. ​“Suddenly, we had exactly what they needed,” Campbell said.

Thus Dalton managed to bring in new industry to balance out its base of carpets and flooring. Qcells originally promised to invest $130 million and hire 525 people within five years, Campbell said. 

“They did it in three months,” he added. ​“In terms of an economic development project, they check all the boxes: Everything they said they would do, they did it faster than they said they would do it.”

Domestic solar manufacturing, by humans and robots

When I asked folks around town what they thought of Qcells, they kept mentioning the dozens of air-conditioning units arrayed on the factory roof, like a field of doghouses, easily visible from I-75. I later learned that Qcells brought in helicopters to install those units, which made for a bit of small-town spectacle. Still, it struck me as a surprising detail to dwell on for a business that somehow turns the sun’s rays into cheap, emissions-free electricity. 

Once I crossed Qcells’ sizzling parking lot and stepped indoors, it started to make sense. Georgia gets hot, and carpet factories get hot, but the vast floors of the twin solar factories are quite literally cool places to work. 

The climate control is not unique to assembling solar panels, but it is required for the sensitive, precisely calibrated product. The air conditioners are but one sign that high-tech manufacturing has arrived, and that it makes for pretty comfortable work.

I met my two tour guides, Wayne Lock and Alan Rodriguez, in the factory lobby, and they quickly confirmed the physical appeal of Qcells jobs. Lock, now a quality engineer at Qcells, previously worked in carpet manufacturing; he had to wear special heat-resistant gear to handle carpeting materials that would otherwise deliver third-degree burns. Rodriguez, an engineering supervisor at Qcells, used to apply the coating material underneath carpets.

“You’re sandwiched between the steamer and the oven, so it gets quite hot,” Rodriguez told me. Attending to those machines exposed him to temperatures that could exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Even more than Qcells’ air conditioning, though, people I spoke to kept bringing up the pay.

By offering more for zero-skill, entry-level positions than the other factories in town, Qcells started attracting workers and pushed up wages across Dalton, Campbell said: ​“Competition brings everybody, so everybody’s had to kind of equalize to keep employees.” 

Now Qcells hourly wages for non-experienced hires start at $17.50 to $22 — that amounts to $36,400 to $45,760 a year for full-time work. Workers with experience in robotics and manufacturing can take home much more than that. Employees can raise their pay through a variety of on-the-job training, most of which involves handling and troubleshooting the in-house fleet of robots.

Lock, Rodriguez, and I walked into the newest factory, past meeting rooms with names like Naboo and Mandalore, Star Wars locales where quirky robots coexist with all manner of creatures. As we strolled across the floor, squat wheeled autonomous vehicles rolled past us down pathways marked by tape on the smooth floor, ferrying bales of materials or hauling out hulking boxes of finished panels.

“We try to stay out of their way, and if we don’t, they yell at us,” said Lock. ​“It’s fun.”

As we stood talking, I noticed that one such robo-buggy was waiting for us to move. Barely discernible over the background drone of machines, a female voice intoned, ​“Robot is moving. Please look out.” When humans hold up more time-sensitive deliveries, Lock explained, the voice switches to male and gets louder. 

Other robots remain fixed in place, carrying out repetitive precision tasks. I stared, mesmerized, at one machine that split wafer-thin silicon cells in half, first scoring them with a laser, then slicing them with a concentrated jet of water. A taller machine grabbed nearly 8-foot metal frames and sliced them through the air like a master swordsman in a Kurosawa film, to slot them around glassed-in silicon panels. 

Throughout the process, cameras scan cells and use artificial intelligence to shunt defective items off the line for manual correction. 

In the 2019-era factory next door, humans carry out many of these tasks. Lock, though, didn’t see the robots as competitors — he said they were taking on more physically demanding jobs so the humans could step into higher-skilled roles tending to robots.

“The ergonomics are better for you,” he said, and the new lines are more productive. 

Hiring local, spending local

When Qcells was first staffing up, it relied on Quick Start, a Georgia state program that funds worker training for new factories before they open — a major draw for executives deciding where to locate their factories.

Qcells still recruits to meet ongoing staffing needs, and it has been paying special attention to high schoolers who are graduating and looking for employment. Nash speaks passionately about Qcells’ recruitment efforts; she’s seen the civic fallout from decades when local families encouraged kids to avoid manufacturing.

“Small communities cannot thrive with kids graduating and leaving those communities to live elsewhere, to get high-paying technical jobs,” Nash said. ​“That’s what’s happening across the country. Bringing manufacturing back, and bringing highly automated manufacturing, is offering job opportunities where now these students are staying here.”

Some 56 percent of Dalton-area students enroll in postsecondary education within 16 months of graduating high school, said Stephani Womack, director of education and workforce development for the Greater Dalton Chamber of Commerce. For the remainder, the chamber wants to make sure family-supporting jobs are available.

For two weeks in June, Womack helped run Project Purpose, a crash course in how to start and navigate careers that pay living wages. Recent high school graduates prepped for interviews, shopped for professional clothes, and toured housing options and downtown hotspots — the kinds of places they could frequent once they join the workforce. 

But the centerpiece of the program amounted to professional speed dating, as Dalton’s major employers offered tours and entry-level jobs. Last year, Dalton’s first time running Project Purpose, seven young adults completed the program, and Qcells hired one of them. This time, 18 finished, and Qcells hired 12 of them to start on July 1.

“Next year, we hope to double that, or more,” Nash said. 

Several participants came in knowing about Qcells, betting that the intensive crash course would increase their odds of landing good roles there, Womack told me over a table at Garmony House, a downtown coffee shop that draws lines for its statuesque strawberry cupcakes and coffee-glazed cinnamon rolls.

“Qcells is providing a diverse set of options for our students who need to go to work but want to stay in our community,” Womack said. ​“They see a climate-controlled facility with entry-level opportunities — that’s exciting for them. … Manufacturing isn’t what it used to be.”

For younger people to stay in town and build a life, Dalton needs more housing, and now it’s getting its first large apartment complex in over two decades, Campbell said. In total, 900 apartment units are slated to come online from last August through this November — not enough to catch up on a long-running housing deficit, but a step in the right direction.

That renewed real estate activity is reflected in downtown Dalton’s bustling core. 

Locals pack the booths at the Oakwood Cafe, perhaps the only place in America that sells a platter of egg, sausage, toast, and grits for just $3.65. Multiple microbreweries beckon, as does a plush cocktail bar, the Gallant Goat, which stocks fresh mint by the fistful to garnish its drinks. Down the road, diners can sample ceviche of shrimp shipped in from coastal Mexico, succulent chicken wings, and high-end Southern cuisine. 

This spring, the plush Carpentry Hotel opened across from the Oakwood Cafe, decked out with vibrant textile art to commemorate the town’s carpeting heritage.

“That’s been big for us, getting that hotel in downtown. That’s indicative of a robust local economy that people are coming to participate in,” local real estate agent Beau Patton told me as the late afternoon sun streamed into the Gallant Goat. Patton works with Qcells employees who want to buy homes in the area. He sees the factory’s decision to locate there as ​“very mutually beneficial” for Qcells and Whitfield County: ​“What you hope is Whitfield County grows with it, and it grows with Whitfield County.” 

From Dalton to towns across Georgia

Dalton got in early on the national clean-energy factory revival, and has already seen its solar factory push up wages, enable high school graduates to stay and start careers, and inject money into a reinvigorated downtown. Many more communities in Georgia are following close behind with their own cleantech factories, seeking a similar economic jolt.

“There is a palpable and intense sense of excitement across the state about how these manufacturing and infrastructure policies are supercharging Georgia’s economic development,” said Senator Jon Ossoff, the Georgia Democrat who authored the IRA manufacturing incentives that Qcells is tapping into. ​“And I would add, it’s not just the primary industrial facilities; it’s all of the secondary and tertiary suppliers and vendors and service companies and the financial services firms needed to support them.”

Qcells is building an even bigger factory compound down in Cartersville, which won a conditional $1.45 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy on August 8. This facility will take advantage of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits to onshore more steps of the solar supply chain: slicing silicon wafers, carving them into solar cells, and assembling finished modules with even newer robots than the ones I saw in Dalton. Until now, those high-value precursors to solar panels were shipped in from overseas. Workers in Dalton complete just the last step: assembling modules. Cartersville promises to bring the dream of American-made solar a bit closer to reality.

To achieve that dream, the industry has a few other challenges to confront. For one, 97 percent of the glass that encloses solar panels comes from China. Besides the geopolitical implications of that dependence, glass is so fragile and heavy that its shipping costs make domestic production enticing both economically and environmentally. 

“We need domestic glass to have an efficient supply chain,” said Suvi Sharma, founder and CEO of solar recycling startup Solarcycle. His company is breaking ground on a combination solar-panel recycling facility and solar-glass factory in Cedartown, some 70 miles southwest of Dalton. Sharma expects to invest $344 million in the community and hire 600 full-time employees.

Compared with Dalton and Cartersville, ​“Cedartown is more off the beaten path — this would be the first large-scale factory going up there,” said Sharma. After years in which the population declined and young people looked elsewhere for jobs, ​“this enables them to keep people and bring in more people. There’s a cascading impact.”

Solarcycle will use its rail spur to ship in low-iron silica from a mine in Georgia, plus soda ash and limestone. Over time, it will supplement those raw ingredients with increasing amounts of glass the company will pull from decommissioned solar panels, including those made by Qcells. The goal is to produce enough glass for 5 gigawatts of panels per year; Solarcycle will ship the glass to nearby customers. At that point, workers in northwest Georgia will have a hand in all the major steps of solar-module production except the processing of raw polysilicon. Hanwha recently became the largest shareholder in REC Silicon to secure access to domestic polysilicon from the Pacific Northwest. 

Georgia also nabbed a hefty chunk of the electric-vehicle factory buildout catalyzed by IRA incentives. Hyundai is dropping nearly $1 billion on its ​“Metaplant” near the deepwater port of Savannah and building an adjacent $4.3 billion battery plant with LG. Kia erected a new EV9 SUV manufacturing line at its plant in West Point, about halfway down Georgia’s border with Alabama. The first EV9 rolled off the line in June — less than two years after the IRA was signed into law.

Dalton, then, is a leading indicator of the industrial invigoration that clean energy factories are bringing to cities and towns across Georgia. People broadly appreciate it — if not for the role in combating climate change or countering China’s industrial might, then for high starting wages, comfortable working conditions, and opportunities for advancement. 

But for this nascent factory boom to endure, the policies that triggered it need to stay in effect. The people of Georgia played a decisive role in spurring this manufacturing revival; this November, they’ll have an outsize role in deciding if it continues.

How Dalton, Georgia, went from Carpet Capital to Solartown, USA is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.