Title: National Coordinator for Solar Market Pathways
Funding Opportunity: Solar Market Pathways
SunShot Subprogram: Soft Costs
Location: Montpelier, VT
Amount Awarded: $1,872,845
Awardee Cost Share: $311,129
As the National Coordinator for the SunShot Initiative’s Solar Market Pathways program, the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) will create a learning network that enables communications, coordination and shared learning across the other 14 organizations in the program. For more information on this award and the Solar Market Pathways program, visit their website.
APPROACH
ISC will provide targeted technical assistance to help awardees develop high-caliber, technically sound, broadly supported plans, models, and strategies. ISC has created a website to document the progress of Solar Market Pathways awardees that helps identify and disseminate best practices and lessons learned from the Solar Market Pathways program partners’ experiences to advance solar deployment throughout the U.S.
INNOVATION
Solar Market Pathways awardees will broaden solar electricity use and deployment by expanding community solar and shared solar programs, developing local financing mechanisms, and exploring ways to integrate solar energy into communities’ emergency response plans. Solar Market Pathways projects are designed to cut the non-hardware “soft costs” of solar like permitting, financing, and connecting to the electric grid. The case studies and lessons learned from these projects will help local governments replicate similar projects, an important step in making solar deployment faster, easier, and cheaper across the country.