Solar for All Fast Facts

Thanks to the 60 grant recipients under the $7 billion Solar for All Program, for the first time in history, low-income and disadvantaged communities in every state and territory - as well as Tribes across the country - will have access to affordable, resilient, and clean solar energy. Together, the 60 grant recipients have committed to delivering on the three objectives of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: reducing climate and air pollution; delivering benefits to low-income and disadvantaged communities; and mobilizing financing to spur additional deployment of affordable solar energy.

As part of this collective effort, Solar for All grant recipients have committed to the following:

Funding residential and residential-serving community solar projects that will cumulatively reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions by over 30 million metric tons CO2 equivalent - which is equivalent to the emissions of over 7 million typical passenger vehicles and contributes to the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of a 100% clean-electricity grid by 2035. 100% of solar projects receiving subsidies and low-cost financing under the program will deliver meaningful benefits to households.

90% of grant recipients plan to fund residential rooftop solar.
88% of grant recipients plan to fund the deployment of residential-serving community and shared solar through diverse ownership models that enable households in disadvantaged communities to access the additional economic benefits of asset ownership.
78% of grant recipients plan to fund storage solutions, maximizing residential rooftop and residential-serving community solar deployment, increasing the resilience of the power grid, and delivering electricity to vulnerable communities during grid outages.

Reaching communities in all states and territories, including in Tribal Lands, maximizing the reach and breadth of Solar for All.

Collectively, the 60 Solar for All grant recipients will implement programs that cover all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and several territories.
More than $500 million – over 7% of Solar for All funding – will be dedicated to Tribal communities. Tribes across the nation will have greater access to programs that reduce energy costs and delivery electricity during outages.
Grant recipients are developing programs specifically designed to serve communities facing unique barriers to distributed solar deployment across multiple states, including rural communities in the southeast; communities in the industrial heartland; households in affordable housing; households that cannot deploy residential rooftop solar; and communities around minority-serving educational institutions.
All 60 grant recipients will maximize the breadth and diversity of the households that can benefit from solar.

Creating equitable access to affordable, resilient solar for nearly a million low-income households, by providing subsidies, low-cost capital, and technical assistance to projects, communities, and developers.

100% of Solar for All funding will support the low-income and disadvantaged communities that need it most, ensuring that the program benefits flow to the most overburdened communities and advance the President’s Justice40 Initiative.
The average low-income household benefiting from a Solar for All program will experience ~$400 in annual savings from their electricity bills. Low-income households across our country will realize over $350 million in annual household savings from all 60 grant recipients' programs, totaling over $8 billion in cumulative savings for over a standard solar project 25-year asset life.
Programs funded by Solar for All will deploy and unlock over 4 gigawatts (GW) of distributed solar energy entirely for low-income and disadvantaged communities. According to analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy, by the end of 2023, low-income households were benefiting from approximately 7 GW of solar energy. The Solar for All grant recipients will increase the residential solar capacity serving low-income households by one third over the next five years while guaranteeing over 20% household savings.
Solar for All programs will deliver resiliency and grid benefits by creating capacity that can deliver power to low-income and disadvantaged households and/or critical facilities serving low-income and disadvantaged households during a grid outage.

Delivering hundreds of thousands of good-paying, high-quality jobs, especially in low-income and disadvantaged communities.

Programs funded by Solar for All will create hundreds of thousands of jobs all across the country over the next five years, supported by the commitment from every grant recipients to develop robust workforce development plans.
Solar for All grant recipients have committed to fostering the creation of good-paying, high-quality jobs, and are working with a number of local, regional, and national labor unions to implement their programs.
Solar for All grant recipients will apply Davis-Bacon Act labor standards and the Build America, Buy America Act to their programs, bolstering good-paying, American jobs.

Disclaimer: The commitments above are taken or derived from the narrative proposals that grant recipients submitted to EPA and that were reviewed and selected in accordance with the evaluation criteria in Section V.A: Evaluation Criteria of the Notice of Funding Opportunity. Where grant recipients made commitments based on magnitudes of outputs and outcomes (such as reducing or avoiding greenhouse gas emissions), the commitments are adjusted for the amount of partial funding received relative to the initial funding requested. Note that EPA is actively working with the recipients to revise these narrative proposals into workplans that reflect adjustments made during workplan negotiations.