Clean Energy Deployment

We explore opportunities and barriers influencing the equitable deployment of energy technologies across demographics and communities.

EMP’s work in equitable clean energy deployment spans both distributed energy resources (e.g., residential solar deployment) and utility-scale resources (e.g., siting and planning). Much of our current work on equitable distributed energy resource deployment leverages our unique Solar Demographics dataset, which covers the vast majority of U.S. residential rooftop solar systems and analyzes various income and demographic trends among adopters. We subsequently leverage this dataset to conduct various additional analyses of rooftop solar adoption barriers and various solutions including low-to-moderate income solar incentives, policies, and business models, supply-side business siting patterns, and marketing strategies. EMP research also includes a deep dive into solar financing, with a study on solar leasing performance of low-to-moderate income customers.

EMP also conducts a range of analyses on the energy justice implications of utility-scale clean energy planning and siting. In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey and American Clean Power Association, we develop and maintain public databases on the locations and attributes of both utility-scale wind turbines and solar facilities, which enable sophisticated geospatial siting and trends analysis of clean energy deployment.

Selected Projects

• Solar Demographics Trends and Analysis
• Drivers and energy justice implications of renewable energy project siting in the United States

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