This Detroit-area collective is installing solar streetlights, exploring community solar and advocating for policy change in pursuit of a carbon-free future.
Back in 2011, when DTE Energy, the utility serving Highland Park and the greater Detroit Area in Michigan USA, repossessed more than 1000 street lights because the city govt failed to pay the utility bill, the neighbors of the community rose to the occasion, defying the odds and started a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to install community owned, solar-panel-charged streetlights that operate independently of DTE's grid. That initial response has since grown into Soulardarity. The nonprofit, which has built its community organizing strategy around what it calls its “blueprint for energy democracy.”
Nearly half of Highland Park’s residents, 88 percent of whom are Black, live below the federal poverty line. DTE Energy has pushed through a series of rate hikes over the past six years, and utility bills can claim from a third to a fifth of a typical Highland Park family’s income.
Of the 45 percent of Highland Park residents who have reported having trouble paying their bills, one in four have had their electricity shut off for lack of payment — two-thirds of them during harsh Michigan winters. Meanwhile, DTE has come under fire for the unusual practice of sending unpaid bills to debt collectors who have threatened residents with further financial or legal hardship.
Highland Park residents have also experienced multiday blackouts from a DTE Energy grid that’s faced criticism for poor reliability, most recently after thunderstorms in July left about 600,000 customers without power, some for up to five days. Some customers face life-or-death consequences when they lose power for their medical devices or lack heating or air conditioning. Those who are less vulnerable still lose medicine or food without refrigeration.
From urban centers like Detroit, New Orleans and New York City to remote rural and tribal communities, neighbors are banding together to raise money to install solar panels and energy-efficient appliances to reduce energy costs in homes, apartment buildings and businesses. Community groups are organizing with nonprofits to finance community solar projects that can share low-cost, carbon-free power among those who can’t afford solar on their own, and they are winning assistance from government agencies to deploy batteries that can provide backup power for schools, churches and community centers when the grid goes down.
Soulardarity has worked with other groups on “solarize” campaigns to pool residents’ purchasing power for lower-cost bulk solar installations. Polar Bear Sustainable Energy Cooperative, a nonprofit spun out of Soulardarity and named after the mascot of the now-closed Highland Park High School, runs crowdfunding campaigns to help homes with aging fossil gas infrastructure switch to solar power and electric heating and cooking.
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