Padilla Secures Nearly $250 Million for California Residential Solar Projects in Low-Income Communities

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As Californians celebrate Earth Day, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) April 22 announced that he secured $249,800,000 for California’s Solar for All project to help deliver residential solar for low-income and disadvantaged communities across the state. The funding, announced by the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA, comes from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund as part of the EPA’s Solar for All grant competition.

California’s Solar for All program will bring together a coalition of state entities to help reach homes and businesses across the state that are most in need of affordable, reliable clean energy. The coalition will leverage the state’s leadership on solar energy and this new funding to build new programmatic capacity and expand current efforts to lower energy costs, increase access to residential solar energy and advance strategies to address future market conditions amid California’s decarbonization efforts.

The Solar for All funding will help California add at least 247 megawatts of solar and 425 megawatt-hours of associated storage in low-income and disadvantaged communities. This will double the amount of solar energy in low-income multifamily complexes and contribute an annual average of 29.2 percent in household bill savings for over 158,000 participating households.