Environmental Justice

As we gear up for another busy year at GRID, we want to take a moment to reflect on and celebrate our success in 2015. Thanks to all of our supporters, homeowners, and volunteers, it has been an amazing year in the Bay Area! Here are a few key wins from 2015:

There is nothing more challenging than juggling in the rain. However, the rain did not dent the spirit of 39 University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) students in the first week of January 2016 as they worked tirelessly in the rain installing two solar systems in Madera, California.

Rose All Runner's grid-tied installation is part of a demonstration project, funded by a grant from the All Points North Foundation (APNF), to model sustainable energy development in Native American communities. The pilot includes solar installations for three families integrated with hands-on job training for up to 30 local tribal members in three different communities.

The counties that the Rosebud Sioux reservation encompasses are among the poorest in the nation, with unemployment rates as high as 83 percent, and as much as three quarters of the employed population still living under the poverty line. Winter is always the worst, with frigid temperatures, ice and snow limiting already-scarce work opportunities, and sending electricity bills skyrocketing. This year, though, a beacon of hope for some relief is taking shape in the form of a solar array on the home of tribal member Karen Spotted Tail.

The wide stretches of sparsely populated land in Navajo Nation can make it feel like you’ve stepped back into the past. For residents here, that remoteness comes with a price: many live without electricity. Across the Navajo nation, an estimated 15,000 homes have never been connected to the grid. This week we demonstrated one way to begin addressing this issue with an off-grid solar installation for Vietnam veteran Henry Yazzie.

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Shinnecock Tribal leaders brought attention to how tribal communities are at the front lines of climate change in our latest Tribal Solarthon event. Few communities are closer to the front lines than the Shinnecock, a 10,000-year-old tribe on the eastern end of Long Island. With just about 1000 acres of land remaining in its name, the Nation is losing feet of precious coastline every year to rising sea levels, and saw parts of its ancestral graveyard swept away during Superstorm Sandy.

Where do you live? Many disadvantaged communities in the Inland Empire have been selected for investment as a result of California’s cap and trade program. Check this map to see if your home is located in a red zone...

Leading women volunteer alongside youth job trainees to bring solar energy to the Menjivar family.

This week in Denver, Stan Greschner, GRID's VP of Market Development, had the honor of sharing the stage with former President Bill Clinton and Navajo leader Jonathan Yazzie at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).