Environmental Justice

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).

Legislators, administration officials and community groups gathered at a live GRID solar installation in Sacramento to highlight the state’s partnership with GRID to expand clean energy access to disadvantaged communities. Using proceeds from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF)--a fund created through California's cap and trade program--we will install rooftop solar for more than 1,600 families through 2016.

Often referred to as “Charm City”, Baltimore is the site of GRID Alternatives’ next set of solar installations, where we hope to sprinkle a little of our charm. Through support from the Abell Foundation and partnering with the City of Baltimore Office of Sustainability and Civic Works, we will launch in Baltimore this June, bringing solar power to ten homes in the CARE Community.

What do basketball star Bill Walton, twenty NRG Home Solar employees, and a baker in San Francisco have in common? The question might sound like the lead-in to a joke, but the answer is actually a pretty serious matter. The common thread between these people is a commitment to making solar power more accessible.

Raising a child with cerebral palsy has meant constant struggle with electric bills for the Heltsley family of Yuba City California. This week, relief is on the way, as the Heltsleys receive a new solar PV system on their home through GRID Alternatives' no- to low-cost residential solar program.