- The future of cities could be on this roof behind me,
(air whooshing)
where there are over 9,000 solar panels
on 22 acres of buildings.
But, right now all these panels only power
6% of this apartment complex's energy.
So, I want to know, how do we bring
more solar power to cities?
To find out, I'm visiting Stuytown Solar,
a project that doubled Manhattan solar capacity.
- We're a seventy year old community.
And if we can do it, I know that anybody can do it.
- Then I'll connect with Gilbert Campbell,
who helps businesses install solar prrojects.
- Solar is growing at 12 times faster than national economy.
Solar has been a job generator.
- I'm Lucy Biggers, and this, is One Small Step.
(upbeat music)
Stuytown Solar is a huge project
that covers the Stuyvesant town apartment complex
on the lower East side of Manhattan.
The project includes 9,761 solar panels.
That, plus investments in energy efficiency
and composting, have lowered
this complex's footprint by 15%.
Stuytown is owned by investment firm, Blackstone,
which put $11 million into the solar project.
I'm curious to see how the project works
and how other buildings can follow their lead.
How long does something like this have to run
to actually offset the production cost
of just the materials we're looking at?
- About 180 days.
- And you're past that now.
- Yep, well past that.
- All right. We're in the green. (laughs)
- We're in the green, that's right, we're in the green.
- Kelly Vohs is the CEO of Beam Living,
which runs the Stuyvesant town complex,
which was built in 1947.
And it's home to over 27,000 New Yorkers.
So how does it work? How are you getting the energy
from these panels into this building?
- Pretty simple.
They come down when it's sunny,
it's a little cloudy today, which is okay,
but when it's sunny, can actually go on my phone
and watch how much energy is being created.
And then it goes right into here,
and back down into the main panel in this building.
- And then does that lower your bill that you're paying for
energy, that you would have to buy off of the market?
- There is a couple of ways to do it.
One of the ways is the way you described,
where we consume that energy.
And when you can couple that with batteries,
it becomes very powerful.
Batteries in residential, in New York City's
a little challenging now.
We're very bullish that over time, that will change.
Another way, which is a way we do it,
is we provide the electricity back to Con Edison,
so they can use it, and it reduces
the amount of energy that New York City needs to use.
- When you look at different parts of the country,
like there's areas like Arizona
that are sunny 100% of the time,
and here we're a little bit more touch and go.
Does that really lower the efficiency of these
because we don't have sun every day of the year?
- It's definitely a lower efficiency.
Doesn't make it not worth it.
- You spent millions of dollars to make this.
And so did you crunch the numbers and think that like,
something like solar panels,
even though it was only lowering, you know,
your energy consumption by 6% was a good investment for you?
- If it's not a actual return on investment with, you know,
percentage return on that money,
sometimes there's just the return on investment,
and it's not always dollars.
Sometimes it's about doing the right thing.
And sometimes about thinking forward in what will be
required both legally and ethically in 10 years.
- In June, 2019, New York state passed legislation
that requires electricity production
to come from 70% renewable energy by 2030.
And for all new buildings to include
solar panels or green roofs.
As of 2018, only 1% of New York's
energy generation comes from solar.
While nationally in 2019, almost 2%
of energy generation came from solar.
- We have a goal which is called, the solar plus decade,
which is basically to get from 2% where we are now,
to getting to 20% by 2030.
- That's Gilbert Campbell.
He's been working in solar for over 10 years,
and is the CEO of Volt energy,
and on the board of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
I think the thing about solar is that it's so perfect,
it's a free energy coming from the sun,
but at the same time you have these drawbacks, you know,
the sun doesn't shine all the time.
There's clouds, there's nighttime and it's hard to store it.
So how do you see solar overcoming those big limitations
on how much power it can produce?
- Energy storage, I think coupled with solar,
is a great marriage.
The energy storage technology has gotten a lot better
and you see more utilities that are investing
in energy storage projects.
- What do you think is the future of rooftop solar?
It seems like a lot of your projects have been on rooftop.
- Rooftops work very well because there's a lot of times
property owners really have no use of it.
And then solar fits perfectly there.
A lot of times, you know, you can't see it
from the street level, for those that don't want
to see panels, I'm biased, I think they look beautiful.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory did a study
that said if we were to utilize even just small rooftops
in the US, that would be enough solar power
to cover a year's worth of electricity
for up to 121 million American households.
- And just adding them onto something
that we're not using anyway, they're just sitting there.
- I know we're talking about rooftops,
but our nation is also designed around parking and cars.
So, you know, that's another area where,
when you look at parking spaces and solar carports,
it's another way where we can also get to more solar.
- 10 years from now, we have 20% of the grid.
Is there a situation where we have like solar panels
everywhere and we go, Oh God, what have we done?
- Just to kind of put you at ease,
in order to provide enough solar to the power the US,
it would require 0.6% of available land.
I think that that is a little bit overstated
as far as the amount of available space that we would need
for solar to really make it.
And that's the power of provide all of our electric uses.
- Having access to clean and renewable energy like solar,
is a key component of social justice in the US.
Leading environmental groups have shown
that communities of color disproportionately
live near sources of toxic air pollution,
exposing them to a higher risk of health problems.
- We've seen all this played out from COVID.
Underserved communities have had been hit the hardest
by COVID-19, and a lot of that's due to like,
lung issues from breathing bad air.
It's making investments in communities of color.
Making investments where coal miners that had been worked
so hard for so many years to provide a living
for their family, their plants are being displaced.
They need to be retooled for the energy jobs of the future,
but also have solar in a neighborhood.
So I'm hoping we get away from this being a partisan issue
where it's really an American issue.
- What's one small step that people can take
to bring more solar to their communities?
- Get involved in local politics.
We have to leverage our collective voice to say,
you know what, this makes sense for us.
You gotta put smart people in office that understand
that we've got to make those smart investments
for our future generations.
- From speaking with Kelly and Gilbert,
I now understand how solar power is just a piece of the pie
of decarbonizing our energy system.
If we want to have a chance at preventing
the worst impacts of climate change,
we also need policy, energy storage,
a modernized grid, and more.
Batteries are also an area
where we need to see advancements.
And I'd love to do an entire video exploring that topic.
But for now, that's all for this episode.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
Bye.
You get a solar panel, you get a solar panel,
you get a solar panel, you get a solar panel, you, you,
you get a solar panel. Everyone gets a solar panel.