| dc.description.abstract | Renewable energy deployment over the past two decades has been undeniably successful in many facets of the national economy. Its mass deployment can create positive economic, environmental, and energy justice impacts. In the built environment, which accounts for up to 40% of the U.S. greenhouse gasses, renewable energy has made significant inroads in adoption. Unfortunately, the benefits have not been evenly shared among all economic demographics and in all property types. Specifically, renters in existing multifamily workforce apartments are lagging far behind single-family homeowners in access to photovoltaic solar renewable energy as apartments currently have adoption rates below one percent. A primary reason cited for this stubbornly low adoption rate is the existence of the split-incentive where landlords must make the financial investments, but tenants receive the benefits of the energy systems.
The ramifications of this situation manifest themselves in economic, environmental, and health outcomes that are demonstrably worse for residents of workforce multifamily rental housing. The negative impacts are most acutely experienced in socioeconomically marginalized communities, but the effects can extend beyond local and state borders and have far-reaching negative consequences.
This study evaluated the financial and environmental benefits available with photovoltaic solar when deployed on a large scale on multifamily properties in various locations across the country. I therefore created a model to quantify the financial return and decarbonization potential of installing photovoltaic solar systems on multifamily apartments. I correlated these results with energy burden data across seven U.S. cities to create a geographic index for property owners and policy makers to understand how to develop and implement measures to incentivize increased renewable energy adoption.
The results of the study demonstrated that positive economic results can accrue to landlords after making photovoltaic solar investments in the form of both increased annual net income and property values beyond the value of the initial system investments. The property value increases were available in almost all geographic jurisdictions studied and reached above an eight-fold increase over the system cost in Lahaina, HI. Similarly, the annual cash flow enjoyed by the investors attained over a four-fold increase in the best-performing city, Lahaina, HI. These financial results were buttressed with significant positive environmental outcomes in many states when a reasonable photovoltaic solar adoption rate was modeled. Over half a million metric tons of CO2e could be avoided annually in six states, and in Texas, over two million metric tons of GHGs could be eliminated annually.
The study hopes to facilitate renewable energy adoption in rental housing in a wide variety of locations by providing the information necessary for property investors to determine the financial outcome of making renewable energy investments. Additionally, by using the three-dimensional index developed in the study, regulators could incentivize private property owners to unleash the financial and environmental results identified in the study by targeting policies to the locations that offer the best opportunities. This public-private schema could have the effect of allowing a private market mechanism to address both environmental and energy justice challenges creating a virtuous system where landlords, tenants, and community interests are all simultaneously promoted. | |
