Research Themes +
Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
Strategic Initiatives +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
Publications
News +
For media inquiries,
please contact ETA
Interim Communications Manager
Kiran Julin

kjulin@lbl.gov
About Us +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

The impact of policies and business models on income equity in rooftop solar adoption

Publication Type

Journal Article

Date Published

11/2020

Authors

O'Shaughnessy, Eric, Galen L Barbose, Ryan H Wiser, Sydney Forrester, Naïm R Darghouth

DOI

10.1038/s41560-020-00724-2

Abstract

Low- and moderate-income (LMI) households are less likely to adopt rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) than higher income households in the United States. As the existing literature has shown, this dynamic can decelerate rooftop PV deployment and has potential energy justice implications, in light of the cost-shifting between PV and non-PV households that can occur under typical rate structures and incentive programs. Here we show that some state policy interventions and business models have expanded PV adoption among LMI households. We find evidence that LMI-specific financial incentives, PV leasing, and property-assessed financing have increased the diffusion of PV adoption among LMI households in existing markets and have driven more installations into previously under-served low-income communities. By shifting deployment patterns, we posit that these interventions could catalyze peer effects to increase PV adoption in low-income communities even among households that do not directly benefit from the interventions.

Journal

Nature Energy

Year of Publication

2020

URL

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00724-2

Notes

A free view-only version of this article as published in Nature Energy can be found here.

A webinar highlighting key findings from this work recorded on December 3, 2020, can be viewed here.

Related resources
This work builds on LBL research on demographic trends in solar PV adoption. See other resources available at the LBL Solar Demographic Trends and Analysis webpage.