A new Microsoft solar project shows how climate and racial equity are getting connected

Published

4 years ago

August 12, 2021

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A Bronx rooftop with a view of Manhattan in the distance is covered with solar panels. As climate and racial justice are connected, ESG experts say more clean energy projects and jobs need to come to neglected urban communities.

DON EMMERT | AFP | Getty Images

Climate crises across the country — record heat waves, wildfires and flooding — have pushed climate to the forefront of corporate agendas. At the same time, companies are being held accountable for their actions to fix systemic racism at the community level. The two goals may seem distinct, but a new Microsoft renewable energy deal demonstrates that as the ESG industry develops, the environmental and social mandates shouldn’t stay in their siloes. Environmental injustice and racial injustice have always been connected in the real world, and should be in the realm of corporate ESG as well.

Microsoft announced in mid-July a solar energy partnership with Volt Energy, a Black-owned solar energy development firm, to supply Microsoft with 250 megawatts of solar power. It’s just one small power purchase agreement in the technology giant’s pledge of using 100% renewable energy by 2025, but it stands out not only for being done with a minority-led firm, but in being structured so that a portion of the profits are used to develop renewable energy sources in underserved communities across the United States.

The deal was Microsoft’s first utility-scale solar power purchase agreement with an African American energy solar development firm.

Big Tech’s climate commitment

Microsoft is already a leader in environmental initiatives from waste elimination to carbon removal, joining Big Tech peers Apple and Alphabet and more recently Amazon who are all heavily invested in climate technology, whether to power their own energy-intensive data centers or for transportation needs, as in the case of Amazon.

Microsoft’s overarching climate pledge goes one step further than most corporations though, promising to not just become carbon neutral but remove all the carbon from the environment that the company has emitted either directly, or by electrical consumption, since it was founded in 1975, by 2050.

“This is another example of them continuing to push the boundaries of what environmental leadership and leadership overall looks like for companies,” said Alison Omens, chief strategy officer at JUST Capital, ESG research specialist, which ranked Microsoft No. 1 among corporations in 2021, a position it has consistently held in the rankings. “Microsoft is doing a good job of thinking about the connection point between equity and environmental justice,” she said. “We cannot think about these things in silos.”

Bringing climate tech to underserved communities translates to high-paying green jobs, healthier air, and increased investment in those neighborhoods.

Tim Boyle | Getty Images News | Getty Images

“They’re not in this for charity,” said Nathanael Greene, a senior renewable energy advocate at the National Resource Defense Council. “They’re in this to make money, so this tells us that renewable energy is winning in the marketplace.”

That marketplace increasingly needs to represent all of America, including long neglected rural and urban communities of color.

“Developing community-based, renewable energy projects and related initiatives take time, and we are focused on doing the work to help ensure we are successful,” said Noelle Walsh, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s cloud operations and innovation group.

Racial equity and climate justice

Following the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, discussions on racial inequities were ignited throughout corporations across the country. The larger history linking environmental justice and racial justice tracks a map of 20th-century environmental pollution that tended to be most acute near low-income communities and communities of color including majority Black, Native American, Latinx and Asian American areas, as well as an environmental non-profit movement that grew in size and scope but lacked diversity.

Microsoft and Volt Energy executives declined to provide details on projects being developed under the partnership, but bringing renewable energy sources to underserved communities signals an important step towards investing in the environment at the intersection of fighting racial inequities.

In the late 1960s, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, growing concerns emerged around the inequity of environmental protection for communities of color across the U.S. In the 1980s, toxic solid waste sites were often located in low-income communities, often with majority Black, Native American, Latinx and Asian American residents, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Racial inequities like this persisted into the 1990s when an executive order was signed in 1994 by the Clinton Administration, dedicating federal funding to improve environmental and health conditions for minority and low-income communities.

“It is critically important that clean energy infrastructure and economic development investments are made in underserved minority and rural communities that have been disproportionally impacted by environmental injustices and lag behind in the health and financial benefits of the thriving clean energy economy,” said Volt Energy’s co-founder and CEO Gilbert Campbell in a statement at the time of the deal’s announcement. “It is equally important to provide access to the business and job creation benefits of the clean energy movement.”

The intersection of the environment and racial justice is an issue where leading ESG researchers and ESG investment activists are beginning to develop metrics. On Wednesday, shareholder advocacy group As You Sow released its first environmental racism scorecard for S&P 500 companies (Microsoft was No. 1). As You Sow views the metric as important in holding companies accountable for environmental harm even if they are making progress — and touting — diversity efforts, such as in hiring. The racial justice scorecard include indicators specifically focused on environmental racism through tracking of corporate environmental violations, fines, and penalties since 2015.

Scoring environmental harm

Andy Behar, CEO of As You Sow, said the new ESG metric stood out for a bad reason: the number of companies that ended up with a negative score when their progress on diversity was measured against their environmental harm.

“Environment violations, money paid in super fund sites, toxins dumped in communities of color … 39 of the S&P 500 don’t make it to zero,” he said. “We’ve never had a scorecard where we had to visualize negative numbers. It describes the situation really on the ground. They are doing more harm than they are able to make up for with positive hiring, donations to communities of color.”

Among those S&P 500 laggards are many oil and gas companies, as well as Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which is facing increased ESG scrutiny.

ExxonMobil scored a negative 23%, placing it last. One example cited by As You Sow was the section of Beaumont, Texas, where 95% of the residents are African American and an ExxonMobil refinery releases at least 135 toxic chemicals.

The Exxon Mobil Beaumont Polyethylene Plant stands following Tropical Storm Imelda in Beaumont, Texas, U.S., on Friday, Sept. 20, 2019, which brought flooding that threatened refinery operations.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

“When we are in a conversation with a Chevron [Chevron was not in the bottom 10, ranking 350 out of 500 companies] or whoever, we’re saying you are not only failing on climate but get a negative score on racial justice, and you can’t have climate justice without racial justice, and this data actually shows that, and will be part of next year’s shareholder resolutions,” Behar said.

Diverse energy leaders

“After George Floyd, a lot of Silicon Valley companies took a hard look in the mirror and said they needed to invest in more diverse entrepreneurs and more diverse companies, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of progress there,” said Donnel Baird, CEO and founder of BlocPower, a climate technology start-up based in Brooklyn, New York, that is focused on energy efficiency retrofits for urban buildings.

BlocPower, which ranked No. 47 on the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, has completed over 1,000 projects in the New York City area, and is expanding its projects in 24 other U.S. cities. The Urban Green Council estimates a $20 billion market and well over 100,000 jobs created by 2030 in the NYC-metro area alone, and business models like Bloc Power’s retrofitting in underserved communities translates to high-paying green jobs, healthier air, and increased investment in those neighborhoods.

Baird’s firm has received a $50 million investment from Goldman Sachs, as well as investments from Salesforce Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, who all came together in the middle of a pandemic to fund the early-stage company.

“I think there’s a moral and ethical for business leaders to invest in green infrastructure,” Baird said, but he added, “Goldman Sachs is investing $50 million to our company to invest in green buildings and low income communities. They’re not doing that for PR. They’re doing it because it’s a great story and they’re going to make money.”

Baird gives Microsoft credit for leading the charge in corporate America by making substantive investments in communities that need environmental justice initiatives, but he said all technology companies can go further. They can diversify their sustainability supply chains, and as more companies invest in carbon offsets as a way to meet their ambitious carbon-neutral targets in the years ahead, he said companies should invest in renewable energy credits in the streets of Chicago, Seattle and low-income communities instead of in the Brazilian rainforests, where there is less corporate accountability.

He recently told CNBC the road for Black founders in the energy sector is still one beset by bias, which he learned firsthand in fundraising, and George Floyd won’t change that quickly enough.

“We talked to 200 investment firms before the first yes. It was no on no for months on end,” Baird said. “The same people investing before George Floyd are the ones who are investing after. I believe intentions are real, but deep in the heart of hearts, they are just looking for the 19-year-old Stanford or Harvard dropout who has been doing coding since age 10. It’s pattern recognition.”

Environment

Homeowners share surprising, real-world data after installing solar panels

Published

9 hours ago

November 24, 2025

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Homeowners share surprising, real-world data after installing solar panels

Homeowner shares unexpected, real-world data after installing rooftop solar panels: I'm pretty surprised

Are you wondering what kind of results you’d get if you added a home solar system to your roof? Homeowners are sharing their results online — and the real-world data might surprise you!

In a recent post to r/Solar, a Reddit user going by DontBuyBitcoin shared a screenshot indicating that their newly-installed ~11.5 kW system produced over 1,700 kWh of electricity in October. “Pretty surprised by the production of the system I got,” writes DontBuyBitcoin. “11.48KW. I cant wait to see what JUNE-AUGUST [2026] going to look like 😍 I wish SolarEdge will make their app better looking with more functionality”

Home solar energy chart

Other Redditors were quick to share in the enthusiasm. “Congratulations!!! Great numbers,” wrote LegalNet4337. “We got 1.6 MWh with a 14.45 kW system. East and West facing panels in SoCal.”

That 1,700 kWh is nothing to sneeze at. Based on the current national average electricity price of about $0.17/kWh (in AUG2025), DontBuyBitcoin’s admittedly large-ish system translates to ~$290 of potential savings. In a higher rate state like Illinois, with a projected 2026 kWh rate that’s closer to $0.18/kWh, that’s ~$306/mo.

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We expect retail electricity prices to residential customers will average 17 cents per kilowatthour (kWh) nationwide in 2025, a 4% increase over 2024, and then rise to approximately 18 cents/kWh in 2026. This rise continues a trend in which residential electricity prices have increased at an average annual rate of 5% each year since the COVID-19 pandemic. The increase in retail electricity prices this year comes as the cost of natural gas to the electric power sector was up more than 40% in 1H25 compared with a year earlier, with similar year-over-year increases forecast for the remainder of 2025. The average cost of natural gas for power generation in our forecast increases another 17% in 2026.

US ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION (EIA)

Those are big numbers, but 11-15 kW rooftop solar systems are big. Significantly bigger, in fact, than the US average, ~6.6 kW in 2024 – but you don’t have to have a big system in order to post big numbers. Superior weather conditions and perfect PV panel placement can also get the job done, as another Redditor found.

“The last 2 days we have had perfect weather here in South Florida and I have been able to get over 30 kWh from a 5 kW system with a 3.8 kW inverter. This is the highest I have seen since getting PTO in September,” wrote Redditor dlewis23, who shared another SolarEdge graph. “I am super happy with seeing over 30 kWh in a single day.”

30 kW/day from home solar

Taken altogether, these real-world snapshots prove that whether it’s a modest 5 kW array or a beefy 10+ kW setup, homeowners out in the real world are seeing meaningful, measurable differences from their home solar installations. And, with retail electricity prices projected to keep on rising through the decade, every kilowatt counts.

Electrek’s Take

When we ran our “Why did you choose to go solar?” survey back in September, only 32.6% of respondents chose, “Lowering my monthly utility bills” as their primary motivation to go solar. That result proved, in my mind, that Electrek readers are just better people than most, and seem to be willing to spend a little more to do something positive for their environment and their community.

That said, wasn’t it no less a thinker than Albert Einstein who said, “Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe” (Google it.)? And, with a 5% rate hike compounding every year from now until the AI and data center bubbles burst, the impact energy rates may have on all our pocketbooks may be enough to put “Lowering my monthly utility bills” back on top.

If and when that happens: be smart, get several quotes, and understand the difference between buying and leasing your PV system (especially if you plan on selling your home in the foreseeable future).

SOURCES: Reddit, EIA; featured image via Tesla.

If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.

Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

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Environment

Volvo set to ditch LiDAR for 2026 – and Luminar is BIG mad

Published

22 hours ago

November 23, 2025

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Volvo set to ditch LiDAR for 2026 – and Luminar is BIG mad

Volvos Are Losing Their LiDAR Roof Bump For Good And Luminar Isn’t Happy

It seems like the writing was already on the wall last week when Volvo moved to make its Luminar-supplied LiDAR system an option – there are now reports that the Swedish car brand is set to ditch LiDAR tech entirely in 2026.

In a recent SEC filing following a missed interest payment on its 2L notes, Luminar confirmed that Volvo’s new ES90 and EX90 flagship models (along with the new Polestar 3) would no longer be offered with LiDAR from Luminar. The move signals a full reversal on the safety tech that had started as standard equipment, then became an option, and is now (according to reports from CarScoops) gone altogether.

In a statement, a Volvo Cars USA spokesperson added the decision was reportedly made, “to limit the company’s supply chain risk exposure, and it is a direct result of Luminar’s failure to meet its contractual obligations to Volvo Cars.”

This is what Luminar had to say about the current, icy state of the two companies’ relationship as of the 31OCT filing:

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The Company’s largest customer, Volvo Cars (“Volvo”), has informed us that, beginning in April 2026, Volvo will no longer make our Iris LiDAR standard on its EX90 and ES90 vehicles (although Iris will remain an option). Volvo also informed the Company that it has deferred the decision as to whether to include LiDAR, including Halo (Luminar’s next generation LiDAR under development), in its next generation of vehicles from 2027 to 2029 at the earliest. As a result of these actions, the Company has made a claim against Volvo for significant damages and has suspended further commitments of Iris LiDAR products for Volvo pending resolution of the dispute. The Company is in discussions with Volvo concerning the dispute; however, there can be no assurance that the dispute will be resolved favorably or at all. Furthermore, there can be no guarantee that any claim or litigation against Volvo will be successful or that the Company will be able to recover damages from Volvo.

As a result of the foregoing, the Company is suspending its guidance for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025.

LUMINAR

On November 14, Luminar confirmed that Volvo had terminated its contract altogether, in a blow that could leave Luminar rethinking its long-term future and planning litigation against its biggest ex-customer.

The news follows a host of significant upgrades to the EX90 that include a new, more dependable electronic control module (ECM) and 800V system architecture for faster charging and upgraded ADAS that improves the automatic emergency steering functions and Park Pilot assistant.

Electrek’s Take

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You can’t spend years telling everyone you’re miles ahead because you have LiDAR, then ditch LiDAR, and pretend no one is going to call you out on it. They had better hope they don’t up on Mark Rober’s YouTube channel doing a Wile E. Coyote impression (above).

That said, it’ll be interesting to see if ditching the LiDAR has a negative impact there. Or, frankly, whether ditching the LiDAR and its heavy compute loads will actually help mitigate some of the EX90’s niggling software issues. It could go either way, really – and I’m not quite sure which it will be. Let us know which way you think it’ll go in the comments.

SOURCE: Luminar, via SEC filing; featured image by Volvo.

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Environment

John Deere electric riding mower gets removable batteries from EGO

Published

1 day ago

November 23, 2025

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John Deere electric riding mower gets removable batteries from EGO

John Deere and EGO Collaborate for a New Cordless ZT Mower

The new John Deere Z370RS Electric ZTrak zero turn electric riding mower promises all the power and performance Deere’s customers have come to expect from its quiet, maintenance-free electric offerings – but with an all new twist: removable batteries.

The latest residential ZT electric mower from John Deere features a 42″ AccelDeep mower deck for broad, capable cuts through up to 1.25 acres of lawn per charge, which is about what you’d expect from the current generation of battery-powered Deeres – but this is where the new Z370RS Electric ZTrak comes into its own.

Flip the lid behind the comfortably padded yellow seat and you’ll be greeted by six (6!) 56V ARC Lithium batteries from electric outdoor brand EGO. Those removable batteries can be swapped out of the Z370RS for fresh ones in seconds, getting you back to work in less time than it takes to gravity pour a tank of gas.

And, because they’re EGO batteries, they can be used in any 56V-powered EGO-brand tools and minibikes for unprecedented cross-brand interoperability. Tools and minibikes that, it should be noted, can be purchased at John Deere dealers across the country.

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The upsell scripts write themselves, kids. And when you start your dialing, tell your prospective customers their new Z370RS Electric ZTrak electric mower lists for $6,499, and if you order now we can bundle it with EGO minibike for the kiddos – just in time for the holidays!

Electrek’s Take

When John Deere launched the first Z370R, Peter Johnson wrote that electrifying lawn equipment needs to be a priority, citing EPA data that showed gas-powered lawnmowers making up five percent of the total air pollution in the US (despite covering far less than 5% of the total miles driven on that gas). “Moreover,” he writes, “it takes about 800 million gallons of gasoline each year (with an additional 17 million gallons spilled) to fuel this equipment.”

It should go without saying, then, that states like California, which are banning small off-road combustion engines, have the right idea.

SOURCE | IMAGES: John Deere.

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