Clean Energy

Rooftop solar for social housing is  lot more tricky than it is for owner-occupiers for a number of different reasons.  How do you pay for it?  How can you make sure tenants actually benefit, and how do you establish equity between tenants?  Is there a way to install it on multi-unit properties and mange it so that either your organisation or your tenants benefit?  Here's a quick summary of these issues. 

 

Paying for it

Solar panel installation has taken off among owner-occupiers because it makes financial sense.  They have to pay for the installation of solar panels up-front, but this pays for itself over a number of years through lower power bills and the ability to sell surplus power back to the energy grid. 

 

However, this equation doesn’t work for renters, whether in the private market or in social housing.  In the private market, they don’t have the long-term tenure to be assured of getting the benefit from their investment, while social housing tenants, even when their tenure is fairly secure, can rarely come up with the several thousand dollars needed to pay for the installation.  The owners (private or social) are more likely to be able to afford the up-front costs but they don’t get the financial benefit, which flows to their tenants.

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There are a number of ways governments and community housing providers have got around this.

• ​Direct Funding - A number of State governments, particularly the South Australian Government up until 2019, have simply funded the installation of solar panels on public housing dwellings, seeing this both as part of their commitment to emissions reductions and as a valuable service to their tenants, lowering their energy costs.  However, no State Government has sustained such a commitment over time, and it can be hard for cash-strapped community housing organisations to afford it, although my friends at bric here in Brisbane managed it for  recent development courtesy of a generous builder.  ​

• Partnership with Energy Providers - Another way to solve the problem is to work in partnership with energy providers to provide renewable energy to tenants.  One example of this is the Queensland Government’s Solar for Public Housing Trial.  In Cairns, Rockhampton and Logan, the Department of Housing worked in partnership with Ergon Energy to install solar panels on the roofs of public housing dwellings.  The panels remained the property of Ergon, and the tenants entered into an arrangement with Ergon to purchase their power at a reduced rate as a result of the panels.  Although the trial received a State Government innovation award in 2018 it has not been extended, and most references to it have disappeared off the internet.  The Government has never published its evaluation so it is not clear why they chose not to move beyond the trial phase.

• Clean Energy Financing - In years gone by a small number of larger community housing organisations were able to secure funding from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Commonwealth Government's clean energy financing body, so supplement State housing funding by adding solar panels and energy efficiency measures.  These projects reduced tenants' power bills and the overall emissions footprint of the buildings.  However, this is a strictly limited source - the CEFC is set up to find innovation and will then want to see this mainstreamed without further commitment from itself.   

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Overall, the record of successful implementation of such schemes is patchy at best.  This is partly because this aspect of housing development is peripheral for social housing organisations, and partly because of the other challenges.

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Other Challenges

The two other key challenges here, which overlap to some extent, are about equity between tenants and the challenge of multiple dwellings.  

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Even with detached housing, not all housing is suitable for solar.  Some may be poorly located for solar generation, some rooves may not be structurally able to bear the extra weight, and so forth.  Where you have two properties or more in the same neighbourhood and some get solar while others don't there is a strong perception of unfairness or favouritism which can damage relationships with tenants.  Other interventions which can improve tenant energy bills, like energy efficiency measures, don't have the same problem and can be a better use of scarce funds.

 

A related issue is the challenge of installing rooftop solar in multi-unit dwellings.  This is generally not technically complex in a new building although it is an extra costs.  However, because the roof is shared it can be complex to distribute the benefits fairly.  If the common areas of the building consume significant amounts of power (for instance, if it has lifts and automatic doors) it may be worthwhile just to power these and have the benefit flow back to the provider.  However, if all that needs powering are lights and fire safety systems then most of the power would end up being exported to the grid and it wouldn't be worthwhile.  Alternatively, it could be used to lower tenants' power bills via an internal community power scheme but these are complex and face significant technical, logistical and regulatory hurdles.  

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To Solar, or Not to Solar?

In talking with others about this issue, many people have expressed the view to me that it's just not worth the expense and hassle.  On this view, you can get better benefit for tenants by improving the energy efficiency of their homes, making them both cheaper to run and more livable.  

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On the other hand, social and affordable housing providers hold significant housing and land assets as well as office facilities, and there may be ways to use these to support broader decarbonisation efforts.  One avenue to achieve this is through participation in a Community Power Scheme as part of a broader community initiative.  These schemes take many forms but typically involve community members and organisations sharing their resources to develop locally-based renewable energy generation and storage.  Such projects take various forms, and represent a form of intermediate technology in between the industrial scale generators that power most of our energy grid and the individual rooftop solar systems that are now installed on about a third of Australian homes. 

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One example of such a scheme is Totally Renewable Yackandandah (TRY).  Yackandandah is a town of about 1,000 people in the north of Victoria, just south of Albury-Wondonga.  TRY formed in 2014 to promote the use of renewables in their community, and had the ambition of achieving 100% renewables in their community by 2022.  They primary strategy is to facilitate the installation of solar generation on the rooves of both private homes and community buildings, backed by battery storage linked by a local micro-grid or series of micro-grids to spread the load across the community.  While they haven't yet reached that goal, they got to 64% by 2025, and have continued since then.  

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IN an arrangement loke this, each partner comes with its own contribution and the benefits are shared across the community.  As significant property holders, community housing providers can be well situated to hose solar panels and batteries and export the power, benefiting as a partner in the scheme.  Not only can this be at least financially neutral, if not beneficial, it also generates community recognition which can create spin-off benefits in other ways.  And after all, we will all suffer from the climate crisis, so why not all take part in building solutions?