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By Canary Media
By Canary Media
Canary Media
The Obama Presidential Center, which opened on Chicago’s South Side in June, features a museum full of mementos to democracy and the famous family, native prairie landscaping, an indoor basketball court, and other amenities. It will also be powered entirely by clean energy. Solar panels sit on the roof and on a garden pavilion, and a geothermal system heats and cools the complex. But the bulk of its power will be produced by community solar — the center will pay a set “subscription” fee to arrays located off-site.
The Obama Presidential Center will be the anchor tenant for several community solar projects that the Chicago-based company Reactivate is in the process of developing, slated to go online in 2027. Reliable anchor tenants are crucial to the success of community solar: They pay for large amounts — often 40% to 50% — of a project’s output, and can be key to persuading banks or other lenders to help finance a community solar array. The center’s subscription will cover about 6 gigawatt-hours of solar power annually, enough, along with its rooftop panels, for the entire campus.
The Obama Foundation, which runs the center, says community solar is a way to make clean energy accessible to renters, residents in multifamily housing, and those who aren’t able to afford or install solar panels on their own properties. That includes many people who live on Chicago’s South Side, where Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer decades ago.
Community solar delivers significant bill savings to households, especially in Illinois, where a state program guarantees robust benefits to low-income participants.
But in order to reap these savings, residents need to sign up. And too few of the people in marginalized neighborhoods who could benefit most do so, many solar advocates say.
Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett and Reactivate CEO Utopia Hill hope the Obama Presidential Center’s foray into community solar will raise awareness of, and trust in, the model so that it can help more residents struggling with their energy bills on the South Side and beyond.
They also expect the Obama Presidential Center will set an example for other mission-driven nonprofit organizations and companies to become anchor tenants.
“The foundation sought to use its buying power to catalyze the development of new renewable-energy generation sources,” Jarrett said.
“It is the foundation’s hope that this partnership with Reactivate will encourage other equity-focused organizations to consider community solar as a cost-effective way of procuring renewable energy.”
While Reactivate and other community solar developers in Illinois have signed up thousands of subscribers for their projects, they agree that people are often skeptical of the concept — especially in low-income and Black communities that have sometimes been targeted by predatory lenders and other unscrupulous businesses. Illinois lawmakers and consumer watchdogs, for example, have long struggled to rein in retail electric suppliers that offer residents energy plans under terms that end up being exploitative.
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Hill, who grew up in a working-class Chicago suburb, said that people often respond to an offer of guaranteed savings with “What’s the catch?”
“There is no catch. It’s just an opportunity,” Hill said. “Having a well-established name [with the Obama Presidential Center] will hopefully help people understand that community solar is a real program that will provide savings.”
A series of Illinois state clean energy laws created robust incentives for community solar development, with particularly generous support for low-income residents and those in environmental justice communities, who are guaranteed savings equal to at least half of the value of the energy generated from their solar subscription.
The program has spurred the installation of community solar arrays located in and serving communities like Waukegan in northern Illinois, a heavily industrial area where community solar built on a landfill provides clean energy and savings to about 1,000 households and the local school district.
A community solar project developed by Reactivate — which focuses on marginalized and underserved communities — in a Chicago suburb provided a total of $186,000 in savings last year to its 650 subscribers, 44% of whom earn less than $20,000 a year.
Mercy Housing, a national nonprofit affordable housing developer, is the anchor tenant for two Reactivate community solar projects that went online in 2024.
The benefits go to two Chicago-area Mercy buildings, with 96 and 65 living units. Mercy Housing senior environmental analyst Max Stewart said they’ve seen significant savings on energy bills, money that can be reinvested into energy efficiency or resident services, and help keep affordable housing projects sustainable. He noted that it can be hard to find organizations willing to make such a big commitment to community solar.
The opportunities available to anchor tenants should get “more awareness,” Stewart said. “It always helps to have someone leading the way.”
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Kari Lydersen is a contributing reporter at Canary Media who covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
Politics
Offshore wind
Climate crisis
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