Working With Us

In order to make “Solar Commoning” a standard community economy practice of the 21st century energy transition, we need your help.

Our vision for Solar Commons is based on the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Solar Commons scalability analysis. This showed that Solar Commons could quickly scale to a minimum potential of 10 gigawatts over the coming years. As we build the living lab prototypes that demonstrate value, the standards that create security for investors and funders, and the robust legal and digital peer governance tools that create DIY iteration, we imagine working with communities, governments, investors and donors to achieve our vision.

Imagine: legislators could create Solar Commons policy mandating that utilities set aside ten percent of their electric grid capacity for Solar Commoning as a public good. State and city governments could use Solar Commoning mandates to pay reparations to Indigenous and Black communities. Good corporate neighbors could sponsor Solar Commons in urban neighborhoods where they own factories with large, flat roofs and large electricity loads. Super wealthy individuals could use the Solar Commons Model as Andrew Carnegie in the first US Gilded Age used his model for '“free public libraries:” as a participatory social form in which enormous wealth accumulation could be securely distributed around the country in support of local, enduring community well being. Charitable foundations could serve their community missions by sponsoring neighborhood Solar Commons. Neighborhood associations could create and peer-govern revenue for their mutual aid work by building a Solar Commons which pays for itself (through electricity bill savings) over time.

The Solar Commons nonprofit is looking for community partners, funders, donors and researchers with a social imagination to make a more just energy transition through Solar Commoning. The sun shines for everyone.

Contact Kathryn Milun (President of Solar Commons) at kmilun@yahoo.com.