SunPower Basis Opens Grant Functions for 2023

During the last 9 years, the SunPower Basis has awarded over $1 million to organizations in an effort to increase entry to photo voltaic. At SunPower, we’ve got lengthy believed {that a} future with a livable local weather is a basic proper, and that entry to reasonably priced photo voltaic power and participation in photo voltaic financial alternatives are crucial to constructing that future. In pursuit of this objective, in 2021, SunPower launched 25×25, a set of complete range, fairness, and inclusion commitments designed to make sure the advantages of residence photo voltaic and storage serve American households, job seekers, and companies which have been traditionally underserved. As we glance to the way forward for the SunPower Basis, we’ve realigned its assets to raised serve our 25×25 targets and are excited to announce three new areas of focus and grant alternatives.

The SunPower Basis will tackle systemic inequities and obstacles to photo voltaic entry, affordability, and financial participation by way of three new grant tracks:

1. The Workforce Improvement monitor ensures that the trade’s rising workforce alternatives are accessible for all. IREC’s 2022 Photo voltaic Jobs Census discovered that the residential photo voltaic workforce grew by 11%, with employers anticipating this progress trajectory to proceed. Girls signify 31% of the trade, relative to 47% for the general financial system, and black illustration is at 8% within the trade, relative to 11% of the general financial system. This monitor deploys funding to right these inequities, by prioritizing funding for profession consciousness, vocational coaching, and STEM careers for ladies, folks of coloration, and different underrepresented identities.
2. The Minority and Girls Owned Enterprise Enterprise (MWBE) monitor identifies enterprise possession as a vital step in closing the wealth hole and guaranteeing financial fairness for communities. In actual fact, it’s estimated that black enterprise homeowners maintain 12x the wealth of their nonbusiness proudly owning friends. As photo voltaic continues to develop, so does the necessity for photo voltaic and photo voltaic adjoining subcontractors. At present, solely 7.3% of small building companies are black owned, and solely 5.8% are girls owned. This monitor helps non-profits delivering technical help, teaching or enterprise accelerator companies to set up, provider, or subcontractor MWBE within the photo voltaic trade.  
3. The Photo voltaic Accessibility, Affordability, and Resiliency monitor helps communities entry the assets they want for reasonably priced and resilient photo voltaic power options. Low to average earnings (LMI) communities are much less prone to afford residential photo voltaic, have decrease homeownership charges, have decrease charges of residence enchancment upgrades, be at increased threat of dealing with antagonistic results from local weather disasters, and lack familiarity with photo voltaic merchandise. This monitor helps non-profits conducting structural residence enhancements and photo voltaic deployments in LMI or local weather impacted communities, in addition to instructional consciousness campaigns on the advantages of going photo voltaic.

By committing to those focus areas, we hope to extra rapidly obtain our 25×25 targets by the shut of the 2025 fiscal yr:

1. Improve range in our workforce reaching 25% black and Latinx illustration, and 40% girls illustration
2. 25% of our new U.S. residential clients to be made up of people that stay in deprived communities
3. 25% of the brand new sellers and subcontractors we work with being owned by girls or folks of coloration

Grant Utility Course of

The grant software is stay and can shut on October 20, 2023. Interviews with certified candidates and SunPower Basis workers will happen between October and November, and grant awardees will likely be introduced in early December.

1. Preliminary software due by October twentieth, 2023.
2. Interviews with qualifying candidates and SunPower Basis workers in October 2023 and November 2023.
3. Grant awardees introduced in early December 2023.

Earlier SunPower grantees embrace:

1. Grid Options
   1. In 2022 and 2023, we awarded funding to Grid Options to deploy two girls’s solely cohorts of their Set up Fundamentals Coaching in Sacramento, CA.
2. Photo voltaic Power Worldwide
   1. In 2022 and 2023, we labored with SEI to launch the SunPower Girls in Photo voltaic Scholarship. This grant funded scholarships for 37 girls to obtain in particular person and digital photo voltaic coaching.
3. Footprint Mission
   1. In 2021, we deployed a grant to the Footprint Mission to help their efforts to deploy photo voltaic microgrids in communities impacted by local weather change and local weather disasters.
4. We Care Photo voltaic
   1. In 2021 and 2022, our colleagues within the Philippines partnered with We Care Photo voltaic to work on their We Share Photo voltaic Suitcases program. This program deployed suitcases to youth in power poor communities throughout the Philippines with photo voltaic gear kits that the scholars discovered tips on how to assemble and use in occasions of catastrophe to gentle up faculties, group facilities, and refugee camps.
5. Good Solar + Habitat for Humanity
   1. In 2023, we labored with Good Solar and Habitat for Humanity to deploy 140 panels to 13 reasonably priced housing models in Sacramento and took part in an worker volunteer day.