Solar Summit Speakers

LOS ANGELES, CA-Solar power on apartment rooftops could generate up to 300 megawatts of power within City of Los Angeles boundaries in the next five to 10 years, according to a new report by the Los Angeles Business Council’s recent Sustainability Summit. In addition, a pilot program could create citywide rooftop solar installations by 2012, says the report, which is titled Making a Market: Multifamily Rooftop Solar and Social Equity in Los Angeles.

Based on what the business council calls an extensive property survey, “many of the rooftops with the greatest solar power are found in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods of the city,” the council said in issuing the report. The “social equity” aspect of the study was an important one, the council says, as researchers from UCLA and USC, working in collaboration with the LABC Institute and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, sought to determine whether the benefits of a rooftop solar energy program could be brought to low-income residents of Los Angeles. “It is easier and less expensive to harness great quantities of solar power from multi-family roofs than from single-family homes or smaller commercial rooftops