How To Solarize Your City with Local Investment (and Save the World)

May 14, 2026

This week, I completed a year-long study for Mayor Larry Agran of Irvine, California, on whether Irvine could achieve energy self-reliance through local solarization. The answer is a resounding “yes,” as long as a local investment fund finances the program. By paying 7% per year to investors, the City could completely solarize every residential and commercial building over 20 years, with enough battery storage to largely unplug from the utility grid, and in the process make millions in net revenue for the City.

Irvine is a city of 330,000 people in Orange County, roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego (and, fun fact: where The New York Times pundit Ezra Klein grew up). Among the important facts uncovered by the study:

Over the next 20 years, Irvine residents and businesses—if they don’t solarize—are likely to pay Southern California Edison (SCE), the local utility, $58 billion.
The total cost of meeting the City’s foreseeable electricity needs with local solar installations is about $16 billion. Total electrification means converting natural gas furnaces and appliances to electric alternatives and converting gasoline-dependent cars to electric vehicles. The projections also take into account likely population growth and economic growth.
Preventing the leakage of $42 billion to SCE would create thousands of jobs and pump up the local tax base by millions of dollars each year. Besides being good for the planet, solarization could deliver the most powerful economic development program the City has ever enjoyed.

Investing $16 billion to save $42 billion explains how the fund can deliver a high rate of return to investors, with very low risk, and leftover profits for the fund managers. While I propose that the City of Irvine create the fund itself, a private entity could do so as well. So could a community choice aggregation agency. It’s a huge economic bonanza for any community-minded entity that decides to move in this direction.

I recommend that the City of Irvine first prove the concept with a small fund of, maybe, $10 million, and then expand the scope. With a steady 7% return, a fund like this could easily grow into the billions.

The analysis has the following conservatisms:

No further energy-efficiency measures are assumed, though the scope for these is huge and could greatly reduce the cost of solarization.
No cost reductions for solar cells and batteries are assumed, though most analysts project steep cost declines.
Today’s tariffs on Chinese solar equipment are assumed to remain in place, though they could be lifted as soon as next week!
No new tax credits are assumed, though a climate-friendly state or federal government might re-enact these.
No increases in oil prices are projected—from, say, a hypothetical war in the Persian Gulf—though these calamities are already improving the global cost-benefit calculus for solar.
No utility-based solar is required. It’s too expensive. And between available roofspace, car parks, and public land, Irvine has more than enough area for solar cells to meet the annual electricity demand.

How applicable might this analysis be to your city? Skeptics might point out that Irvine is a sunny city with above-average electricity rates (now about 30 cents per kilowatt-hour). But the truth is that electricity rates are rising dramatically everywhere in the country, in part because of AI data centers, but more importantly, because of the need for expensive repairs and replacement of obsolete transmission and distribution lines. As electricity prices skyrocket and solar prices come down, it’s just a matter of time before your community will be able to follow in Irvine’s footsteps. (I’ll discuss the dramatic implications for utilities in another piece.)

Forget Wall Street (it’s a bubble about to explode). Forget the bond market (it’s too nervous about the Trump dollar). If there was ever a strategy for how local investment can revitalize your community, pay you a good return, and save the world…this is it.

If you’re interested in getting a copy of this study, please fill out this short form. If you’re interested in having me perform a similar analysis for your city, drop me a line.

The paper also points to other cities around the world that have similar solarization ambitions and have gone further than Irvine: Adelaide in Australia; Barcelona in Spain; Dezhou in China; Freiburg and Munich in Germany. And our top article in this issue of The Main Street Journal points out that the United Kingdom plans to use investment crowdfunding to accelerate its clean energy transition.

Our other articles show the importance of exemplary investment advisors, sharehold activism, and rethinking our monetary policy.

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NEWS

The UK Plans to Crowdfund Clean Energy (Corporate Knights, May 5) to advance its Local Power program, aiming to support 1,000 grassroots projects by 2030 through a blend of investment crowdfunding and institutional investors.
How a Financial Advisor in Boston Helps Her Clients Drive Local Impact (ImpactAlpha, May 5) highlights the work of Carrie Endries, an advisor at Reynders McVeigh: “You can really see how your money is attached to something that you can feel proud of. You’re going by this multifamily housing complex, and it’s got solar panels on the roof from Sunwealth, and you invested in Sunwealth, and you know that’s in the fund that you invested in.” More of this, please!
The Securities and Exchange Commission Tried to Silence Activist Investors (Grist, April 30), but As You Sow, a shareholder advocacy group, pushed back.
The Energy and Growth Strategy That States and Regions Are Missing (Brookings, April 23) notes that electricity is becoming a more limiting factor for economic growth. “Across the political spectrum, states and regions are underinvesting in the institutional capacity needed to translate technological progress into affordable, reliable power and economic competitiveness.” Of course, this capacity should include local solar.
The Creation of New Money for the Green Transition (npj Climate Action, April 13) proposes a Green Monetary Policy that would enable central banks to invest in sustainable projects by creating new money. Move over carbon taxes, and bring in the green digital currencies.

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NC3 CEO Chris Miller and Holmes and Pleasant Grove Developer Brent Forsberg visited the SW Lansing building site on Tuesday, May 12. The site is the location of the first project to be funded by the Lansing Growth Fund, the first Michigan Diversified Community Investment Fund (DCIF). The DCIF will enable any community member, regardless of wealth, to become an investor in the mixed-use $8M+ project, as well as other real estate and business investments in their community. Backed and financially supported by the Ingham County Land Bank and county, the project is also receiving financial support from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the City of Lansing, and a host of other local, regional, and national capital providers.

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