Professor Works to Grant Solar Energy Access to Communities

Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy Gilbert Michaud, along with partners from the University of Pennsylvania and Indiana University, will conduct research into solar panel installation projects using a $2.5 million research grant they received from the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Michaud has researched large-scale solar energy projects proposed by state and local governments in Great Lakes communities for several years under previous grants from the Department of Energy. With the new grant, Michaud said he aims to study solar projects at 24 rural and suburban sites across the U.S. beginning in January 2025. 

Through interviews and meetings with locals and policy making agencies, Michaud said he plans to survey these communities’ attitudes about and involvement in solar projects over a three-year period. He said this will continue to provide him with valuable insights into reasons behind community resistance to solar projects. 

Michaud said his research will focus on energy justice — ensuring citizens are educated by the government about proposed solar projects so they can have a say in them.

“We’re trying to figure out do people know about these projects?” Michaud said. “When a project gets proposed, who’s learning about it? Is it local government? Is it private citizens? Is it business owners?”

In addition to poor government communication to citizens, Michaud finds many rural communities’ reluctance to support solar projects stems from the potential of large scale solar developments to eliminate jobs, especially in communities with long histories of fossil fuel-powered industries such as coal mines and power plants. 

Michaud said when he interviewed locals whose families were supported and employed by fossil-fuel powered industries, they expressed strong opposition to solar energy installations. Their opposition came from solar projects requiring fewer maintenance workers than industrial facilities, leading to a fear of employment loss.

“In those regions where they have coal mines and coal fired power plants, for better or for worse, there’s sort of a legacy of fossil fuel tradition,” Michaud said.

Fourth-year student Sophia Petrosino said the loss of jobs has been accompanied by the creation of new ones. Petrosino said she originally majored in biology but switched her major to environmental policy after she started assisting Michaud with his research in October 2023.

Petrosino said she helped Michaud interview many Ohio community residents and closely studied the impacts of solar implementation on their economies. She created a research poster from her findings, which she and Michaud presented to Congress in Washington, D.C.   

During the conference, Petrosino and Michaud said many interviewees feared converting agricultural land into solar farms would deprive agricultural workers of their jobs. However, doing so not only creates thousands of new job opportunities for construction workers and technicians to build the panels and monitor their performance, it allows farmers to accrue more profits than they would have solely selling crops, according to Petrosino.

Using these findings, Petrosino and Michaud said they hope to explain to those in rural communities how transitioning from fossil fuels to solar power is a wise course of action. Petrosino said she considered her presentation in Washington, D.C to be one of the most memorable parts of her research experience with Michaud.

“While we were in DC, we actually got to go to the House of Representatives, and we had got to meet with Congress members and their staffers, to really help ensure and motivate them to vote and pass climate friendly legislatives,” Petrosino said. “That was a really cool opportunity because I felt like I was actually making a difference.”

Petrosino said she enjoyed how her presentation allowed her to represent Loyola’s dedication to climate studies and environmentally conscious philosophy. She said she hopes Loyola’s name made a lasting impression on the members of Congress at the conference and inspired them to take action on climate change.

In addition, Petrosino is optimistic Loyola’s extensive advertisement of its sustainability programs, including recent plans to adopt solar electricity, will inspire other universities to prioritize the environment. 

“Once we set out our plan for how we’re going to represent solar, I think other institutions will be able to adapt that,” Petrosino said. “And it will give them the blueprint of how to do what Loyola is doing.”

In April 2023, staff in Loyola’s Facilities Department, under advisement from Aaron Durnbaugh, the director of sustainability at the School of Environmental Sustainability, signed a power purchase agreement with Double Black Diamond, a state government-commissioned solar farm in central Illinois, the Phoenix previously reported.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2025,  Loyola’s campuses will be powered entirely off solar electricity from Double Black Diamond. 

The agreement was signed to support Loyola’s 2015-2025 Climate Action Plan, in which SES faculty and staff articulated their goal of achieving carbon neutrality across the university by 2025. SES Founding Dean Nancy Tuchman said the SES originally considered installing solar panels on the roofs of campus buildings but found this to be an inconvenient and inefficient solution.

“In the end, everybody thought that the very best way to go is to go all the way and go completely solar with this power purchase agreement,” Tuchman said. “That was really, I think, the best decision to move us forward as quickly as possible.”

The Double Black Diamond contract doesn’t just advance Loyola’s sustainability, Durnbaugh said, it also provides economic benefits to other Midwest communities, especially St. Louis, the nearest major city.

“[The Double Black Diamond solar farm is] being built by union labor, primarily out of St. Louis,” Durnbaugh said. “They’re making job opportunities for low income and diverse folk that want to get into the solar industry. That’s a carved out part of the contract, so that’s some of the stuff that we’re super excited about.” 

Through their research, Michaud and Petrosino investigated how the creation of job opportunities is a benefit of solar installation. Double Black Diamond was particularly interesting for Michaud because it was commissioned through state legislation, the type of policy he focuses on in his studies. For these reasons, Durnbaugh said he highly values Michaud’s research although he isn’t directly involved in it. 

“I think that’s really important research, because actually some of the biggest progress that has been made on climate action and on renewable or sustainable technologies has happened at the state level,” Durnbaugh said.