Nonprofit Helps Sun Shine In Hopkinton
Boston Community Capital, a Boston-based nonprofit, is partly to thank for the recent unveiling of 1,800 new solar panels that now grace the roofs of Hopkinton's middle and high schools as well as its police and fire stations.
Boston Community Capital first entered the solar energy market a few years ago to provide renewable and more economical energy options to affordable and low-income housing projects. But the organization realized that it could improve its overall impact by taking advantage of tax credits if it created a for-profit division, and soon the organization launched the BCC Solar Energy Advantage.
The new enterprise allowed the organization to be a financial partner for nonprofits and municipalities. The resulting additional business also helps the organization to better meet its original goal of improving affordable housing.
"If we can be a less expensive source of solar power for affordable housing because we also serve larger customers like municipalities, that was important to us," said DeWitt Jones, president of BCC Solar Energy Advantage.
With the Hopkinton project complete, BCC Solar Energy Advantage has funded about 1.4 megawatts of solar energy in the state, which makes it one of the largest solar energy producers in Massachusetts.
Solar Savior
Hopkinton's plans for solar panel installation seemed doomed when tax credits available to nonprofits (and municipalities) were cut last fall to combat the growing recession.
Fortunately, the solar panel designer/installer that the town had been working with - Borrego Solar of Lowell - was the same installer that Boston Community Capital had employed on a number of its previous projects. Borrego put the two in touch and the project was able to move forward.
Under the financial partnership between the town of Hopkinton and Boston Community Capital, the nonprofit's subsidiary owns all of the equipment and the energy that the solar panels produce. The town, in turn, pays BCC (at a reduced cost) for the energy that it uses from the panels.
Jones said the benefit of the partnership for the town is two-fold: it assures the town that part of its electricity bill is locked in for 20 years and it allows the town to go through with the project that otherwise would have proven too expensive for it to subsidize on its own.
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