About 35 people gathered at the Ann Arbor Senior Center Monday afternoon for a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the new solar panel installations around Ann Arbor which will provide over 500 kilowatts of solar power. The ceremony was part of Ann Arbor’s fourth annual A2Zero Week, which celebrates the city’s plan towards transitioning the community to carbon neutrality.
A2Zero is a city-wide plan unanimously adopted in 2020 to transition to complete carbon neutrality by 2030. This objective includes transitioning the electrical grid to 100% renewable energy, switching to electric vehicles and appliances, reducing miles traveled in vehicles by 50% and more.
Simi Barr, City of Ann Arbor energy analyst, spoke at the event and said the financial and sustainable impacts of one of the ten solar arrays installed since 2023 were promising.
“Since the activation of solar at the site just a couple weeks ago, over 95% of the electricity used in (the Ann Arbor Senior Center) has been clean and renewable,” Barr said. “We are incredibly excited by the sustainability benefits of this, but also by the operational cost savings that these installations unlock that allows more funds to go towards operating expenses, other energy efficiency projects, and this can really just go on to compound with greater and greater benefits. We project tens of thousands of dollars in savings to the city because of these arrays, and we’re excited to see that part of the coalition and to honor these over the coming years.”
Ann Arbor Mayor Christopher Taylor (D) thanked U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, who was present at the event, and said her advocacy for Ann Arbor to receive more money than previously allocated from the Biden-Harris American Rescue Plan helped make the installation possible.
“With respect to the funding of this particular (solar) array and many arrays throughout the entire city, as Representative Dingell indicated, this is thanks to the Biden-Harris American Rescue Plan without which none of this would have been possible,” Taylor said. “The city of Ann Arbor saw $11 million dollars (before) … Mrs. Dingell stepped up, and she has again and again for our community. A couple of weeks later, $26.5 million goes in the spreadsheet.”
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Rackham student Claire Briglio compared different solutions to carbon neutrality and spoke on the importance of solar panels in the long run.
“I think (solar is) one of the easier to understand and grasp concepts in terms of getting renewable energy,” Briglio said. “I think things like geothermal are not as easy to grasp, in terms of different ways to make things more renewable. And then in terms of transportation and EVs, I think those are also really important because I think people are having a hard time grasping them at the moment because of the high startup costs. But when you get people to understand that in the long term, you’re getting a bigger payoff.”
In an interview with The Daily, Taylor said the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan collaborate often on sustainability issues.
“We work with the University of Michigan all the time with respect to how we can accomplish our common goals and accomplishing carbon neutrality is indeed one of our common goals,” Taylor said. “We move forward together. We’re always talking to each other because we both know that this is incredibly important.”
Barr said students can become involved in the push for carbon neutrality in Ann Arbor through multiple opportunities including A2Zero initiatives
“We have a lot of community events where we’re interacting with the community, getting public input, all of which students can be involved in,” Barr said. “Another way is through our A2Zero Ambassadors program, where we’re working with members of the community that have interest in sustainability and the A2Zero plan, and they go through a multiple-week cohort through our office where they learn about the A2Zero plan, and then get to work on a neighborhood project to actually implement something that moves us toward that carbon neutrality.”
Daily Summer News Editor Edra Timmerman can be reached at [email protected].
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