Wikipedia defines community as:
“A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity.”
Last week, I met with Scott Barker and Chun Liang before we attended the event Powering the Energy Transition: WR Community Energy’s 2024 Progress Report. We discussed how solar power projects in Ontario could continue to produce clean, renewable energy into the future. It reminded me how grateful I am to have grown up in this innovative community of Waterloo Region. The enthusiastic speakers at the event highlighted exciting possibilities for the future.
After the event, I invited Chun to dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. As we walked, he shared that, though ethnically Chinese, he was born in India and is Hakka Chinese. In a moment of incredible synchronicity, we noticed a sign for a newly opened restaurant: Indian & Hakka Chinese. I couldn’t resist taking a photo. I ordered chili chicken, a traditional dish that Chun said tasted like his grandmother’s cooking.
The restaurant sign included a word I found deeply significant: and. It’s a word that relates profoundly to the idea of community. Too often, communities form around a single characteristic, fostering an “us versus them” mentality rather than uniting diverse groups. For example, Hakka Chinese faced persecution and sought refuge in India, forming new communities. Later, during rising tensions, they migrated to countries like Canada in the 1970s—a journey similar to my Mennonite ancestors 200 years ago.
Now, humanity has reached every corner of the earth and must form a global community where the word and brings us together despite our differences. Years ago, I encountered Joseph Arthur’s song Travel as Equals, and its lyrics profoundly impacted me:
“The only way we can survive
We travel as equals or not at all.”
Recently, COP29 concluded with an agreement to allocate $300 billion annually to help developing countries transition to clean energy. However, critical questions remain: how will this money be spent, and will it genuinely address climate change? The song’s message reminds us that our current comforts often come at the expense of others—a moral issue, not just a financial one:
“You can’t be in greater comfort
As my pain prevents your fall
The truth will come and tell us, brother,
We travel as equals or not at all.”
The truth, however, can be difficult to confront. I’ve written articles about underperforming or failing systems. For example, Chun mentioned that the Erindale GO station’s solar system, inactive since April 2021, was a net metering system. Unlike FIT or MicroFIT systems, where performance is directly tied to financial returns, net metering can obscure issues unless someone actively monitors it. In large organizations like Metrolinx, such problems often go unnoticed.
Community solar projects, in my view, make more sense than individual home installations. Although my house has favorable exposure for solar panels, the costs would be higher than participating in a community solar initiative. Shared projects benefit from economies of scale in both installation and maintenance, as noted in an NPR article—especially for low-income families.
Consider the example of 750 low-income households in Washington, D.C., benefiting from a community solar project repurposing brownfield space. A lot of careful thought and planning went into this project. However, yesterday using their public portal I discovered significant issues while analyzing this project using our platform yesterday. The data showed no production from July 2022 to November 2023, despite inverter readings indicating that production should have been possible. It appeared the system was disconnected from the grid during that period. Furthermore, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) portal data seemed inaccurate, potentially reflecting expected rather than actual production. I’ve taken the historical information from the inverters and prepared a spreadsheet which shows only 4.6% of the production listed in the EIA portal.
This raises troubling questions. Did the affected households receive the promised energy discounts based on nonexistent production? Current data suggests the system is only producing 36% to 49% of its potential capacity, with half the inverters offline. Such discrepancies highlight systemic issues in community solar projects, where participants cannot easily verify the reliability of their “share” of the system.
Additionally, the structure of community solar programs can incentivize developers to cut corners. Projects are often built quickly and cheaply, with little attention to long-term maintenance. This approach can attract participants in the short term, but problems are passed on to others down the line.
If such issues can arise in the heart of Washington, D.C., what does this mean for the $300 billion pledged globally or the $7 billion allocated within the U.S.? It’s a sobering thought.
While I can’t solve the world’s problems alone, I believe in the power of a global community. Together, we can rise to the challenge. Here is my commitment to you:
“Yes, if I’m with you, we will always
Travel as equals or not at all.”