Lancaster Embarks on Ambitious Green Building Goals

LANCASTER, Calif. — In March, the Lancaster City Council voted unanimously to change the city’s zoning code to require housing developers to install solar energy systems with every new home built, and it is the first U.S. city to do so.

This is the latest development in the city’s enthusiastic approach to turning Lancaster into “a place the solar industry comes to industry,” Mayor R. Rex Parris said in a statement. Solar Lancaster, a citywide solar program, was founded in 2010 in partnership with SolarCity, SunPower and other installers with an original goal of having 50 homes or businesses adopt clean solar power. That number has since doubled to more than 100 solar sites.

The program offers accessible solar financing for homeowners and business owners, working to simplify the process of going solar through discounted solar pricing, custom solar system designs and solar system monitoring. According to Parris, a solar installer in Lancaster can issue a permit within 15 minutes, whereas in Palmdale, Calif., it can take two months.

The new Residential Zones Update, along with other green building provisions, requires new single-family homes to meet minimum solar system requirements. Homes on lots of 7,000 square feet or more must have a solar system of 1.0 kilowatts to 1.5 kilowatts, while homes of up to 100,000 square feet must have a system of at least 1.5 kilowatts. The ordinance will take effect Jan. 1, 2014.

The plan creates some flexibility for builders in that they can install larger systems on certain homes and smaller ones on others in subdivisions to meet the subdivision’s minimum average of solar use. Developers can also decide to opt out of the requirement and purchase solar credits from another development in Lancaster.

While the change sets a new standard for cities across America, Parris still has future goals for the community to achieve. He hopes to eventually require all new homes to meet LEED certification standards, require grey water systems on all new homes and eventually require the city’s street lights to use LED bulbs and batteries so they will be entirely off-grid.

Apart from creating Solar Lancaster, Parris also led the city council to create the California Clean Energy Authority, bringing utility-scale solar developers and a pipeline of 700 megawatts of large-scale solar within the city’s boundaries, and the High Desert Power Authority, which proposed a new transmission project to the state’s grid operator to increase the delivery of renewable-generated electricity to other municipal utilities, relieving grid congestion between parts of California.