Spanish 
English 
Hard as it is to believe, the pilot phase of Georgia BRILLANTE that started in September 2023 is heading for a landing later this summer. However, with the extra fuel provided by a $156M grant from the EPA’s Solar for All initiative, the program is gearing up for Georgia BRIGHT 2.0 to take off in January 2025 to reach thousands more low-income families throughout Georgia. Capital Good Fund founder and CEO Andy Posner shares insight into where the program is going.
What are the goals for Georgia BRIGHT 2.0?
We are scaling our efforts. We are hoping to reach between 15,000 and 20,000 households and to train and place up to thousand people in well-paying local solar jobs that stay in the community. Capital Good Fund will soon be hiring dozens more people for our staff and adding a new physical location in Metro Atlanta where we will be able to host training and community events that can act as a home base for people to work out of. Thanks to the Solar for All grant, we will also be able to cover “enabling repairs” such as replacing an old roof that would otherwise keep them from going solar. We are also going to require that participating companies and organizations allocate a percentage of their energy savings to low-income families in either cash assistance or equivalent value, which will increase the number of households that benefit from the program even if it’s indirectly.
What has surprised you about the Georgia BRIGHT pilot?
It has been interesting how committed people are to having a battery, even if it means they won’t save as much on their electricity bills. About 60% of our clients installed a backup battery. The weather is becoming more extreme with every summer being hotter than the last and more hurricanes each year. Due to climate change and electrification, power outages are going to become more common and our clients value having the assuredness of 24/7 access to electricity even in an outage.
What is an effective strategy that you will apply to Georgia BRIGHT 2.0 and programs in other states?
We are gaining momentum, but it takes multiple efforts to get the word out. We can’t make Georgia BRIGHT work without the support of local groups on the ground like Southern Environmental Law Center and Georgia Interfaith Power & Light. We are creating a community advisory board that will reflect the whole state to cultivate more relationships, which are so crucial. For example, we partnered with Georgia Conservation Voters who is currently canvassing people one household at a time to build the necessary trust to get people to believe that Georgia BRIGHT is for real. We have already gotten a lot of leads from that ongoing outreach.
What has been the most gratifying part of Georgia BRIGHT?
Hearing the stories about the people who are already saving money through Georgia BRIGHT. My favorite might be a client who got a system installed with a battery and less than two weeks later someone backed into a transformer, and he didn’t lose power. It’s great knowing we have the funding to scale the program, so it really makes a difference. I had a vision for how to tackle climate justice 15 years ago and it’s finally becoming a reality.
