Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs offer a way to finance solar and energy efficiency measures by allowing commercial and residential property owners to pay back clean energy project scoping, equipment and installation costs through their property taxes. City collective solar purchasing programs pool the purchasing power of residents, businesses and municipalities interested in solar-otherwise known as buying solar in bulk-thereby cutting solar's already dropping costs by an additional 10-20 percent. Local government programs that support collective purchasing and offer PACE financing: Cities like Chicago, Illinois, Fort Collins, Colorado, and Kansas City, Missouri have made solar more accessible to residents and businesses with programs that make solar easier to afford.To help speed deployment of solar in urban areas, the report recommends: But city policies can be especially important, because they often address those 'last-mile' barriers that stand in the way of solar's advance. These days, the main drivers of solar growth often include federal and state policies and incentives-and, of course, solar's own plummeting costs. Importantly, it offers policy recommendations that cities can use to spur solar growth and offer benefits to urban dwellers across the country.

Titled Shining Cities: Harnessing the Benefits of Solar Energy in America, the report explores how leading cities have been promoting the installation of solar power.

That's why innovative urban solar policies that promote the clean power of the sun can be key to lowering electric costs, increasing grid reliability and resilience, mitigating climate change, creating good-paying local jobs, and helping all of us breathe cleaner air, according to a new report by Environment America. The metropolitan areas that cities anchor are places with high electric demand.

More than 57 million people live in our country's 100 largest cities-1 in 6 Americans, in fact.

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