How worker-ownership helped California Solar create good jobs

An increasingly popular way to attract foreign direct investment is to let the world’s wealthiest trade cash and property investments for citizenship. The $2 billion-a-year industry allows the ultra-rich to buy passports that permit visa-free travel to nearly the entire world, often with no residency requirements. Highly controversial, the industry is marked by a lack of transparency and concerns about what happens to civic ties when citizenship can be bought and sold.

In Jackson, Mississippi, a series of community-led cooperatives are creating opportunities for affordable home ownership. This is part of a trend across the country to create community land trusts. They are financed through donations, other community businesses, or commissions. Though each land trust faces hurdles, they are collectively allowing more access to wealth and ownership in historically low-income neighborhoods.

Redeveloping and repurposing unused real estate provides a path toward economic revitalization. With a combination of public and private grants, the nonprofit group, International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA), has purchased and redeveloped real estate in the town of Ajo, Arizona. The renovated town plaza and Curley School complex contain retail spaces, artist studios, and even house community gardens of the Ajo Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

Mobile home owners in Colorado are beginning to own their own communities due in part to legislation that is making it easier to do so. Resident-owned communities preserve the affordable housing stock, which manufactured home communities make up a large percentage of.

As building developers in Kenya design new structures that are more environmentally friendly and sustainable, they can look to the Garden City Mall in Nairobi as a successful example. This mixed-use development with shopping, residential, and office spaces uses solar energy, which helps cut energy costs by over 30 million shillings each year. The mall also was the first in the region to receive an international green building certification.

Solar energy is a clean, cheap, renewable, and land-efficient resource, making it a valuable technology to scale up in the face of climate concerns and clean energy. Diversifying the supply chain for creating and sourcing solar panels can help make solar energy more reliable when faced with geopolitical and human rights issues.

Two insurance companies, Discovery and Dialdirect, implemented a smartphone app for drivers to report potholes in their city. The companies then fill the potholes and brand them with their logos.

The Diné Naazbaa Partnership (DNP) serves Navajo Nation veterans, connecting them with food, medication, transportation and other necessities, as they’re more likely to be unemployed and far less likely to use or apply for VA services. The DNP has connected with about 1,228 of the 14,700 veterans on the Navajo Nation and has partnered with 370 groups to fund projects that provide housing improvements and emergency financial aid to veterans.

Amidst electricity shortages, Health System Consultant Limited came to a local hospital’s aid, outfitting the medical center with solar panels to ensure patients can still access healthcare services. Since the installation, patients at the General Hospital in Maru say diagnosis speed and the quality of care they receive have improved.

Pakistani households and small businesses independently embraced rooftop solar systems, making Pakistan the world's largest solar panel importer by 2024—a notable success demonstrating the potential of decentralized, economically driven clean energy transitions.