Energy: Commercial & Industrial Solar

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Why is this a Climate Smart indicator?

San José Clean Energy is working towards delivering 100 percent carbon-neutral electricity to all customers by 2030. Rooftop solar panels complement this goal and contribute to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
One of our Bold Goals is to become the world’s first 1 gigawatt solar city by 2040.

Renewable Energy as a Job Creator. Expanding renewable energy, like solar, creates local jobs in construction, electrical work, engineering, and manufacturing.
Lowering Electricity Bills Through Solar. Rooftop solar generates their own electricity, significantly reducing monthly utility bills. Over time, these savings can offset the initial cost of installation and provide households and businesses with long-term financial benefits.
Solar Plus Storage. Solar panels paired with battery storage systems create a more reliable local grid. This combination reduces greenhouse gas emissions by minimizing reliance on natural gas plants and strengths community resilience by lowering the risk of widespread blackouts.

What is the City doing to make progress on this indicator?

Completed

Building reach code incentivizing all-electric buildings (adopted for 2019 and 2022 building code cycles)
Evaluation of local solar energy potential by National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL)
Zero net carbon building demonstration project and video (including solar)
Department of Energy SolSmart certification

In Progress / Ongoing

Ongoing trainings for the public

ABOUT THE DATA

Sources

California Distributed Generation Statistics (CDGS) - Interconnected Project Sites Dataset. The data were filtered to include only projects including solar, categorized as “Commercial” or “Industrial,” and occurring in ZIP codes that lie entirely within San José’s city boundary. Each year’s total includes all projects that were approved by December 31 of that year.

Limitations

Each item in the data set is ZIP code-specific but not address specific or geocoded. Due to the complex nature of San José’s incorporated boundary and overlapping ZIP codes with other cities, it is not possible to precisely count installations in the City of San José using ZIP code data.

Some of the projects in the CDGS dataset include both solar panels and another type of renewable energy generation. For these projects, the entire generation capacity of the project is included, even though it is not possible to know how much of the project’s generation capacity is from solar.

Last updated

July 2025