Energy: Distributed Generation (Commercial & Industrial Solar)

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Why is this a Climate Smart indicator?

One of Climate Smart’s four key strategies is to power our community with 100% carbon-neutral electricity by 2030.
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.
Increasing the amount of distributed renewable energy capacity in San José has additional benefits:
- 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 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

Evaluation of local solar energy potential by National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL, 2017)
Zero net carbon building demonstration project and video (including solar) (August 2019)
Department of Energy SolSmart certification (2019)
Building reach code incentivizing all-electric buildings (adopted for 2019 and 2022 building code cycles)

In Progress / Ongoing

Evaluating

Automation options for SJCE’s Peak Rewards Virtual Power Plan program that would allow businesses to earn greater rewards by enabling smart thermostats, building management systems, or batteries to automatically respond to grid signals within limits set by the business owner
Power Purchase Agreement Offers or On Bill Financing, which would remove up front cost barriers to large solar and storage installations.

ABOUT THE DATA

Sources & Methods

Distributed renewable energy capacity in San José is pulled annually from the California Distributed Generation Statistics (CDGS) - Interconnected Project Sites Dataset. For this metric, the data are filtered to include only projects categorized as “Commercial” or “Industrial” and occurring in ZIP codes that lie entirely within San José’s city boundary. Technology Type is filtered to only include Solar PV and Photovoltaic projects. Data under System Size AC is summed for each year of interest and converted from kWh to MWh. Each year’s total includes all projects that were approved by December 31st 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

May 2026