With an aging grid and a wave of incoming data centers, could schools help solve North Carolina’s energy crunch? Sustainability think tank Frontier Group and advocacy group Environment North Carolina released a report that found that the state’s schools could host 900 megawatts of solar energy. That’s enough to power all the homes in a Durham-sized city, or 150,000 homes.
The report’s authors analyzed aerial photos of school roofs across the state. They totaled at least 1,300 football fields worth of unoccupied rooftop real estate. If filled with solar panels, that much energy would offset a little more than 1% of North Carolina’s annual power needs.
There are additional local benefits to expanding clean energy production at schools, according to the report, such as chipping away at monthly utility bills. At least 105 schools in North Carolina already host solar panels, according to a 2023 inventory by Generation180.
