French luxury fashion house Chanel is investing $35 million in a partnership with a solar provider to install solar arrays on low-income apartment buildings throughout California.
The partnership with San Francisco-based Sunrun would lower tenants’ electric bills by bringing solar power to 100 properties across the state, according to the Los Angeles Times. It would benefit residents who typically wouldn’t be able to access solar energy and the savings that comes with it. The partnership has completed installations at 21 properties, all in Southern California.
Sunrun CEO Lynn Jurich said that getting solar arrays on all 100 properties “will be enough for about 30,000 low-income residents.”
“They’ll get solar panels on their rooftops that will essentially save them about $50 per month on their electric power,” she said. “Most of their electricity will be free for the 20-plus years.”
Chanel is also funding 20,000 hours of installation job training in the first year of the partnership, according to the Times.
Effective this year, California requires solar roofs on new single-family homes and multifamily properties fewer than three stories, with some exceptions. It was the first state in the country to adopt such a requirement when it did so in 2018.
Sunrun focuses on retrofitting existing buildings. The partnership with Chanel will extend several years and will help finance Sunrun’s goal to provide solar power to 10,000 multifamily households.
As of early Monday, Sunrun’s stock price has tripled over the last year. That 300 percent growth is well ahead of the solar market’s 120 percent growth over that period, according to Yahoo Finance. [LAT] — Dennis Lynch