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Last spring, when the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina installed a giant solar array on its new headquarters in Winston-Salem, leaders of the project hoped it would inspire other nonprofits to follow suit.
Sure enough, it has done just that.
A 400-kilowatt solar array is now being built at the headquarters of Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina, less than two miles from Second Harvest.
“They’re our neighbor,” said Bill Haymore, a longtime Goodwill veteran who has worn many hats and today serves as its chief sustainability officer. “We partner closely with them. So we watched with great envy at the work that they had done, and we followed the model that they set forth.”
The installation will produce enough electricity to power about 40% of the building, Haymore said, and will save the nonprofit over $1 million in energy bills over the coming decades. Those savings will be plowed back into Goodwill’s mission of providing employment, job training, and other opportunities for the community.
What’s more, the clean energy project itself falls squarely within his organization’s sustainability ethos. “The work we are doing in this arena is something that we’ve been doing for 100 years,” Haymore said. “Every time we take a donation, we’re recycling.” But, he added, “we need to be bolder about it and show the community that we’re committed to this work. The solar panels were just one of the things that we have elected to do to reduce our carbon footprint and to be a better steward.”
A behemoth international network, Goodwill is made up of 150 independent organizations, each with its own board of directors and priorities. While the Goodwill serving northwest North Carolina doesn’t have any carbon reduction goals yet, Haymore says the plan is to change that.
“This past year, we purchased carbon-tracking software to help us benchmark where we’re at,” Haymore said. “Once we feel very, very confident with what our carbon footprint is, we’ll be able to measure success.”
As did Second Harvest, Goodwill will reap a 30% tax credit in the form of direct pay — a mechanism established by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act that allows nonprofits to access the incentive, which was formerly available only to entities that pay income tax. The organization also hopes to get a 10% bonus credit since it, like the food bank, is located in a low-income census tract.
These levers, designed to help institutions with no tax liabilities and thin operating margins, remain intact at least through the end of next year — despite the axe that congressional Republicans took last summer to a host of clean energy inducements established or enhanced during the Biden years.
But last summer’s law did include new red tape: Beneficiaries of clean energy tax credits now must verify that no components of their new systems were produced by a “foreign entity of concern.” The requirement took effect at the beginning of this year, spurring Goodwill to contract for the project by Dec. 31. The installation is expected to be completed sometime this fall.
Both Goodwill and Second Harvest were recruited to go solar by the Piedmont Environmental Alliance, a local group that formed the Green Business Network to encourage businesses and nonprofits to install solar, electrify their vehicle fleets, and reduce food waste.
If there was a “silver lining” to last summer’s clean energy rollbacks, it was that “Second Harvest and others were feeling the pressure that these tax credits might not exist forever,” said Will Eley, director of the alliance’s green economy program. “They wanted to move as quickly as possible, and Goodwill was certainly responsive to that.”
Eley and his group have been a key force behind an array of initiatives in Winston-Salem and the surrounding region, including the newly launched “Electrify the Triad” campaign and a training program for clean energy jobs hosted at the Goodwill.
That’s why Eley is most excited about the fact that the solar panels will be installed by workers trained at the nonprofit.
“You can actually see the rooftop from the classroom that’s been used for that,” he said. “It’s the full circle of positive feedback loops. It’s been a lot of fun.”
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