Written questions and answers with Tepfirah Rushdan, director of the Detroit Office of Sustainability, in the Solar district of the city.
Mayor Mike Duggan and other city officials share information about the selected Solar district with parishioners during a press conference in January 2025.
Detroit modeled how Clean Energy solutions with communities can be put together with the combination of the urban revitalization efforts with sustainability goals. The climate goals of the Motor City are ambitious: By 2034, Detroit aims to supply 100% of its municipal buildings with clean energy and to obtain 50% of its electricity from clean sources in the next three years. On the way, the city promotes a number of co-benefits, including improved public health, more energy efficiency and affordability as well as high-quality jobs and opportunities.
As part of this strategy, the Office for Sustainability and Department for Neighborhoods in Detroit is composed in order to implement the city's solar initiative in the neighborhood, build up the solar arrangements in the open country, which is surrounded by communities that benefit from the ambient area. Five districts were selected due to interest in the residents, and a total of 167 hectares of land are equipped with solar fields, increased garden beds and other landscape design. Led by Mayor Mike Duggan and informed by input of thousands of Detroiters, the effort is one of the first steps to achieve the major climate goals of the city. Due to the provision of clean energy and appealing residents and local non-profit organizations, solar districts will use free areas and offer money efficiency upgrades for the surrounding houses.
Tepfirah Rushdan, director of the Sustainability Office since 2024.
I spoke to Tepfirah Rushdan, Detroits director of sustainability to learn more about the city's solar district, how the municipalities were involved in every step of the process and their advice for other local managers who want to build up more sustainable futures for their cities.
How does the solar district fit into the larger strategy for Detroit's climate and energy strategy in Detroit??
The Solar Neighborhoods project is one of several strategies that the city of Detroit uses to fix climate change, and the one that has the most direct effects. By creating enough clean energy to supply 127 urban city buildings with electricity, we can compensate for this amount of use of fossil fuels. In contrast to other cities that build hundreds of miles away solar, Detroit mainly takes on free land in its own neighborhoods and brings it back to important use that the surrounding districts particularly benefit from the entire city.
As a city, we also invest considerably into the conversion of our vehicle fleet into fully electrical, hybrids and in some cases operated by vehicles operated with hydrogen fuel cells. As part of our climate, we are working on reducing the CO2 footprint of our own facilities and demanding our larger buildings privately owned to take similar steps through energy and water benchmarking regulation.
We are also proud of our partnership with American Forest and others to plant 75,000 new trees in Detroit in order to rebuild our Baum -Baldachin.
Why is the community input important in this project?
Simply put, community input drove this project from the start. From the beginning, Mayor Mike Duggan made it clear that Solarfelder would only be placed in districts who were actively looking for the occasion and overwhelmed the residents living there. This contradicts the solar projects and states, which are often sitting in other cities, against the express wishes of the nearby residents.
The most important thing is that each of the remaining homeowners who live in the planned solar array -footprint, voluntarily decided offers to buy their houses and support the move to a new home.
Community members who take part in a meeting in which designs are presented for the solar systems.
For the few who did not want to go, we simply redesigned the border of the solar straw to carve them. This not only meant that they would stay in their long -term home, but this change in the area of the community advantages of the neighborhood and entitled them to thousands of dollars of energy efficiency -upgrades into their home.
How do you make sure that the wishes and concerns of the communities are properly heard? How often – and how – do you take members of the community with this project?
With our Ministry of Neighborhoods and our Sustainability Office, we carried out a comprehensive engagement procedure in the community to ensure that every resident who lives in each of the Solarviertel has fully understood the proposal and options. We held numerous community meetings and also went from door to door to make sure we reached every resident.
Our approach was to take as much time as necessary to ensure that all questions were answered so that they could make the decision that was best for them, their families and their neighborhood.
How did the input from Community members shape the various solar -array -without? What will the last lots look like?
Community input played a major role in this project. It was the feedback of the community that created us in the direction of a community advantage program for homeowners in the Solarviertel, but outside the actual arrays. This was one of the biggest factors for creating neighborhood support for the project.
The neighbors not only decided themselves if a solar array was useful for their neighborhood, but also the process of what they will look like. The residents came together to design the appearance of the site inside and outside the arrays.
They chose from decorative fence options, perennials and ornamental trees as attractive visual buffers as well as flower meadows and/or agrivoltaics within the arrays, and the results are breathtaking.
These graphics show the variety of solar fields, whereby communities working with the developers to select the layouts that have best fulfilled their needs in the types of plants and fences that are installed.
What other advantages do municipalities receive from the Solar district project?
The most obvious advantage of the initiative of the Solarviertel is the removal of failures and the use of large strips from empty land, which have been attributed to an attractive annoyance for illegal dumping and other undesirable activities to an attractive, productive and targeted use. This alone was important for the residents of these districts, who often felt like they had been forgotten.
The more personal benefit will be felt by the owners of occupied houses in every Solar district who stayed outside the arrays and lives. Depending on the number of ACRES that each neighborhood produces in Solar, each home owner inmates receives between 15,000 and 25,000 US dollars of energy efficiency improvements to their houses in order to reduce energy consumption and reduce their energy costs. These upgrades recently began in our neighborhoods in phase 1, in which homeowners from a list of upgrades such as new windows or a new roof, energy -efficient stoves and hot water can be selected or even their own solar collectors.
What advice do you have for other local officials who want to build clean energy projects in your cities or cities?
Listen to the residents because they are those who will live with the result. We are firmly convinced that Detroit's solar neighborhood project was supported so enthusiastically because we let the neighbors decide whether they wanted a solar system in their neighborhood, and we took the time to understand and address their concerns.
For mayors and local officials who want to learn more about climate action plans or support with a current plan, our experts help here to support cities in the development of tailor -made climate action plans that meet the needs of the community and offer access to resources and financing options. You can find more information at: www.edf.org/localclimateaction.