DC historic homeowners get the green light to ask for front-facing solar panels (but don’t make them green, or blue!)

“The beauty of historic districts, and indeed tin roofs, will not matter when the climate crisis begins to impinge upon our privileged lives,” said Georgetown resident Carole Lewis Anderson at a hearing to determine whether solar panels facing the front of a house would be allowed in DC historic districts. “We need to take a fresher look at the concept of preservation. Shouldn’t it apply first to the planet?”

DC’s Historic Preservation Review Board met on December 19 to discuss proposed guidelines around sustainability in historic properties. The most controversial element of these guidelines was a statement against solar panels on the fronts of roofs. This issue burst into the forefront after the board denied a set of such panels to Takoma homeowner Steven Preister in October. Board members like architects Chris Landis and Gretchen Pfaehler juxtaposed the need to save the planet against the sight of solar panels which “upsets” them and “detracts from the slope of the roof.”

Responding to outrage that followed Greater Greater Washington’s report on that hearing, the preservation office revised its guidelines to say that front-facing solar panels could be okay if “necessary” to achieve climate goals such as DC’s 2019 clean energy law. The board approved the guidelines, including the proposed changes, at that meeting as the start of what will surely be a long conversation within the preservation community about how to integrate planetary preservation.

Witness: The old rules hurt some black middle- and low-income residents

This will be helpful to residents of neighborhoods like Anacostia, said Ronald Bethea, who hosts a podcast called “Solar Now And The Future With Its Economic Impact On Black America.” Bethea first pointed out that black residents are rarely involved in preservation conversations; he was the only black person among ten to testify about the guidelines. Bethea said that in several situations and Kingman Park and Anacostia, DC’s two majority-black historic districts, “people qualified for Solar For All but were not able to get the permits” to install solar.

Solar for All is a DC Department of Energy and the Environment program which “aims to bring the benefits of solar energy to 100,000 low to moderate income families in the District of Columbia.” It funds solar installations on qualifying buildings for homeowners and renters making less than 80% of the Area Median Income and saves them 50% on their electricity bills over 15 years, according to the DOEE website.

Bethea said, “That’s very concerning to me, because many of our baby boomers in the African American community meet these guidelines and are property owners,” but “run into issues where they can’t put a system on their roof.” These residents are paying rising electric bills with “compliance fees passed on to ratepayers” from not having enough DC-based solar, he said.

Anderson said she had spent three years trying to win approval of solar power, battling the Old Georgetown Board, the federally-chartered preservation board specific to Georgetown, and her homeowner’s association. She said, “I walk the streets of Georgetown and other historic districts frequently. I see HVAC units, satellite dishes, cable wires. And yet I had to fight for three years to get solar panels. … Apparently I’m unusual in believing that solar panels are beautiful. They evidence reduced reliance on the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, and the harnessing of clean and essentially free energy. They are certainly more visually acceptable than HVAC units and communications dishes.”

Erin Palmer and Geoff Bromaghim from the Takoma Advisory Neighborhood Commission supported the new guidelines. Bromaghim said the commission, which unanimously supported a resolution asking for a more permissive stance toward solar panels, felt the old rules were “highly problematic both in principle and in practice.” Mark Rodeffer of the DC Sierra Club said even the new guidelines don’t go far enough as they “fail to recognize the severity of the climate crisis”; one solar company entrepreneur told Rodeffer that they won’t touch properties in historic districts because of “all the issues and complications” and “the risk of getting drawn into a protracted process.”

Four witnesses — DC Preservation League head Rebecca Miller, Committee of 100 preservation chair Faye Armstrong, and Takoma activists Loretta Neumann and Sara Green, opposed the guidelines as is. Miller said they are “not ready for prime time.” Green said on her tin roofed-house, “you shouldn’t be putting anything on the roof, that would ruin the character.” Neumann brought up the bungalows in Takoma, which lie outside the historic district and have solar panels which look “bright shiny blue.”

The rules change, though not yet with full clarity

The board went on to approve front-facing solar panels for Preister’s Takoma house. It didn’t come without a cost — Preister had revised his design to use a “solar skin” which will make the panels blend in more with the roof, but with a 10% increase in the price of the project and reduced efficiency, which gives him fewer of the solar credits that defray the cost of solar installations.

The preservation board still wants any future such front-facing solar installations to come before them at a hearing, at least for now. That’s because the board wasn’t yet ready to give a blanket approval for such things or let the preservation staff approve them.

That will allow the board to get a feel for different technologies and how they apply to various cases. Until the board is ready to be more hands-off, it also will create cost and hassle for homeowners and their solar installers, who will have to both take likely an entire day to attend a meeting.

The board’s hearings frequently don’t hold to the times on their agendas; despite being only the second item of the day, the discussion of the guidelines started nearly an hour late, meaning DOEE Director Tommy Wells, who’d shown up to speak, couldn’t stay for his chance. The final case of the day, in Cleveland Park, didn’t even have a quorum of the board remaining and after hearing testimony, the board will resume hearing it in January.

The witnesses opposing the new guidelines actually had some similar comments to proponents like Palmer, in arguing that the solar standards could be more clear. Palmer said the term “necessary,” in the guidelines, “raises some concerns because it is not defined.” Rodeffer criticized the guidelines for their “inconsistency.”

Callcott, of the preservation office, led the conversation by stating that this document is not a set of regulations and is more aimed as an educational document for homeowners. But the Committee of 100’s Armstrong said the document “does not include sufficiently detailed guidance and photographs to indicate what solar installations would be acceptable on historic bldgs.” Neumann argued, “We need more detailed information, and photos.”

Miller, from the DC Preservation League, also pointed out ways these guidelines were quite vague. She said, “One of the things that historic preservation always is targeted for is that people don’t think it’s consistent. And so I think there is an opportunity to put up examples of different types of properties of what could and could not be allowed, it gives residents a better opportunity to understand what is and isn’t available to them. ‘You’re allowed to do that in this district and not in that district.’ Well, maybe it’s because your district buildings are different.”

Is preservation too much of a black box?

Miller is bringing up an important point. The preservation practice in DC has evolved an intricate set of practices about what is likely okay and what is not, but this is still largely within the heads of the community of government officials, architects, and community activists who engage with preservation all the time. For instance, in my historic district of Dupont Circle, the board has typically been permissive about additions in rear alleys, but there have also been exceptions, often resulting when neighbors are particularly energetic in their opposition and/or particularly well-versed in architecture-speak. There are no written guidelines for the Dupont Circle Historic District.

The preservation office has recently made a stronger effort on this score with newer districts like Kingman Park, where more detailed guidelines in fact say that visible additions are okay in the rear but not the front, for instance, or that porches are important to preserve but it is okay for new doors to not replicate the originals (though it is preferred). There is plenty of gray area, like saying, “New construction should be compatible with its site, taking into account the immediate context and the broader character of the historic district.”

The consequence is that so many preservation decisions happen either in meetings between HPO staff and applicants or else are subject to the whims of who’s at the board meeting that month.

Bromaghim, from the Takoma ANC, said, “What we need is guidance for someone who wants to go solar in our historic district that tells them how they can do it in a way that is attractive. It’s an abdication of your duty to not have guidance that says this is how you can do it. Otherwise, folks who want to go solar just won’t show up. They will view the process as broken or too onerous.”

Preister, the homeowner whose front-facing solar panels became the focal point of this debate, said later, “Some of my neighbors are interested in doing [solar], but they’re scared to do it.” Landis suggested the new guidelines would create “a rush to apply for these kinds of solar cells,” but Callcott said he didn’t think so, in part because the board still will insist on seeing each case individually.

Several board members, in approving the guidelines, said they saw it as not the end of a conversation but a step. There’s now an opportunity for the preservation office to take the advice of even the skeptics of the new guidelines like Armstrong, Miller, and Neumann as well as supporters like Palmer, and sharpen this guidance from a vagueness into clarity so that there can indeed be a “rush.”

Carole Lewis Anderson said at the hearing, “Every sun ray of energy obviates the need of another drop of oil. If we do not model sustainable behavior, we cannot make positive changes.”