A free shuttle service and a still-to-be-constructed affordable housing and cultural hub are among 14 organizations that will share nearly $1 million in Community Clean Energy Grants.
Announced Wednesday, the awards from San Diego Community Power and Calpine Community Energy in coordination with the nonprofit San Diego Foundation go to projects that integrate renewable energy with housing, transportation and neighborhood resilience efforts.
“These projects are designed by and for the people who will benefit most, ensuring that our solutions are tangible, relevant and equitable,” said San Diego Community Power CEO Karin Burns.
The grants include $67,564 for the Mid-City GO! Shuttle, a free micro-transit service that takes passengers in and around City Heights and North Park.
Launched in February as a pilot program, the shuttle service helps reduce vehicle miles traveled and already averages 300 to 400 rides per week, said Jesse Ramirez, director of urban planning for City Heights Community Development Corporation.
The Mid-City GO! shuttle currently operates Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the grant will enhance efforts to potentially expand service to seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“This can help us get one step closer to overcoming transportation barriers, which translates to giving access to folks going to school, going to work and all that good stuff,” Ramirez said.
The Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, also known as PANA, received a grant of $100,000 that can help install electrification infrastructure in the nonprofit’s Global Village Refugee and Immigrant Cultural Hub.
The 2.2-acre site that PANA hopes will break ground by the end of next year will include a six-story structure at the edge of City Heights. The entire project will feature more than 150 affordable housing units as well as commercial space for a 50,000-square-foot global marketplace, a community clinic and gathering places.
“On the commercial side, we’re hoping for everything to be electric,” said Rachel Lozano Castro, PANA’s director of strategic partnerships and development. “And we’re looking, too, at making the housing units electric, and then solar panels on the top of the building as well.”
Rachel Lozano Castro of the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA) stands in front of a rendering of the Global Village Refugee and Immigrant Cultural Hub, a development that received $100,000 in the 2025 Community Clean Energy Grants. (Rob Nikolewski/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
This is the third year that San Diego Community Power Community Power has awarded clean energy grants to local organizations.
San Diego Community Power is one of 25 community choice aggregation programs, or CCAs, that have sprung up in California in recent years. CCAs purchase electricity generation for residents and businesses in their respective municipalities.
The second-largest CCA in the state with more than 950,000 accounts, Community Power serves customers in San Diego, Chula Vista, La Mesa, Encinitas, Imperial Beach, National City and the unincorporated areas of San Diego County.
Calpine Community Energy works as Community Power’s back-office service provider, helping with billing and running the energy provider’s contact center.
The San Diego Foundation administers the grants on behalf of Community Power and Calpine. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the foundation has distributed $1.8 billion throughout its history of connecting businesses and philanthropic groups with nonprofits and other organizations.
Other awardees of 2025 Community Clean Energy Grants are Circulate San Diego, GRID Alternatives San Diego, Hammond Climate Solutions Foundation, In Good Company, La Mesa Park & Recreation Foundation, Little Saigon San Diego, Metropolitan Area Advisory Committee on Anti-Poverty of San Diego County, Inc. (MAAC), Prophet World Beat Productions, Strategic Energy Innovations, the South Sudanese Community Center, Tree San Diego, UNCI, Inc. (Uniting Natives Culturally and Intertribally).