Best Buy adds NY rooftop, California solar field
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- Best Buy installed a rooftop community solar garden atop its Long Island City, New York store — its first brick-and-mortar to host one — generating an estimated 461,800 kilowatt hours annually that will flow to the local grid for subscribers of a third-party community solar program.
- Best Buy also activated a 5.87-gigawatt-hour solar field near its Dinuba, California distribution center to directly power the facility.
- Best Buy's FY2025 corporate social responsibility report found operational emissions are down 74% from a 2009 baseline, per head of environmental sustainability Tim Dunn.
- Best Buy signed the Climate Pledge in 2020 and accelerated its net-zero target to 2040 from a prior 2050 goal, with a separate target to cut scope 1 and scope 2 emissions 75% by 2030.
- The Long Island City installation is sized to power roughly 44 homes and businesses annually, while the Dinuba field can power about 559 homes.
- The two new sites bring Best Buy's solar portfolio to seven fields, adding to projects previously announced in South Carolina, Michigan, California, and Texas.
Why it matters: Best Buy has already cut operational emissions 74% against a 2009 baseline while moving its net-zero deadline up a decade to 2040, so each new solar site now helps close a narrowing gap rather than lay groundwork. The Long Island City project's community-solar structure — exporting power to a third-party subscriber pool rather than self-consuming — gives Best Buy a scalable template for stores in markets where rooftop solar economics don't pencil out for direct use.
