Solar energy faces cloudy prospects on warehouse rooftops

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Industrial real-estate companies have been showing more interest lately in the roofs of their structures, where warehouse operators are looking to cut energy costs, reduce emissions and even make money from the sprawling and mostly unused space by installing solar panels. Matt Schlindwein is taking his time adopting the technology, however. The managing partner of East Brunswick, N.J.-based industrial real-estate firm Greek Real Estate Partners said a fraction of the more than 300 warehouses he manages in the Northeast have solar panels on their roofs.

That’s largely because the highly-touted benefits of solar power run up against serious costs as the panels are brought in: The installations are expensive, he said, and there’s a risk that the heavy panels could damage the building. “Number one for a tenant occupying a large-scale industrial warehouse building is a good floor, not a leaky roof," Schlindwein said. For the past decade, “the amount of benefit that the landlord could have from doing solar was limited," he said.

Schlindwein isn’t the only real-estate executive with concerns about the hot technology. Warehouse operators across the U.S. have been cautious about installing the panels on their roofs, even as companies have gotten attention for installations on shopping malls, self-storage buildings and distribution centers.

Commercial buildings in the U.S. installed 1,913 megawatts of solar power in 2023, up from 1,034 megawatts installed in 2014, according to trade group Solar Energy Industries Association and research firm Wood Mackenzie. That compared to 40,290 megawatts installed nationwide last year across all residential, commercial, community and utility projects.