If you’ve been to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, you’ve walked by huge solar panels in its parking lots. They create lots of shade – but they also generate 4.55 megawatts of solar power across the zoo’s campus.
“You can’t miss them,” said Megan O’Keefe, sustainability project manager with the zoo. “I think that’s part of the intention. It’s like immediately teaching our visitors what our values are. It’s the first and last thing that they see when they come and visit the zoo, and that’s really important to us.”
The Cincinnati Zoo has been experimenting with its own solar power for some years now. The Euclid parking lot array was installed in 2024, to the tune of $9 million. Between the solar panels at Bowyer Farms (the zoo’s outpost in Warren County) and its on-campus solar panels, the zoo produces 5.5 times more energy than they use annually.
“We meet 67% of our electricity needs with solar, renewable energy that is generated on site in Avondale at our Zoo, mainly from our parking lots,” said O’Keefe. “We have some smaller arrays on rooftops of different buildings, which really help, too.”
Zoo shares solar power by installing panels for the community
The zoo itself has been in the solar power game since around 2006, but since then, it has also shared the renewable energy devices by installing solar panels for the community.
The zoo’s first community solar array installation came together as part of the annual Reds Community Fund Makeover, in 2019. That year, the team installed an array of panels at New Prospect Baptist Church in Roselawn.
The Cincinnati Zoo has completed solar array projects with the Reds Community Fund every year since.
In addition to a 2025 makeover project at Frederick Douglass Elementary School, the zoo installed two significantly sized arrays at the Talbert House:, a nonprofit that helps people with substance use disorder and mental health treatment. The panels are at Carthage Flats and the Klekamp House.
In 2023, the zoo formalized the Community Solar Resiliency Program (CSRP), aimed at helping share the benefits of renewable energy with its Avondale and Greater Cincinnati neighbors. The program was spurred by the acquisition of several additional solar panels, which were added to an existing order in order to fill the extra space in the shipping container.
“We often hear, ‘Why is this zoo spending all this time installing solar panels across Cincinnati?’” said O’Keefe. “And for us, it makes perfect sense. Circling back to: serving the community and being good neighbors, sharing the benefits of renewable energy, which reduce emissions, reduce utility expenses, conserve vital habitat for wildlife and for people, and it just really makes sense for us in a unique way.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Solar arrays: Cincinnati Zoo becomes a source of solar power for community
Reporting by Leyla Shokoohe / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
