Sunrun Inc.

Background

Sunrun was co-founded in January 2007 by Lynn Jurich, Ed Fenster, and Nat Kreamer, with a business model centered on power-purchase agreements and leases that allowed homeowners to install solar panels at little or no upfront cost. Under these terms, Sunrun would own and maintain the equipment while selling electricity to the customer at an agreed rate for a 20- or 25-year contract term. The company went public on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2015. ¹

In July 2020, Sunrun announced the acquisition of competitor Vivint Solar for $3.2 billion, completed in October 2020, which significantly expanded the company’s market share and customer base. Sunrun previously maintained a retail partnership with Costco for more than a decade before the two companies failed to reach mutually agreeable terms and terminated the arrangement in September 2024. Sunrun subsequently expanded its retail presence through a partnership with Lowe’s announced in February 2024, marketing solar and storage products across 430 store locations. In August 2024, Sunrun announced it had surpassed one million customers, describing itself as “the first and only storage-plus-solar company” to reach that threshold. ^{4  5  6  7  8}

Government Funding and Tax Incentives

Sunrun’s business model has benefited from the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which the Inflation Reduction Act extended and expanded to a 30 percent credit on residential solar installations. From 2010 through 2013, Sunrun entities also received 42 separate grants totaling $184,918,514 under Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a Congressionally created Treasury program that provided cash payments to weather-dependent energy developers in lieu of tax credits. ^{9  10}

When House Republicans proposed phasing out the residential ITC in 2025, Sunrun CEO Mary Powell publicly campaigned against the measure, warning Congress against what she called a “rug pull” on weather-dependent energy. The ITC phase-out was subsequently enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, which phased out the residential solar credit by December 31, 2027. ^{11  9}

Financials

In full-year 2024, Sunrun reported total revenue of $2.037 billion, a decrease of approximately 10 percent from full-year 2023. Customer agreements and incentives revenue, the core subscription segment, grew 27 percent year over year to $1.5 billion, while solar energy systems and product sales revenue fell 50 percent to $532.5 million as the company shifted focus toward its subscription model. Annual recurring revenue from subscribers stood at approximately $1.6 billion as of December 31, 2024. ^{12  13}

Controversies

In May 2017, MarketWatch reported that former Sunrun managers alleged the company manipulated sales data in the period leading up to its August 2015 initial public offering, claiming they were instructed to delay internal documentation of customer cancellations to inflate reported sales figures. ¹⁴

Partnerships and Outside Affiliations

In November 2020, Sunrun announced partnerships with WE ACT for Environmental Justice and Blacks in Green, framing the initiative around “advocating for state, local, and federal policies that expand access to solar, grid resiliency, and economic empowerment for people of color and low-income families.” The company has also maintained a partnership since 2011 with GRID Alternatives, a nonprofit installer of solar for low-income households; as of September 2021, the partnership had facilitated 18.3 MW of solar installations for 4,575 low-income homeowners. ^{15  16}

Since at least 2020, Sunrun has partnered with Protect Our Winters (POW), a climate advocacy organization. Under the arrangement, Sunrun donates $350 to POW for each new customer who signs up through a dedicated referral portal. In 2020, Sunrun participated in POW’s “Rebuilding a Green Economy” campaign, which directed advocates to contact members of Congress to urge inclusion of weather-dependent energy provisions in COVID-19 stimulus legislation. ^{17  18}

In formal press releases, Sunrun has used the language of “mitigating the impacts of climate change,” and uses the language of “environmental justice,” “social equity,” and “economic empowerment for people of color.” In August 2024, the company announced that its emissions reduction targets were approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), committing to net-zero emissions across its value chain by 2050. ^{15  19  20}

Leadership

As of April 2026, Mary Powell was Sunrun’s chief executive officer, a position she has held since 2021. Prior to joining Sunrun, Powell worked as president and CEO of Green Mountain Power Corporation, Vermont’s dominant electric utility, from 2008 to 2019 where she led that company’s adoption of Tesla Powerwall and other weather-dependent energy programs. As of 2026, Powell sat on the board of trustees of EDF Action, the 501(c)(4) political lobbying arm of the Environmental Defense Fund, which advocates for climate and environmental legislation before Congress. Powell received estimated total compensation of approximately $8.3 million in 2025. ^{21  22}

As of 2026, Ed Fenster, a co-founder, was executive chairman of the board. ²¹