July 27, 2011
Regular readers of this newsletter must be well aware of the fraught history of Property-assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs. We’ve been writing about this excellent new way of financing small-scale solar installations since January 2009, not long after the first PACE program was instituted in Berkeley, California. Following Berkeley’s success, twenty-seven states rushed to pass PACE-enabling legislation, clearing the way for local governments to create programs in which:
- The government entity raises funds, ideally from tax-free clean energy bonds;
- Homeowners and business owners can apply to use those funds for renewable energy or energy efficiency installations;
- The solar arrays (for example) are installed at no cost to the owner;
- The owner repays the lending agency through regular property tax assessments over an extended period, e.g., 20 years;
- Should the owner sell the property before the installation is paid for, the balance of the tax assessment is applied to the new owner.
Graphic courtesy of PACENOW campaign (www.PACENOW.org)
Of course, for every idea that catches fire there’s someone waiting with a bucket of water, and in this case it was the Federal Housing Finance Authority (FHFA), the overlord of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FHFA considered the financial arrangement not a tax assessment but a loan, and thus could not stomach the notion that its mortgage operations would lose their senior lien position to a local authority. Last summer, then, FHFA instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac not to underwrite mortgages for properties with a PACE assessment. Given the large number of home mortgages that end up being sold to these government mortgage agencies, FHFA’s action effectively killed the entire PACE movement.
(more…)
June 30, 2011
We know that some portion of our Solar Nation subscribers are also members of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), the nation’s oldest association of solar professionals and advocates. But for those of you who aren’t, here’s one big benefit of belonging to ASES: Solar Today magazine.
Solar Today connects you to the leading solar energy experts, tells you what’s going on in solar development today, and keeps you up-to-date on policy, technical, business and legislative issues concerning solar. Every October there’s a ‘Getting Started’ edition full of tips for anyone looking to use solar power for the first time. You can find up-to-the-minute news on-line, and link to the digital edition of the magazine, here.
Solar Today is one of many ASES membership benefits. You can get it by going here and joining ASES today.
June 30, 2011
Another popular ASES progam is the National Solar Tour, in which hundreds of people and business owners open their doors to show the public how they’re using solar power in their lives. It’s the world’s largest grass roots solar event.
Last year there were tours in every single state, and more than 160,000 interested people paid visits to solar homes and businesses.
Would you like to be a host this year? Tours will take place (in most areas) on October 1, and you can register as a host by going here.
Share the solar wealth!
June 30, 2011
Old friend and long-time toiler in the vineyards of renewable energy reporting Stephen Lacey, now writing for the ‘indispensable blog’ Climate Progress, writes this month about how quickly solar PV is approaching grid parity.
According to top solar executives in Stephen’s story: “solar PV is no longer a fringe, cost-prohibitive technology – but, rather, a near-commodity that is quickly becoming competitive with new nuclear, new natural gas, and, soon, new coal.”
From time to time in Solar Citizen, we’ve brought to your attention indications that solar PV is getting ever closer to traditional energy sources in cost per unit of energy…
February 2011: Solar Gaining on Natural Gas
January 2011: Renewable Energy Head-to-Head with Nuclear
November 2010: Solar Heading for Grid Parity
July 2010: Solar Cheaper than Nukes
…but it’s noteworthy to read in the Climate Progress report that, long before the decade is out, reductions in materials costs can even bring solar PV into serious competition with newly constructed coal plants. And that’s a comparison with coal as it’s actually priced, not the full cost accounting price of the stuff, which, as Scott Malone of Reuters points out, can be three times what the industry charges.
Reinforcement for these stories can be found in a report on the UK’s energy future released recently by the independent consulting firm Ernst & Young. According to their report, the price of solar modules should fall to $1/Watt by 2013 (half of the 2009 figure), due to continuing reductions in the cost of materials and improvements in efficiency. So this energy source that has been decried for so long by the coal industry as too expensive (and by no less an energy expert than Bill Gates as ‘cute’) is heading fast for grid parity. The question is now not if, but how soon.
And as for the coal industry, perhaps it’s just as well that so many proposals for new coal plants have been rejected of late. If built, they’d be white elephants–or at least very grubby ones.
June 30, 2011
How many of us have heard the dismissive statement about renewables – particularly solar and wind – to the effect that their intermittency prevents them from becoming serious players in the power market? It reminds us distantly of the politician who averred, some hundred years ago, that the U.S. Patent Office could be closed because everything that could be invented had been invented – that science and technology had nothing new to say and could not improve the status quo.
No, thought leaders in the renewables industries have not spent years baffled by what detractors portray as an insoluble problem. They do actually know that the wind does not blow constantly, that clouds have been known to hide the sun, and that nightfall happens on average every evening in tropical and temperate latitudes. And they know that there are solutions aplenty. (more…)
May 31, 2011
In a former chapter of his life, the Solar Nation Executive Campaigner helped found and run a grass-roots group supporting a proposed utility-scale offshore wind installation. The group’s efforts succeeded because it consistently presented factual data to counter wildly exaggerated claims by opponents and despite the fact that its shoestring budget was a couple of decimal points inferior to that of those opponents, whose coffers were kept well-filled by industry and political donors.
There’s an obvious parallel between that experience and that of advocacy groups operating at the national level, trying to draw the attention of federal legislators away from those whose contribution to the debate is expressed in dollar signs.
It’s a tough and sometimes dispiriting race. But for those of us pleading the case of renewable energy, it’s not a race we can afford to give up – not if we want truly clean energy and a stabilized climate to characterize our age and future ages.
So we still find ourselves fighting entrenched interests for whom energy and climate considerations come a very distant second to quarterly profits and re-election. Solar Nation monitors activities and developments both in Congress and at state level to find suitable openings for advocacy actions on energy and climate bills. It’s at the state level where many renewable portfolio standards and emissions limits first become law, and also where some of the fiercest fights to advance clean energy occur.
We know that timely, focused action at this level can reap great rewards. In the last six months:
- We fought to have Congress extend the Treasury Grant Program, which provides cash grants in lieu of tax credits for commercial solar installations; the program was extended for a full year in December;
- We focused attention on those U.S. House members co-sponsoring a series of bills to strip funding from the Environmental Protection Agency; that fight is still ongoing;
- We protested the decision of Department of the Interior to relocate the Solar Decathlon from the National Mall; it was subsequently restored to the National Mall (albeit a somewhat remote section of it, but certainly less remote than an inaccessible marina in Maryland);
- We supported Kentucky’s Clean Energy Opportunity Act; the bill moved quickly to the energy committee;
- We fought against the cutting from the federal budget of the Department of Energy’s Loan Guarantee Program, which underwrites many large-scale renewable projects, opening up the purses of private investors; the program survived the Congressional budget process in a straitened form;
- We protested the actions of Colorado’s Xcel Energy, which had peremptorily shut down its solar rebate program; the Utility responded with a program whose incentives rewarded performance rather than investment;
- We objected to a proposed bill in Florida that would have arrogated all solar development to the state’s largest utilities, disenfranchising independent solar developers; this bill was rejected by the state senate.
But the good guys still need some help to keep going and keep the bad guys off-balance. Can you make a donation to help us help America to become a solar nation? It’s tax-deductible, and easy to do. When you click on the DONATE button, you’ll be directed to our secure giving site, and your donation will keep us working for America’s future.
With thanks, from Solar Nation.
April 27, 2011
Do you want to do your part to move the solar needle forward in your community? You can do that by being part of the largest grass roots solar event in America: the ASES National Solar Tour.
The 15th Annual National Solar Tour is already in the planning stage. Commercial and residential owners of solar systems are now signing up to host visitors interested in learning about real-life experiences with renewable energy use. It’s a great opportunity to spread the word to your neighbors about the economics and the practicalities of going solar.
Last year, for the first time, there were solar tours in every single state in the Union, with participation by 160,000 solar enthusiasts. This year even more are expected. In most locations, the Tour will take place on Saturday, October 1.
You can find out more about the National Solar Tour here, or by contacting Richard Burns, Tour Manager.
April 27, 2011
Our thanks to those of you who communicated your displeasure to the U.S. Congress over the very real danger that the Department of Energy’s Section 1705 Loan Guarantee Program would be a casualty of the Congressional budget process. We sent out our Action Alert at the height of the Capitol Hill donnybrook, and the news floating to earth along with the dust it aroused is that the program has actually survived intact.
The Loan Guarantee Program provides underwriting guarantees to private investors to enable them to fund renewable energy projects. As of this year, the program has allowed more than twenty large projects, representing some $40 billion in private investment, to proceed. Continuation of the program will enable a further $35 billion of private investment to be committed, creating more than 80,000 jobs.
This is a classic example of where not to cut government spending, i.e., where it attracts more investment than it actually pays for, not to mention that it increases renewable energy deployment in typically large packages, and creates good green jobs. It seems that some sanity crept back into the stridently doctrinaire debate in Congress, for which we’re grateful.
We’re also grateful for your contribution to the argument. Now, back to the barricades….
April 27, 2011
The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has published research showing that Californian homes with PV systems installed sell for a premium over homes without such systems.
“We find compelling evidence that solar PV systems in California have boosted home sales prices,” says the lead author Ben Hoen, a researcher at Berkeley Lab. “These average sales price premiums appear to be comparable with the average investment that homeowners have made to install PV systems in California, and of course homeowners also benefit from energy bill savings after PV system installation and prior to home sale.”
The premium has amounted to between $3.90 and $6.40 per watt installed, or approximately $17,000 for a 3.1-kW PV system. (more…)
April 27, 2011
We often find ourselves having to temper people’s expectations about newly announced advances and breakthroughs in solar power. New materials, processes and efficiencies discovered in the laboratory often won’t, realistically, be seen outside the lab. for a couple of years, while others don’t translate into commercially realistic products at all.
That’s no reason, however, for us to shy away from passing on news of exciting discoveries in research labs., because those discoveries may, in the fullness of time, change the way we build houses, derive our electrical power and live our daily lives. We’d just like to see these products fulfill their promise and be on the market now, rather than when our grandchildren are of homebuying age.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time…
Notwithstanding, the news coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology qualifies as exciting, and we look forward to it living up to its promise for the way it could transform the built environment. (more…)
