Joe Biden to Solar Power USA With P.A.C.E. ‘Recovery through Retrofit’ Berkeley First Municipal Financing
Vice President Joe Biden just revealed a plan to make Berkeley First available nationwide. Yesterday at his Middle Class Task Force meeting Biden proposed the way to make solar roofs easy for everyone to afford with virtually free solar panels. If you now pay your current electricity bill and own a home, that’s literally all it takes to go solar under municipal tax assessment financing.
That’s because his plan; detailed in Recovery Through Retrofit simply makes the very successful Berkeley First municipal tax assessment financing a Federal program, called PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy), funded nationwide through the Recovery Act.
- » See also: Group Buying = Lowest Price for Solar. Ever.
- » Get CleanTechnica by RSS or sign up by email.
The plan from Biden’s very practical Middle Class Task Force on Environmental Quality addresses and solves two issues:
1. That homeowners who might move in a few years don’t retrofit with solar power. So this loan attaches to the home, not the borrower, and is passed along to the next buyers for 20 years till paid off.
2. That only a few rich cities can muster the bonds needed to offer the program. When I asked my Mayor why we were not joining with our neighbor Berkeley to offer Municipal Tax Assessment Financing, I was told “because we can’t get the bond financing”. Sonoma, San Francisco and these cities have followed in Berkeley’s footsteps.
Biden’s plan addresses that financial barrier by securing funding from the Recovery Act to provide cities with the wherewithall to make free solar power available to homeowners. The risk is low. Most homeowners pay the electricity bill. This simply replaces that bill with another for the same amount or less. The next buyer would pay the same set rate for the solar that stays the same, instead of electricity rates that continue to rise an average of 6% a year.
Berkeley First was a pioneering new way to make solar affordable. In a small pilot program - that sold out in the first nine minutes (!) 40 homeowners in Berkeley won the chance to put solar on their houses and pay it back over twenty years through a property tax assessment added to their homeowners property tax.
In practice, that meant their household expenses would really not change at all, but they would be paying down solar instead of paying electricity bills monthly. The $100 or $200 that they used to send to PG&E would just get added to the mortgage bill each month instead; to pay down their solar roof.
I saw first hand how Berkeley First truly enabled anyone to go solar, it was so affordable.
I did solar estimates in the East Bay during that time and worked with people who’d managed to snare a place in Berkeley First. There were no nasty bank loan applications with those installs. Literally, no money changed hands.
So I really believe this would be the way to get ’shovel-ready’ green jobs projects out almost instantly and clean the nations carbon emissions very quickly. Cities are ready. Homeowners are ready. Joe Biden: let it roll!
Image: Flikr user Whitehouse.gov
Source: Recovery Through Retrofit via SFGate
Additional info: Property Assessed Clean Energy
Follow at twitter
So what happens to unincorporated areas, like Kensington, which can’t issue bonds to set up programs like this?
Shovel ready is the correct term!
To piggy-back on to what “Russ” said….
Without having done much research on the bill, this certainly sounds like a propaganda-laden article, which is disappointing. More and more I’m seeing very biased and unbalanced articles like this appear on this and related blogs.
Where are the hard numbers on the long-term financial effects of the Berkely project?
How much did the solar offset their energy usage? How much did they have to pull from the grid, and subsequently pay in a monthly bill to PG&E in addition to their solar “payoff” bill?
How will this effect the rates for non-solar users who rely on PG&E and similar power companies for their energy needs? Will it not cause rates to rise significantly?
This article seems to assume that attaching PV Panels to a roof will create enough energy to run an average house, and that the entire nation lives in southern California where the sun shines nearly every day.
Neither one of these assumptions are correct. So, it is flawed to think that this bill is a viable answer to our need for alternative forms of energy.
It seems rather unwise to use the response of a whopping 40 home owners in California to serve as a gauge for what would work across the rest of the country.
[ED - here's the 12 cities 2 counties and 14 states that are offering Berkeley First property tax assessment financing]
People can and do get all their electricity from a solar roof. That’s a fact.
The CPUC controls charges for PG&E. It wouldn’t cause PG&E to charge others more. If enough people did this it would actually lower costs for the utility because they would not have to spend to build more power.
“Where are the hard numbers on the long-term financial effects of the Berkeley project?”
I don’t think you understand that the money comes from each individual homeowner who chooses solar, paid over 20 years.
The Feds just front the money to the city to front the money to the solar company so they can start on it right away. The Fed gets paid back over 20 years.
“People can and do get all their electricity from a solar roof. That’s a fact.”
I am not arguing that SOME people DO get all of their electricity from a solar roof, but nationally, I would say that percentage of people would be small.
Not everyone has the luxury of living in a house designed specifically to run solely off passive solar energy.
[Ed- Only solar PV solar panels make electricity - passive solar energy merely conserves what warmth/coolness you have]
So, for those who cannot get all of their energy needs from a solar roof, then they are going to have to pay a utility company to offset their energy needs. So, this would mean two payments for that person - the “payment” on their solar, and the cost to offset the remainder of their energy needs.
“The CPUC controls charges for PG&E.”
I promise I’m not trying to be antagonistic, but this seems like a very narrow view of the world. When we’re talking about legislation that affects the entire country, then we have to realize that the rest of the US doesn’t get their energy from PG&E, and the CPUC doesn’t regulate utilities outside of CA.
“If enough people did this it would actually lower costs for the utility because they would not have to spend to build more power.”
Forgive me, but I don’t understand the math here. If I’m not mistaken, the majority of a Utility Companies expenditures goes to operational expenses, not expansion.
While the need for additional expansion WOULD decrease if enough people “did this”, it wouldn’t decrease the everyday operational expenses of running a utility company. So, those who -by necessity- were still served by the utility company, would, by necessity, see their rates increase as the operational expenses needed to run said utility were spread over fewer subscribers.
Of course, this could eventually lead to the utility company shutting down facilities, which would lower operational expenses, but we’ll save discussion on the effects of hundreds, if not thousands of utility company employees being without a job for another post.
“I don’t think you understand that the money comes from each individual homeowner who chooses solar, paid over 20 years.”
No, I understand perfectly that the “hard” cost of the solar would be paid for by the individual homeowner. But it doesn’t consider the “soft” costs of going solar.
[Ed- soft costs are also paid by homeowner]
There are maintenance costs, of course, and also -for those who cannot derive all of their energy needs from solar- the cost of installing a dual-source system to power their home, the cost of replacing broken and damaged panels due to inclement weather, the cost of lost wages and jobs due to the proposed decreased need for grid power, and of course, the cost of a large-scale launch of such a program. The marketing, advertising, and information dispensing would be rather steep for something like this if enacted on a national scale. These are just a few of the “soft” costs that immediately come to mind, and I’m sure there are many, many more.
There is also the question of how this would affect home sales. Will people be willing to “inherit” a tax when they purchase a home that has had a solar roof installed?
[Ed- sure; because they won't pay electric bills. Cheaper over the years as electric bills rise]
Especially if that home still requires grid power. What if I, as a homeowner, don’t WANT a solar roof?
To me, to launch a program like this without answering a few more questions, and again, basing it on the response of 40 Southern California homeowners, seems rather short sighted and ill-conceived.
Good Idea. I hope many cities across the nation will implement and encourage this concept.
Will it work for everyone? Of course not, however it is a step in the right direction. It will help spread solar to the masses as well as increasing solar jobs and opportunities. And it will lessen our dependeny on non-clean energy.
The Recovery through Retrofit program for solar panel implementation is a great step forward. There needs to be an outreach program that broadens awareness about this opportunity.
This is the kind of creative thinking that was at the root of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Just more political ‘SNAKE OIL’.
[Ed - quite the opposite, actually. Banks sold ever rising mortgages under false pretenses that snookered people out of home affordability. This does opposite; sets a standard rate for electricity for 20 years, then its free]
If Jimmy is not a lawyer, I would be surprised. Tough questions need to be asked repeatedly, and every answer will spawn several more questions.
Here’s a couple more: Will this ’subsidy’ apply only for Solar PV? Or will it apply to wind power generators as well? How about solar hot water? How about geothermal heating and cooling? As we know, heating and cooling generally accounts for more than a third of household energy consumption. If the objective is to increase renewable energy use then these should certainly qualify for equivalent financial consideration.
Here’s another question: how about solar PV roof tiles? Hmmm, any thoughts about linke between Dow Chemical’s recent announcement re solar PV roof tiles and Mr. Biden, a Delaware resident who just may be aware that Dow is big in Wilmington?
I’m not complaining one bit. To get solar and other renewable energy production methods moving, VP Biden’s effort should be lauded: the economics will all work out.
Here’s another question: shouldn’t corporate enterprises — hotels, office buildings, etc. ad infinitum — be offered similar deals?
If Jimmy is not aware that most everything in Washington, DC starts with a ‘nose under the tent’, then I would propose he consider that possibility.
Hooray for Joe!
Ahhh, a correction to my last. (Shoulda been more patient…)
Hooray for Joe, I think… We should never underestimate the potential for disaster, or for a few rich and powerful to ensure they get richer and powerfuller…