Monthly Archives: April 2013

Renewables BuyBack Bill Pays Good Money For Clean Energy

Picture this: You live in Texas, the state with the most solar energy potential in the U.S.  Knowing this, you decide to install solar panels on your home’s rooftop because, in Texas, you can lease – rather than buy – the entire solar energy system.  The option to lease allows you to take advantage of a low monthly payment that will be offset by the savings on your energy bill, rather than face high upfront investment costs.

Now, while you are at work during the day, your panels are actually putting excess, unused energy back onto the grid, when electricity is most expensive.  And, that surplus of energy isn’t just wasted; it is used by your electric company to serve other customers.  In most states, electric companies buy this power back at a retail rate.  But, in Texas it’s not quite that simple.  In order to see any form of pay back, you have to be a lucky customer of one of only three retailers – TXU Energy, Reliant Energy and Green Mountain Energy – that offer “renewable buyback” rates in Texas.  If you happen to buy electricity from one of the other 50 retailers serving residential providers across the state, though, you could always switch over to a renewable buyback program.  But there is no guarantee that you will be paid a fair market value for the 25+ years your solar energy system is expected to last.

Making a long-term investment to protect against highly-fluctuating, unpredictable electric rates is a difficult decision, and making that decision without knowing whether you are guaranteed fair compensation is nearly impossible.  This is one of the key reasons why Texas lags behind the nation in solar adoption.  Fortunately, there is a solution in the works.  Senate Bill 1239 from state Senator Jose Rodriguez seeks to guarantee homeowners, schools and religious facilities at least a minimum buyback rate based on wholesale market energy prices, which were about 50 percent lower than retail rates in 2011, on average.  The bill has a similar impact for rural electric co-operative, municipal and independently-owned utility customers, ensuring that any homeowner, school or religious entity that installs a properly-sized solar energy system will be compensated comparable to the way a fossil fuel power plant is compensated in the wholesale market. Read More »

Posted in Renewable Energy, Texas / Tagged | Read 1 Response

A Clean Energy Paradise In The Pacific

When people think Hawaiian paradise, usually beaches, sun and trade winds come to mind. The price of energy? Not so much.

The state actually has the highest electric rates in the nation, approximately 2 to 3 times higher than the average price on the mainland. Given these high rates and the relatively mild climate, it makes sense that Hawaii’s customers are among the lowest monthly consumers of electricity at 585 kWh per month. However, despite low energy use, Hawaii’s customers still have the highest electric bills in the nation, at a whopping $203 per month on average. That’s 20 percent higher than the next highest state’s average bill!

It’s appropriate, then, that the Aloha State is on the forefront of policy measures intended to lower energy bills by looking to energy efficiency and renewable energy. Hawaii’s sunny days, coupled with its extraordinarily high cost of electricity, make going solar a relatively attractive option. And, not to mention, a much cleaner option given that the state relies on petroleum to generate over 75 percent of its electricity. In fact, Hawaii ranks third in the nation for total installed solar electric capacity per capita. However, the upfront cost of installation remains a significant barrier to widespread adoption of clean energy technologies. Access to financing is limited to those with stellar credit, and there is little incentive for renters to pay for energy upgrades to properties they don’t own. In Hawaii, solutions that work for renters are especially important since over 40 percent of the state’s residents rent.

But all is not lost. On February 1st, the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) delivered a blueprint of a promising on-bill program to help residents and small commercial customers — including renters — invest in cost-saving, clean energy projects. By allowing for repayment of private financing for energy efficiency and renewable projects on customers’ monthly utility bills, Hawaii would be the first-in-the-nation to offer a statewide residential and small commercial on-bill program. The program works for renters and property owners because the energy benefits and the repayment obligation transfer from tenant to tenant with the property, enabling customers to invest in projects that outlast their terms of occupancy. Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, On-bill repayment, Renewable Energy / Tagged , | Read 1 Response

New Study Expands Efforts to Understand Climate Implications of Methane Emissions

New supplies of natural gas are no doubt changing our energy landscape and, of all fossil fuels, natural gas appears to be a smarter choice because its carbon footprint is smaller when combusted than coal or oil. When talking about natural gas as part of a potential climate solution, though, it is important to recognize its unique position as either being a good or bad thing for global warming – depending upon the amount of uncombusted methane emissions that are released into the atmosphere.

No matter what market forces dictate for the future of gas, it’s EDF’s job to ensure that natural gas doesn’t become a detriment to public health or the environment. And, with respect to air quality and climate, getting better data on methane emissions is essential.

Methane can be emitted at various points across the natural gas system. Comprised mostly of methane, natural gas is a potent greenhouse gas. When it enters the atmosphere unburned, it has a higher warming potential than carbon dioxide, the principal contributor of man-made climate change. The more gas released, the more it undermines the climate benefits of using natural gas as compared to other fossil fuels. Yet there is no clear sense of how much and from where methane is leaking out from the system, as my colleague and Chief Scientist Steven Hamburg has explained here.

Over the last year EDF has been orchestrating a large-scale study of methane emissions with leading researchers in the field and industry to better understand the amount of methane emissions across the natural gas supply chain. To date the 30-month collaborative effort, with a $10 million overall budget, is bringing together almost 20 universities and research facilities and about 40 industry partners, collectively, in order to measure methane directly at potentially large emissions sources as gas moves from the formation underground to the wellhead and then on to the consumer.

Yesterday, the third part of EDF’s methane research study was announced, which focuses on the local distribution of natural gas (from city gate to customer meter) Read More »

Posted in Climate, General, Methane, Natural Gas / Comments are closed

Lowering The Price Of Residential Solar Starts In The Neighborhood

By: Guest Blogger Scott A Robinson, University of Texas at Austin – Energy Systems Transformation Group 

Source: SolarCity

The price of solar panels has been decreasing rapidly in recent years. This decrease in price has been reflected in residential markets, with installation numbers booming. However, the total costs of the system remain high enough to discourage mainstream adoption of the technology—even in places like Texas, which have abundant solar resources.

From a customer’s viewpoint, there are two components of the cost of a solar photovoltaics (PV) system. The first is the “sticker price” of the system: the price you pay out of pocket. The second is information cost:  the time you must spend researching the technology to understand if it would be a good investment overall. This is a more difficult task for PV technology than it is for a new phone, or even a new car. The complexity of assessing solar PV creates a cost barrier on top of the reported price of the system.

To better understand these costs to consumers, and what can be done to decrease them, Dr. Varun Rai and I looked at data from PV owners across the state of Texas. We wanted to better understand the drivers behind the length of time people spent researching solar PV before deciding to buy. Our paper describing the results of the research, “Effective Information Channels for Reducing Costs of Environmentally-friendly Technologies: Evidence from Residential PV Markets”, was published last month in Environmental Research Letters (ERL). Read More »

Posted in Investor Confidence Project, Renewable Energy, Texas / Read 1 Response

Hannon Armstrong Raises Capital For Clean Energy Finance

Late last week, I had the chance to peruse Hannon Armstrong’s SEC filing for their upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO), which is expected to start trading next week on April 18th.  The company is in the business of financing energy efficiency and other clean energy projects, and hopes to raise as much as $245 million.

Since 2000, Hannon Armstrong has provided or arranged over $3.9 billion of debt and equity financing deals for around 450 sustainable infrastructure projects.  To date, most of these assets have been sold to other investors.  Out of the $3.9 billion in financing deals they have arranged, Hannon Armstrong currently holds less than $200 million of these obligations on its balance sheet.  The company plans to use the IPO proceeds to increase its investments, and has already identified $110 million of financing opportunities that can be closed within 45 days of the IPO.  Additionally, the firm has secured $400 million of credit capacity from Bank of America to finance projects.

Our understanding is that the majority of the company’s projects are energy efficiency retrofits for the federal government or municipal properties, universities, schools or hospitals – often referred to collectively as the MUSH market.  These properties tend to be attractive to lenders because the owners generally have high credit quality and the buildings are not generally mortgaged.  Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, On-bill repayment / Read 1 Response

EDF Energy Innovation Series Feature #19: Energy Analytics From FirstFuel Software

EDF’s Energy Innovation Series highlights innovations across a broad range of energy categories, including smart grid and renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency financing and progressive utilities, to name a few. This Series helps illustrate that cost-effective, clean energy solutions are available now and imperative to lowering our dependence on fossil fuels.

Find more information on this featured innovation here.

Driving improvements in the built environment is extremely impactful because buildings emit more than a third of our country’s greenhouse gases. Furthermore, according to IBM, roughly 30 percent of building energy usage is wasted. From location to location, however, these changes are sometimes hard to prove beforehand or demonstrate quantitatively after changes or investments are made. As the need to comprehensively tackle energy inefficiency has increased, so has technology’s ability to identify and measure the impact that building upgrades (retrofits), operational shifts or basic behavior changes can make.

Companies like Lexington, Mass.-based FirstFuel Software (FirstFuel) are doing for energy information what Google has done for online search: using complex algorithms to help make simple, usable sense of the massive amounts of energy data being collected by smart meters and other energy management devices.  Needing only one-year of hourly meter data and an address, FirstFuel’s Remote Building Analytics platform screens entire building portfolios for high-potential opportunities, conducts deep building audits and tracks energy savings – without ever going onsite or installing connected devices.

Using hundreds of proprietary algorithms and external weather and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping technology, FirstFuel can provide detailed insight into each facility’s energy use and lay out specific, actionable recommendations for improved efficiency.  “We call it a ‘zero-touch’ approach,” said FirstFuel Software CEO Swapnil Shah. “It’s a very simple and compelling value proposition for the customer.  No hardware and no on-site visits mean you can begin to achieve true scale.” Read More »

Posted in Energy Innovation, General / Comments are closed