Thoughts on Solar by Run on Sun's Founder & CEO, Jim Jenal

UPDATE - As of October 6th, our Representative, Adam Schiff, is now also a co-sponsor of this bill, bringing the number of co-sponsors to 39.  Way to go, Rep. Schiff!  What about your Member of Congress?

Given its potential impact on the residential solar market, the PACE Assessment Protection Act of 2011 is a very big deal.  Thanks to the folks over at Open Congress, you can now track the status of that bill with a handy widget that we have added after the jump.

Here is the current status of the bill, HR 2599:

The widget will update automatically as the bill progresses (we hope!) through Congress.  Of course, one way to ensure that it does pass, is for YOU to contact your representative and urge them to co-sponsor the bill and vote for it when it comes up.  This really should be a no-brainer: enacting a law that will make it easier for homeowners to finance solar power installations and other energy efficiency retrofits on their homes by paying for them through their property taxes.  This allows for a much lower overall project cost to the homeowner than they would receive through either a traditional home equity loan or lease payments.  (Uh, ok, so maybe that calls to mind two groups who might not be big fans of PACE financing, but apart from those special interests, who else could say nay?)

When you contact your member of the House, please drop us a comment and let us know - it would be great to see a large collection of comments reflecting people taking action to get this legislation passed.

UPDATE: Former President Bill Clinton sat down with Judy Woodruff of PBS to extoll the virtues of PACE: “the closest thing to a Free Lunch that we have in this country."  The report also shows President Obama’s support for a PACE program - but can it get through Congress?

H.R. 2599 - the PACE Assessment Protection Act of 2011 - is picking up the pace and now has 22 co-sponsors - 13 Republicans and 9 Democrats. Given the general climate in the House (where no one denies that things are getting hotter), this outbreak of bipartisanship is nothing short of remarkable. We will name names after the jump.

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UPDATE: The bill was indeed introduced as planned, it is H.R. 2599.  You can follow its progress via OpenCongress here.

After having been left for dead by federal regulators, PACE - Property Assessed Clean Energy funding for solar power and energy efficiency projects - is making a comeback thanks to bipartisan (Yes!) legislation gaining momentum in the House.  You can help get this important legislation passed by contacting your representative - details after the jump.

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SECOND UPDATE (7/9):

LADWP has announced that due to overwhelming interest, the single meeting scheduled for the 14th has been replaced with four meetings. Each meeting will be limited to the first 125 participants who RSVP (links below).  Please note - if you registered previously YOU MUST REGISTER AGAIN!

Here is the updated schedule:

Thursday, July 14, 2011
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.  RSVP
2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.    RSVP

Friday, July 15, 2011
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.  RSVP
2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.    RSVP

The remaining information below remains unchanged.  We have signed up for the Thursday morning session - hope to see you there.

UPDATED Re: Parking (See below)

The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power - the nation’s largest municipal utility - has just announced that it will be conducting a workshop to discuss its revised solar rebate and feed-in tariff programs. This is the first public meeting since LADWP suspended its solar rebate program last April.

Here is the proposed agenda from the LADWP website:

1. Introductions and Overview of LADWP Local Solar Programs
2. Overview of Solar Incentive Program
3. Breakout sessions to discuss Solar Incentive Program changes
4. Summary of Solar Incentive Program breakouts
5. Overview of Local Renewable Energy Program
6. Breakout sessions to discuss Local Renewable Energy Program
7. Summary of Local Renewable Energy Program breakouts

The workshop will be held on Thursday, July 14, 2011, from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.  at LADWP headquarters, 111 N. Hope Street, A-Level Auditorium, LA CA  90012.  Parking is available free of charge in the Music Center’s underground structure.  Attendees should enter on Grand Avenue, between Temple and First Streets, look for the LADWP representative at the entrance and and present a printed copy of this invitation at the entrance. The LADWP representative will provide immediate validation and waive parking fees prior to entering the structure.

The Hope Street level entrance to the LADWP headquarters building is accessible despite light construction currently in progress on the building exterior. Upon entry, guests will be asked to sign in at the Security desk, pass through a screening device and wear a temporary visitor’s badge.

The public is invited.  You can RSVP by clicking here.

We will be attending and we will report back on what LADWP has to say.  If you attend as well, please come up and introduce yourself.

The California city of Palm Desert is taking the lead in organizing local governments to tackle the obstacles coming out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to PACE - Property Assessed Clean Energy financing. As readers of this blog will recall, Los Angeles county spent months holding meetings and planning for the roll out of its own PACE program known as LACEP - the LA County Energy Program. That all came to a screeching halt last July when the mortgage giants objected to the design of the PACE programs.

Now Palm Desert is fighting back, voting to allocate $25,000 as seed funding for a non-profit education and advocacy organization to be called “Energy Independence America” that will be operated by EcoMotion.  The Palm Desert press release is repeated in its entirety here:

Palm Desert to Again Lead on Clean Energy Financing Kicks Off Formal PACE Advocacy Effort to Overcome Federal Obstacles Palm Desert, California, the city that spearheaded Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing in 2008, is leading the charge to overcome federal obstacles placed in the way of this popular program. Palm Desert has committed initial seed funding of $25,000 to EcoMotion to form a non-profit education and advocacy organization for PACE, called Energy Independence America, and is urging cities and counties throughout the country to get behind this important effort. Interested parties can request to be on the list for Energy Independence America updates.

“It is absolutely infuriating to me that the federal government has thrown a roadblock in front of local government’s efforts to clean up our environment, reduce our carbon footprint, and make our country more energy independent,” said Councilwoman and immediate past Mayor Cindy Finerty.

Property Assessed Clean Energy financing was rapidly sweeping the nation as “one of the most innovative municipal finance programs in modern history,” according to The Harvard Business Review. It had spread to twenty-five states throughout America, but growth was abruptly interrupted on July 6, 2010 when the Federal Home Finance Agency (FHFA), caretaker of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, summarily announced that it would no longer honor mortgages with PACE liens securing residential energy improvements.

In response to the FHFA proclamation, residential PACE programs across America came to a grinding halt. Palm Desert, the State of California, and six other entities sued the FHFA. But in the past ten months, despite lawsuits and lobbying, no progress has been made in moving FHFA off of its position. At the Palm Desert PACE Solutions conference in March, participants agreed that concerted action will be required to remove this major roadblock to PACE and return it to its potential as a “game changing,” revolutionary financing mechanism.

On April 14, 2011, Palm Desert City Council voted unanimously to support a systematic nationwide effort to overturn FHFA’s administrative determination. This effort is known as Energy Independence America. “We are planning to reach out to all stakeholders affected by FHFA’s decision, from public entities that benefit from PACE programs to the private homeowners who benefit from efficiency and generation improvements, as well as the manufacturers and contractors who install them,” said Ted Flanigan, President of EcoMotion, the entity hired by Palm Desert to organize Energy Independence America. “Not only does PACE represent huge benefits for our environment and our nation’s energy independence, but also a $100+ billion industry in energy efficiency and renewable energy.”

Jim Ferguson, former Councilmember and Mayor of Palm Desert and the person credited with driving AB 811 through the California legislature, has agreed to a key spokesman for Energy Independence America. Per Ferguson, “We are going to exert every effort possible on the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government so they see the short sightedness of preventing homeowners from spending their own money to cure our nation’s environmental and energy woes. We’ve had a huge outpouring of cities and states looking to Palm Desert to, again, take the lead on clean energy financing.”

To get more information, you can contact Virginia Nicols at EcoMotion: (949) 450-7153 or email her at: vnicols@ecomotion.us.

We wish them all the luck in the world and we urge anyone with connections at their city to urge their city council to join up.