{"id":601,"date":"2010-07-27T12:33:08","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T16:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/energyrealist.com\/?p=601"},"modified":"2010-07-27T12:33:08","modified_gmt":"2010-07-27T16:33:08","slug":"to-srec-or-not-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/?p=601","title":{"rendered":"To SREC or not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article<\/a> by David L. Levy, Professor of Management and Chair of the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, gives an interesting summary of financing solar PV and some of the arguments around the question.<\/p>\n

The article concentrates on commercial scale (university scale in this case) projects.\u00a0 The implications for a residence are much the same; without SRECs solar PV does not make financial sense.\u00a0 But SRECs are an unknown quantity.\u00a0 According to this article, and my own research, banks will not lend on SRECs.\u00a0 The conclusion has to be that the banks think SRECs are too risky.<\/p>\n

SRECs are an expression of the will of a state to force [\u201cencourage\u201d may be the more polite word] change towards renewable\/sustainable energy.\u00a0 In the US \u201cstate\u201d literally means the individual states.\u00a0 SRECs are not a federal program.\u00a0 The current SREC programs then depend on continuing political will at the state level to move toward renewables, and on the end users willingness to pay the (slightly) higher electricity rates.\u00a0 I guess most end user pay the extra few cents a day out of ignorance.\u00a0 But there is no guarantee of continued user indifference or the states commitment.\u00a0 One could envisage a political climate where SRECs just disappear \u2013 it\u2019s very unlikely, but possible.<\/p>\n

I know this sounds like a broken record [does anyone even remember what a broken record sounds like, in this day of ipods and MP3s?] but we need a comprehensive national policy so that individuals, and commercial entities, can make long term decisions and get financing to install, operate and maintain sustainable energy systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We need an energy policy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":602,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/energyrealist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}