McGoldrick wants Solar funds for low-income housingSup. Jake McGoldrick just had an epiphany: install solar panels on affordable, low-income housing projects, citywide.
That way the City can green San Francisco, create local jobs and business opportunities—and eventually reduce to zero the utility bills of low-income folks.
McGoldrick’s moment of clarity came in face of increasing pressure from local solar businesses and work creation programs to support Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recently announced Solar Energy Incentive Program.
McGoldrick says he supports going green and hiring locally, but he balked at the lack of public discussion about the mayor's program, which uses tax payer dollars to subsidize solar installation on private property.
Pitched as a pilot project, Newsom's solar energy incentive program proposes to allocate $3 million between now and the end of June, and $3-5 million in subsequent fiscal years. That adds up to more than $50 million by 2018.
McGoldrick believes these monies would be better used subsidizing installations on public housing and non-profit-owned, low-income projects.
Supporters of Newsom's proposed Solar Incentive program argue that could better leverage a portion of the SFPUC’s Mayor’s Energy Conservation Account, and get more out of Hetch Hetchy dollars spent in energy efficiency and solar.
But as McGoldrick observes, the Mayor's current plan fails to address public ownership concerns.
‘That’s why I’m going to try and give these MECA funds to affordable housing projects,” McGoldrick said.. “That way, people get jobs, solar companies come here, the city goes green--and we do power purchase agreements.”
San Francisco only has a 30 percent home ownership rate. But since a portion of that percentage are absentee landlords, the City could only target an ever smaller fraction of the city's roof tops for solar installation, under theMayor's current Solar Energy Incentive Program.
‘Tenants can’t jump in and spend $25,000 to replace their roof, and you can’t have the question of jobs be the tail wagging the dog," McGoldrick said.
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Comments (3)
The SF solar incentive pilot, which was approved by the SFPUC back in January 2008 in a public hearing, was slatted to start on April 1st. This pilot program allocated $3 million from the Mayor's Conservation Account at the SFPUC to leverage solar rebate funds available from the state and federal tax credits to make solar more affordable in San Francisco. This pilot would have put solar on San Francisco roofs now and because it would have leveraged other funds that aren't available to municipal buildings, it would have put more solar up than if the $3 million were used to put solar panels up on municipal buildings. There is a public benefit to more solar going up faster. The CO2 that is released into our atmosphere from conventionally generated electricity is reduced by every kilowatt hour that solar generates, regardless of whether that panel is on a privately owned building or municipally owned building. Solar generates power at peak times of electricity use. This means more solar, less need for the peaker plants to generate electricity. The pilot compliments Community Choice Aggregation. The more electricity generated by our rooftops, the less we purchase from PG&E. The solar panels those funds put up will still be here generating clean electricity for CCA. Supervisor McGoldrick and Daly should let the $3 million pilot move forward.
Then, the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor should work to craft a long term solar program that gets solar and other renewables up in a way that benefits tenants and other San Francisco residents, CCA and creates local green collar jobs. The time to act is now. We have the momentum of our policymakers thinking about solar and making proposals, let's harness that and use it to move forward.
Posted by Jeanine Cotter | April 8, 2008 07:29 AM
Mayor's Plan Means Less Solar Not More
I'm sorry Jeanine but your facts just aren't correct on this. If we spend public money to subsidize private solar panels for individuals and corporations, the cost savings that those panels create will go into the private owners' pockets instead of going into building more solar on more buildings.
However, if we wisely use public dollars to build public solar projects which the City owns, all of the savings and revenues created by those solar projects can be immediately directed to build -more- solar projects.
And under Community Choice Aggregation we can still put solar panels on individual homes and businesses, but with the City owning the panels instead of the private owners. This will not only allow those private owners to join the solar movement for free, but it will ensure strong solar revenues for the City which it can use to build vastly more solar projects.
Because the Mayor's solar program would drain away that massive potential for public power on private buildings, it is absolutely -not- designed to work in harmony with Community Choice, and could so seriously harm the public solar revenue stream that Community Choice needs to be successful, that it could seriously harm that vital public project.
Posted by Eric Brooks | April 8, 2008 12:40 PM
"McGoldrick believes these monies would be better used subsidizing installations on public housing and non-profit-owned, low-income projects."
A discussion that needs to be had, is what should be the true goal of the subsidy. Is it to increase clean energy produced, or help non-profits and low-income families.
The problem is that low-income families *very* rarely go solar, and a $4000 subsidy won't change that, neither will an $8000 or $12000 subsidy. You would have to subsidize the whole thing, and at that point we've lost site of the goal of the subsidy... more solar. If the goal is more clean energy produced, period, then the subsidy is perfectly designed as is. It simply cannot be made more effective. I know this from practical experience from working for a solar installer, as well as a theoretical perspective, from reading all of the documentation ( prepared by the PUC and the solar task force.
If the goal is to lower the energy bills of low income families and non-profits, than that needs to be the discussion, the goals not the implementation.
Applying means testing to the subsidy program renders it useless, and using the funds to put solar on public projects creates about 1/6th as much energy.
If the subsidy is suppose to make more solar on more roofs, period, than a small private sector subsidy is undeniably the most effective use of the funds.
Posted by David Llorens | April 22, 2008 10:38 PM