Center for Resource Solutions

The Sun Could Be Setting on Arizona RECs

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The incentives offered by Arizona’s electric utilities have spurred their customers to install photovoltaic systems, which helps the companies comply with a mandate for renewable energy distribution. The incentives are renewable energy certificates, which are purchased by utilities from customers producing energy. But the RECs may soon become unnecessary – at least for the residential market – because the cost of producing PV energy is sinking towards parity with the cost for grid power.

This rapidly approaching reality is raising a tricky question: how will utilities demonstrate their compliance with the state’s renewable energy mandate without RECs? Keep reading →

 /  Published October 16, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Dodd Frank ‘Biggest Threat’ To Renewables Industry

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The Dodd-Frank Act, introduced to clamp down on the high-risk transactions that brought the financial system to its knees in 2008, could reduce capital funding for renewable energy projects and hit environmental commodity trading, leading industry experts said last week.

“There was a perception that bankers were ripping off Main Street folks and that needed to be changed. If you look at these causes and say what does this have to do with renewable energy … this has very little to do with renewable energy,” said Steve Michelson, counsel at environmental commodities specialist 3Degrees. “Our [environmental] markets and the energy industry did not cause the financial crisis. But if you look at Congress’s solutions to these problems we are implicated in some ways.” Keep reading →

 /  Published November 21, 2011 at 11:10 AM