Abstract
Solar energy offers many advantages over traditional electricity sources. The fuel is free and produces zero emissions. Solar power can be deployed at a small scale, and to the benefit of individuals and communities. This cannot be said about most other energy sources. Just try putting a natural gas plant on your roof! Plus, in most of the country, the cost of solar power is now lower than, or comparable to, electricity from fossil fuels.
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Notes
- 1.
A renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is a state-level piece of legislation that sets required percentages of renewable energy to be delivered by the utilities. A “solar carve-out” means that the RPS includes a specifically delineated target for solar energy. Often the RPS targets for solar have higher incentives than other types of renewable energy because solar is more expensive to develop. These solar carve-outs have been critical in the early development of rooftop solar, as the incentive is available to everybody.
- 2.
A solar renewable energy credit (SREC) certifies that a MWh (megawatt hour) of renewable energy was produced by an electricity generating facility. Renewable energy producers can unbundle the SRECs from the electricity they certify and sell them separately on the market. Utilities then buy these SRECs to greenwash their fossil fuel power (to credit it as renewable) to meet renewable portfolio standard (RPS) requirements. If the market price of SRECs is high enough, it encourages or subsidizes electricity generators to produce more renewable energy. However, the SREC market is very volatile, undermining the value of SRECs in encouraging long-term investment in renewable energy production. For more information, see Al Weinrub and Dan Pinkel, What the Heck Is a REC?, July 2013, http://www.localcleanenergy.org/what-the-heck-is-a-rec.
- 3.
University Park Solar LLC, University Park Solar, accessed January 11, 2017, www.universityparksolar.com.
- 4.
“Community Solar in Maryland,” MD SUN, accessed January 11, 2017, http://www.mdsun.org/community-solar-updates.
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Schoolman, A., Delman, B. (2017). Building Power Through Community-Based Project Development. In: Fairchild, D., Weinrub, A. (eds) Energy Democracy. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-852-7_11
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