Renewable Revolution

Thanks GO. I agree financing is definitely part of the big picture for renewables.

Mosaic is doing a great job but now that California has made a pact with B.C., Canada and some other Northwest States to price carbon, the renewable energy projects, most of which have large depreciation time horizons which do justify long term financing, as your article pointed out, will hopefully get easier financing for the large up front costs.

There are some states that are quite friendly to sustainable business ventures in renewable energy. Here's a snippet of a document written for the hypothetical venture capital investor with x amount of money for y type of renewable energy investment.


Article from July 2013: “The Most Solar-Friendly States in the US”:

SNIPPET:

Vermont won recognition in 2011 for its groundbreaking streamlined solar permitting rules, emphasizing residential and small solar installations, which it expanded in 2012. (The state’s solar “registration” process, rather than “permitting,” is described in an interview with AllEarth Renewables’ David Blittersdorf.)

Interestingly, Vermont is also at the forefront of the net metering debate. A report earlier this year found that solar net metering is a net-positive for the state, even with a state incentive factored in, and not including any tangential economic multipliers. Similar reports, and conclusions, have been published for California, New York, and Texas.

Unlike the other top 12 states, Vermont does not have a formal RPS policy; rather it has “goals” of 20 percent of electricity retail sales from renewable energy and combined heat/power by 2017 as part of a Sustainably Priced Energy Enterprise Development (SPEED) program. Beyond that, the state has targets for each providers’ annual electricity of 55 percent of retail sales in 2017, increasing 4 percent a year until reaching 75 percent by 2032.

Rank ‘Em: The Most Solar-Friendly States in the US
 

Vermont Has excellent Solar investment incentives.
 

Quantifying State-Policy Incentives for the Renewable Energy Investor
 Sreenivas
http://web.ornl.gov/sci/electricdelivery/pdfs/VERDE_IEEE_ECCE_Policy_Paper__Version_4.pdf

Quantifying State-Policy Incentives for the Renewable Energy Investor
 Sreenivas
http://web.ornl.gov/sci/electricdelivery/pdfs/VERDE_IEEE_ECCE_Policy_Paper__Version_4.pdf




I wish the Federal Reserve would jump in and assign the SAME level of interest rates for Renewable Energy add-ons to homes and businesses as for housing construction and re-finance. That would be ROCKET FUEL for getting people quickly off of fossil fuel heat and electricity in their homes. The job spurt alone would be enough to goose our economy if the Wall Street crooks would stop trying to get a war going someplace and instead get some renewable energy cheap financing going here.

Renewable energy is the quintessential  wise investment because of the excellent EROEI. I read recently that Solartech or SolarCity (not sure which) is securitizing chunks of PV power purchase agreements (PPA).These are basically 25 to 30 year bonds that facilitate financing so I am certain some money people are getting on the band wagon. If you could find out who they are and report on it, I would be grateful.   

By the way, I'm making up for lack of certain emoticon buttons by putting images in the gallery of emoticons you can link to. You may have to size them but once you've got the right width and height, it's a cinch.

The above green smiley is set like this (without the brackets so you see the script):
 img width=30 height=40]http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113185047.png[/img