Compromise is Reached on Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Program

The Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program let’s you pay for home energy upgrades through your property taxes and lets you write off the interest in most cases. At the same time some PACE programs have high interest rates and invoke liens on homes. Over 180,000 home owners nationwide have used this program and PACE has been under attack recently due to some predatory lenders using the PACE program in an unethical fashion. After behind the scenes work between Senate staffers, consumer groups, mortgage lenders, and PACE proponents, a compromise has been reached through a large banking bill that was overwhelming supported by the Senate Banking Committee. It’s not clear what changes we’re made but this is a rare win for the solar industry after the Trump administration and Republicans have killed the Clean Power Plan and stalled energy-efficiency standards. What all homeowners should know moving forward is to be very careful with any PACE loan that is offered because of everything that has happened. PACE does have potential to offer a great solutions for home energy upgrades but now it’s clear that it can be dangerous as well so this is another lesson for homeowners to be even more careful whenever taking a loan for energy upgrades.

Why not make the US-Mexico wall an Energy Corridor?

Building an energy corridor along the border would create jobs, bring security, and become one of the biggest modern marvels of this century. Twenty eight prestigious engineers came up with this plan to get the two nations to work together and build a barrage of solar systems, wind turbines, natural gas pipelines, and desalination facilities which would create an industrial park along the border which has never been done before on this scale. These facilities need to be well protected so it would demand strong border security and at the same time would produce cheap electricity and water for mainly agricultural businesses that are attracted to these areas.

Ronald Adrian, Regent’s Professor at Arizona State University and a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering says, “ At first blush the idea seems too big, too aggressive, but consider the Roman aqueducts or the transcontinental railroads — enormous undertakings that gave enormous benefits. The cost of providing basic, essential infrastructure to the border lands is tiny compared to the opportunities it creates,” he says. “I view this project as a means of creating wealth by turning unused land of little value along the border into valuable land that has power, water access and ultimately agriculture, industry, jobs, workers and communities. With only a wall, you still have unused land of little value.”

A lot of people are tired of hearing about how much a wall will cost and about how it will divide us more as neighboring countries but this plan gives us a powerful solution to these concerns. We can work together with Mexico on something that benefits both countries and has a huge upside. We can use our intelligence in creating an amazing solution to this problem instead of just putting a wall up. The times are changing ever faster and we must not settle for average solutions!

Chinese Solar Company Opens US Factory to Avoid Tariffs

This week JinkoSolar held an opening ceremony at its new manufacturing facility in Jacksonville, Florida. The new plant made headlines when it was announced because the Chinese company decided to set up manufacturing in the U.S. in response to the new solar tariffs that are now put on solar panels imported from China. As of now Jinko is the only Chinese-owned solar company to set up shop in the US.

Pilot production at the Jinko manufacturing facility began in November 2018 and has since been steadily ramping up. It expects to be in full production in a couple of months. Once fully operational, the $50 million facility will employ 200 workers and manufacture 400 megawatts of high powered panels annually.