On March 28th, 2016, SRECTrade hosted a webinar with Sungage Financial covering the following:
For access to the slides please click here: Sungage Financial and SRECTrade Webinar. For a video recording of the webinar, click the image below.
TweetOn March 1st, 2016, D.C. Councilmember Cheh introduced the Renewable Portfolio Standard Expansion Amendment Act of 2016 (B21-0650) for legislative consideration before the Council of the District of Columbia. On this date, the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) bill was referred to the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, where it remains under review to date. As introduced by Councilmember Cheh, this bill would serve to accomplish four goals:
Should the bill be enacted, the combination of increasing the overall RPS and solar carve-out requirements and raising the alternative compliance payments (ACPs) will increase market demand for D.C. solar renewable energy credits (SRECs). Increased demand for SRECs will provide price support for SREC values in the District and will encourage additional growth and adoption of solar in the nation’s capital.
For more information on the District of Columbia SREC market, please visit our D.C. market page.
SRECTrade will continue to provide updates on the status of the D.C. RPS bill as it progresses with the Council.
TweetOn Monday, March 28th at 1pm EST SRECTrade and Sungage Financial will be hosting a webinar for New Jersey solar installers. The webinar will introduce a new SREC solution which is available in conjunction with a Sungage Financial solar loan. We will also provide an update on the NJ SREC market and review new tools available to our installer partners.
To register for the webinar please CLICK HERE. A recording will be made available on our blog for those unable to attend.
TweetOn April 15, 2016 the last SRECs of Calendar Year 2015 will be issued for Massachusetts. With the policy climate in flux, it’s important to recall where the market stands for 2015. In short: SREC-I may be slightly oversupplied at ~4.4% to under supplied by ~24.9%. SREC-II is oversupplied by ~65.8%.
Oversupplied or under supplied for MA15 SREC-I?
It is possible the market could be slightly oversupplied. This would be the case if all 2015 issued, 2014 banked, 2014 Solar Credit Clearinghouse Auction (SCCA) re-minted, and 2013 SCCA re-minted SRECs were used towards 2015 compliance. Additionally, compliance entities would have to forgo banking any 2015 vintage SRECs for use in 2016 (i.e. up to 10% of the compliance obligation can be banked for future use).
It is possible the market could be under supplied. This would be the case if not all of the 2014 banked, 2014 SCCA re-minted, and 2013 SCCA re-minted SRECs were used towards 2015 compliance, but some were carried forward for 2016 compliance. This is certainly a possibility as many compliance entities may have purchased 2013 and/or 2014 SCCA SRECs with the intention of using them towards compliance in 2015 and/or 2016. Since the SCCA SRECs could be purchased at a fixed priced of $300, it would have been advantageous for a compliance buyer to buy the less expensive SRECs in the SCCA versus paying 2015 or 2016 market prices.
Why is MA15 SREC-II more straightforward?
The last compliance year, 2014, for MA SREC-II was the first year of the SREC-II program. The compliance period was under supplied and as a result no SRECs were deposited into the SCCA. This is why no volumes from prior periods are impacting the SREC-II estimated oversupply.
Current Pricing
As of late, the MA SREC market has experienced less demand for MA2015 SREC-Is and IIs as many compliance buyers have finalized their needs for the year. Note, all SREC retirements need to be made by June 15, 2016. As a result, bid activity has been less frequent and pricing has fallen with MA15 SREC-Is most recently bid $460 and MA15 SREC-IIs most recently bid $262.50.
*Source: NEPOOL GIS. Q4 2015 SRECs issued based on MA DOER installed capacity information and SRECTrade estimates.
TweetOn Monday, Maryland’s House of Delegates voted to pass HB1106 with a 92-43 vote. The bill previously known as the Maryland Clean Energy Jobs Act of 2016 was divided into two bills last week, and HB1106 was distilled to focus on the RPS components of the original bill. HB1106, which was retitled to “Clean Energy – Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard Revisions”, schedules an increase to the state’s existing Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), including slight increases to the solar carve-out. The increases to the solar carve-out would result in increased demand for MD SRECs. Now that the bill has passed in the house, it will cross over to the Senate for review by the Senate Finance Committee. If SB0921 comes out of the Senate Finance Committee with a favorable report, it will go to the Senate Floor for a vote.
HB1106 was bifurcated from the jobs appropriation component of the Maryland Clean Energy Jobs Act of 2016 last week. On March 16th, the Maryland Public Utilities Subcommittee of the Economics Matters Committee passed three significant amendments to HB1106 to narrow the bill’s focus to the RPS. Notably, these amendments involved:
The isolation of the RPS legislation from the workforce development components of the bill was received favorably in the House, and the bisection may help to secure the bill’s passage through the Senate Finance Committee and on the Senate Floor.
SRECTrade will continue to provide updates on the status of the Maryland RPS as we acquire new information. For more information on the Clean Energy Jobs Act, please view our previous blog post on the topic here.
TweetIn 2014, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed a bill that froze Ohio’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) at 2014 levels for 2 years. The RPS has been locked at 2.5% while the solar carve-out has been fixed at 0.12%. On February 22, 2016 Representative Fred Strahorn introduced House Bill 472 to the Public Utilities Committee, which, if passed, would reactivate the RPS. The proposed RPS and solar carve out schedule is as follows:
The Alternative Compliance payment (ACP) would stay at current levels, while the amount of renewable energy resources required would increase. SRECTrade is tracking HB472, and will provide an update when more information is available.
TweetThe following post is a monthly update outlining the megawatts of solar capacity certified to create SRECs in the PJM Solar REC markets SRECTrade serves. All data is based on the information available in PJM GATS as of the date noted.
The chart above represents the megawatts registered in PJM GATS as of March 17, 2016 (the blue bar) vs. the estimated RPS solar MWs needed to be operational all year long, in the current reporting year, to meet each market’s RPS targets (the green bar). Note, the Estimated RPS MWs does not take into consideration SRECs eligible from previous reporting years and is only used as an estimate relative to the current MWs registered in GATS. All actual RPS requirements are represented in megawatt hours (i.e. SRECs) required per year. The installed capacity operational over that time will produce SRECs, in addition to any eligible SRECs from previous periods, to end up with the final supply relative to that reporting year’s demand. For estimates on required number of SRECs per reporting year across the SREC markets SRECTrade covers, please visit our state market summary pages.
The NJ PJM GATS Registered MW shown above is representative of the installed solar capacity as of 1/31/2016 as reported by the NJ Board of Public Utilities and Office of Clean Energy on February 16, 2016. For the full report click here.
Additionally, please note the following in the figures presented above:
OH2016: Represents all OH eligible solar facilities and includes some facilities that are cross registered in PA. If any systems were eligible in higher priced markets, such as DC, the capacity was excluded from OH eligibility as it could be sold at a higher price in DC.
DE2015: Represents all solar facilities eligible for the DE solar RPS requirement. Some facilities registered in DE are also eligible in PA and could impact that market’s supply.
DC2016: Includes all systems eligible for the DC SREC market. If a system was eligible in another market, it was not included there given the current pricing for DC SRECs.
PA2016: Represents all solar facilities eligible for the PA SREC market. Some systems are cross registered in OH as well. If a system was eligible in any higher priced markets (i.e. NJ or MD sited systems that cross registered in PA) they were not included in the total MW balance displayed above.
MD2016: Includes all MD eligible solar capacity registered in GATS as of the date noted. If projects were cross registered in Washington D.C., the capacity was not allocated to Maryland’s eligible MW total.
NJ2016: The balance noted above represents the 1/31/16 MWs installed reported by the NJ BPU on 2/16/2016.
There are 79,370 facilities across 2,871.4 MW registered in GATS as of 3/17/2016.
363 projects are 1 MW or larger in capacity, representing 1,423.3 MW or 49.5% of the qualified capacity. There are 74 projects that are 5 MW or larger. These make up 30.4% of all qualified capacity, 872.6 MW total, in PJM.
Note: SREC requirements for markets without fixed SREC targets have been forecast based on EIA Report “Retail Sales of Electricity by State by Provider”. Projected SRECs required utilizes the most recent EIA electricity data applying an average 1.0% growth rate per forecast year. The state’s RPS Solar requirement is then multiplied by forecast total electricity sales to arrive at projected SRECs required. Projected capacity required is based on a factor of 1,200 MWh, in PJM states, generated per MW of installed capacity per year.
TweetOn Monday, March 14th, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) provided another update to the list of SREC-II Qualified Generation Units. Notably, the DOER announced that 15.6 Megawatts (MW) of capacity remains available under the SREC-II program for systems equal to or less than 25 kW DC.
SRECTrade will continue to monitor the current status of the program and provide updates on applications as they become available. As previously announced, on February 5, 2016, the SREC-II program reached its cap for projects greater than 25 kW.
A summary of the current status report can be found below:
With the third and final round of the Illinois Supplemental Photovoltaic (SPV) Procurement Program under way, stakeholders are pondering what lies ahead for Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) in the State of Illinois. The bid for the Spring 2016 SPV Procurement Program (Round 3) will take place on March 31, 2016. The Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) will issue its final decision on the results of the Procurement on or before April 6, 2016, when we will learn whether the Illinois Power Agency (IPA) spent the entire $15 million allocated for the final round. SRECTrade will publish another blog post with the results of the third round shortly after the ICC releases its decision.
For the Illinois SPV Procurement Program, the State appropriated $30 million of the Renewable Energy Resources Fund (RERF) to procure SRECs from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems energized on or after January 21, 2015. The $30 million budget was divided between the three procurement program rounds, with $5 million allocated for the first round, $10 million allocated for the second round, and $15 million allocated for the third round. The funds appropriated for each of the first two rounds were fully expended by the IPA.
What will happen next for Illinois remains indefinite. If the IPA awards $15 million worth of contracts in the final round, it is uncertain whether there will be a need for a fourth contingency event to take place in Spring 2017. Once the SPV Procurement Program comes to a close, the future of Illinois SRECs will once again destabilize. Although there is potential that solar PV facility owners could participate in other statewide Procurements, there is no long-term certainty for in-state SREC sales, as was made available by the SPV Program. Even more uncertain is whether the Illinois General Assembly will take up any energy bills this year to institute long-term solutions, either before or after the budget for FY2016 is adopted.
SRECTrade encourages PV facility owners in the ComEd utility service territory to apply for the Pennsylvania SREC market. Solar PV facility owners and installers may submit an online application to sell their SRECs in Pennsylvania by creating an SRECTrade account on our home page, and submitting an application for a new facility.
Please feel free to visit our Illinois and Pennsylvania Markets pages for more information on the SREC markets in these states.
If you have any questions about the SPV Program, you can view our introduction webinar and slides online here. You can also email us at clientservices@srectrade.com, or call us at (415) 763-7732 ext 1. SRECTrade is also happy to address inquiries pertaining to our online application and the Pennsylvania SREC Market for Illinois facility owners and installers.
TweetOn February 9th, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered in a 5-4 decision to issue an unprecedented emergency stay on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan (CPP), as states and other stakeholders continue to present legal challenges before lower courts. The Clean Power Plan calls for a 32% reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 (from a 2005 baseline), requiring states to present their initial compliance plans to the EPA by 2022.
The implementation of the CPP could encourage the states to consider instituting new–or to improve existing–state Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) to help meet their goals. Today, only twenty-nine states, Washington, D.C., and two territories have adopted an RPS. Seven of these RPS states have a solar carve out, where a specific percentage of renewable energy requirements must be satisfied with solar energy resources. In addition, eight states and two territories have set some form of renewable energy goals. The CPP’s call to action will mandate all 50 states to develop cost-effective plans to combat climate change, improve air quality and create new jobs.
Twenty-nine states, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other entities invested in fossil fuels are challenging the CPP. Many of these CPP opponents argue that the EPA is acting beyond its authority and that, at a minimum, the CPP’s merits must be fully reviewed before imposing federally mandated plans upon the states. CPP opponent Wyoming Governor Matt Mead stated that he is “thrilled” that the EPA’s climate rule was stayed, because the stay may leave the door open for the new administration to evaluate whether there is a “better way to go” than what the CPP would require. However, it is possible that the issue will be brought back to the Supreme Court for a decision before the new president is sworn in on January 20, 2017, leaving time for President Obama to make the Plan law before he leaves the White House.
Litigation in the lower courts is scheduled to begin on June 2, 2016, and a ruling from the Court of Appeals is expected by the end of 2016. Once an appellate decision is made, the case is expected to go back to the Supreme Court. But the sudden passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia adds additional uncertainty and complexity to the future of the CPP, as the late Justice Scalia’s successor may very well shape the future of the Clean Power Plan. A new voice on the Court could result in a vote in favor of the CPP, which could swing the 5-4 decision in favor of lowering carbon dioxide emissions and fostering a sustainable change.
Alas, it remains to be seen if President Obama will successfully appoint a new Justice before the end of his term, potentially leaving the appointment to the next President. And if a new Justice is not appointed before the Court revisits the CPP, there is a chance we could see 4-4 decision from the Court on the issue, which would mean that the Court of Appeal’s ruling would be automatically upheld. As D.C. plays tug-of-war over the Supreme Court vacancy, CPP opponents are working to convince the lower courts that the CPP would spell economic disaster for the nation, while CPP’s proponents assert that the Plan would guide our nation away from coal-fired electricity and forestall millions of metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions.
The Obama Administration vowed to press forward with the President’s climate policy. If approved, the Clean Power Plan would set a historic precedent on how environmental laws are structured and serve as an example for national and global policies. The CPP was instrumental in influencing heavily polluting nations such as China and India to sign the Paris Agreement at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. The Paris Agreement aims to prevent, mitigate and respond to climate change. If the Clean Power Plan is ultimately struck down, the decision would challenge the implementation of national and worldwide environmental policies. Evermore, the selection of our next President and Supreme Court Justice will greatly influence the future of clean energy and shape how environmental issues are prioritized and responded to in the years to come.
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