On December 28, 2011, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) announced that after reviewing the public comments on the suggested 10-year Forward Schedule for the Solar Alternative Compliance Payment (SACP or ACP) rate, they published a guideline to establish the 10-year rolling ACP rate schedule. This guideline will act as an interim step to implement permanent regulatory change. The DOER will be working to revise the existing regulations to implement the new ACP schedule into the Solar Carve-Out program. It will replace the existing ACP rules that provided the DOER the discretion to reduce the ACP on an annual basis.

The DOER noted the following in its release:

“DOER recognizes the importance for project developers and project financers, along with retail electric suppliers with compliance obligations, to have greater certainty of the ACP Rate further into the future.  Additional certainty is expected to enhance parties’ abilities to estimate expected SREC revenue streams and to facilitate project financing and negotiations for long-term contracts for SRECs.  The ACP rate must be sufficient to ensure sufficient project profitability to stimulate market growth to meet the program goals, but avoid unnecessary costs to ratepayers”

The ACP schedule to be implemented is at the values initially proposed. The table below outlines the schedule. Over the course of the 2012 and 2013 compliance periods, the rate will stay set at $550 per SREC and decline by 5% per year thereafter. Additionally, by January 31 of each year, the DOER will announce the new 10th year price in order to maintain a complete 10 year schedule at all times.