At a recent meeting, the Energy Commission released the Notice to Consider Establishing a Waiting List for the New Solar Homes Partnership Program (NSHP). Although the program was initially funded to support 400 MW of solar electric capacity by 2016, there appear to be dire budgetary issues with only a fraction of that target reached. In the affordable housing space specifically, only ~4MW has been approved out of an original goal of 36MW.

As you know, multi-family developments already face a multitude of funding challenges. Curtailing NSHP incentives at this early stage will quickly dissuade developers from using solar power to meet energy efficiency standards in affordable housing. This effect is the exact opposite of the program's stated goal, which is to "encourage the installation of eligible solar energy systems on energy efficient new homes and residential buildings."

Our goal with this petition is to maintain the Affordable Housing carve-out within the NSHP program, get clear information on available funds and visibility of all projects that have submitted applications for rebates, and identify projects that are in the queue with reservations that are not moving forward so those funds can be utilized by projects that have building permits and are shovel ready.

The Energy Commission proposing to establish a waiting list for this program would mean that unfunded rebate applications would remain on the waiting list until the end of 2012 and any applications that remain unfunded at that time will be canceled altogether. Please speak out now by signing this petition and let them know this course of action is unacceptable!

As requested in the notice, all signatures and comments will be forwarded to [email protected] and [email protected].

View the full notice here: http://www.energy.ca.gov/renewables/06-NSHP-1/notices/2011-11-04_NSHP_Waiting_List_Notice.pdf