Assessing the PACE of California residential solar deployment: Impacts of Property Assessed Clean Energy programs on residential solar photovoltaic deployment in California, 2010-2015

Technical Report · Wed Apr 04 04:00:00 EDT 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1432252· OSTI ID:1432252

Deason, Jeff ^[1]; Murphy, Sean ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

A new study by Berkeley Lab found that residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (R-PACE) programs increased deployment of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in California, raising it by about 7-12% in cities that adopt these programs. R-PACE is a financing mechanism that uses a voluntary property tax assessment, paid off over time, to facilitate energy improvements and, in some jurisdictions, water and resilience measures. While previous studies demonstrated that early, regional R-PACE programs increased solar PV deployment, this new analysis is the first to demonstrate these impacts from the large, statewide R-PACE programs dominating the California market today, which use private capital to fund the upfront costs of the improvements. Berkeley Lab estimated the impacts using econometric techniques on two samples: -Large cities only, allowing annual demographic and economic data as control variables -All California cities, without these annual data Analysis of both samples controls for several factors other than R-PACE that would be expected to drive solar PV deployment. We infer that on average, cities with R-PACE programs were associated with greater solar PV deployment in our study period (2010-2015). In the large cities sample, solar PV deployment in jurisdictions with R-PACE programs was higher by 1.1 watts per owner-occupied household per month, or 12%. Across all cities, solar PV deployment in jurisdictions with R-PACE programs was higher by 0.6 watts per owner-occupied household per month, or 7%. The large cities results are statistically significant at conventional levels; the all-cities results are not. The estimates imply that the majority of solar PV deployment financed by R-PACE programs would likely not have occurred in their absence. Results suggest that R-PACE programs have increased PV deployment in California even in relatively recent years, as R-PACE programs have grown in market share and as alternate approaches for financing solar PV have developed. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office supported this research.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Building Technologies Office (EE-5B)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 1432252
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION