NEWS The PACE of clean energy development featured in ScienceMarch 5, 2017

The PACE of clean energy development

The Prop­erty Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) pro­gram is a national ini­tia­tive designed to pro­mote invest­ment in solar pho­to­voltaics by com­mer­cial, non­profit, and res­i­den­tial prop­erty own­ers. Its cen­tral fea­ture is to pro­vide low-​​cost, long-​​term fund­ing, which is repaid as an assess­ment on the property’s reg­u­lar tax bill, as is done for side­walks and sew­ers, for exam­ple. Spurring such invest­ment clearly is a good goal, but is the pro­gram effec­tive? Ameli, Pisu, and Kam­men in Applied Energy used a nat­ural exper­i­ment in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia to test the capac­ity of PACE, find­ing that it has been a great suc­cess, more than dou­bling res­i­den­tial pho­to­voltaic instal­la­tions in the region at no cost to the tax­pay­ers. —HJS

Appl. Energy 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.01.037 (2017).