Last year, Governor Patrick announced a goal of 1.6GW of solar electricity in Massachusetts by 2020; a goal that requires more than 1.2GW of new solar in the next six years. The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources has now issued draft regulations for its SREC II program. The regulations are too complicated to summarize in a blog post, but you can read the details in our client alert.
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One tidbit for the purely environmental lawyers among our readers — the draft regulations include a significant preference for siting solar arrays on brownfield and landfills; such installations will receive a higher SREC factor than greenfield installations. They are also excluded from the annual program-wide cap that limits the number of greenfield installations permitted to participate in the SREC II program.
Makes sense: set an extremely ambitious goal of 1.2 GW of added capacity in 6 years, and then cap and disfavor crediting the larger, less costly (greenfield) projects… You’re right, “too complicated to summarize”.