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 Susan Malavet Apr 22, 2013 05:58  |
Curious about your bond proposal wonder if its different than our program in Scotland. They sponsored a subsidies program for wind and solar which homeowners and business ventures are going crazy over. Due to these subsidies and costs the Scottish Energy company is having all businesses to pay £500 extra per year to offset the costs which now may close down a lot of our small businesses and if they don't pay we worry that these costs will be added on to our home bills.
We have several companies outside leasing land to put up 2.5 MW turbines so they can collect the subsidies and sell ROCs with no regard to the people living in the beautiful countryside. With the huge influx of large wind turbines in our rural area we now have a political party newly created to fight this growing land devastation to protect our wildlife and moss beds.
Renewables have to be explored further to be sure that they are actually doing good and not a possible further damage to the earth in the future.
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 Matt Hollingsworth Apr 25, 2013 01:15 | Proposal contributor
I'm not familiar with the situation there in Scotland. It sounds like your two concerns are 1) wind turbines ruin the views in the countryside and 2) the cost to homeowners that results from the subsidy. Your first concern is "in the eye of the beholder" as they say. I think this is a classic trade off for land use and arguably is what zoning laws were created to address. I also think that residential solar is not typically perceived to negatively impact the views as much as wind turbines. As to the subsidies, it is possible to just finance the renewables through bonds without any type of subsidy. Is there additional resistance to renewables in Scotland due to the very strong oil ties of the region?
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 2013scalingrenewablesjudges 2013scalingrenewablesjudges Jul 6, 2013 02:35  |
Mr. Hollingsworth,
Thank you for your submission and congratulations on your selection as a finalist for the final judging round. To improve your proposal we have the following comments/questions that we would like you to address:
Our principal comments deal with the details of your plan.
1. Payment Mechanism: Please elaborate the cashflow (i.e. collection/coupon payment) cycle of the project. Who would collect? Is there an end-life purchase mechanism for a PV solar installation or personal wind-turbine system?
2. If the bonds are insured and underwritten by the Federal government, what size credit-risk pool do you propose and why?
3. How are municipal and state governments involved?
4. What technologies are involved, and in what type of arrangement/scheme? If you propose using a power purchase agreement scheme, what parts of the US do you see this being implemented immediately?
5. What are the financial details of a typical war on global warming bond? (Term, coupon, amount, etc.)
6. Would the Bond mechanism act as a Master Limited Partnership?
7. How do you see this working in an emerging economy?
8. Are there any synergies/collaboration that can occur between your program and private PPA providers and utilities?
Please consider these comments/questions in your next draft.
Thanks,
CoLab Judges.
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2013scalingrenewablesjudges 2013scalingrenewablesjudges Aug 1, 2013 10:42 |
The proposal has some good ideas regarding a long-term solution for financing decentralized renewable energy, there are too many holes in the plan that have been left unanswered. Specifically, the payment mechanism and scheme outlined in the author’s proposal are not adequately delineated. Furthermore, the proposal seems to be based solely on the American Market rather than an E7 country, and while the author claims that other countries can follow US example, the proposal does not give enough consideration/knowledge with how to set up a bond market for localization in emerging economies. It would have been interesting to see a novel approach in the cashflow/payment dynamics, i.e. fully thought out diagram/ model that showed the projected returns/yields of the renewable bond model. The Author did not provide such a model, which was suggested in the Judges’ initial comments.
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