People will finance a new car for getting to work. Or a 60 inch TV for entertainment purposes. They will not finance a power source like wind or solar if it is over priced and has no ROI.
If more people would take responsibility for their lives, and not look to a nanny state to tell them what to do, they would see the payback for many small projects is in the savings.
I installed a programmable thermostat and thermal curtains this past fall. In the coldest winter in decades my propane heating bill went down from an average $1,000 for October through January to $288. The cost was $300. My ROI was 4 months.
$200 of what I saved is going into another 6 inches of insulation in my attic. A free heat loss scan from my propane supplier predicts I should save another 10 percent from that project. My ROI will be longer, about 7 years, if I leave out savings on summer air conditioning.
Another $300 of the savings is going for a small solar panel and battery setup to power a pair of LED floodlights. On a daily basis they will provide lighting to a riding area without raising my electric bill, but they are also part of a larger plan to manage lighting needs during the frequent extended power outages common to my town.
The last $200 saved is fun money.
Homeowners would be more into clean energy projects if they would work out the financing part of the equation, according to Pike Research.
Pike Research reports that 42 percent of respondents in a recent survey said they would be interested in Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs. PACE financing means that the cost of clean energy home improvements—solar panels, insulation and the like—is paid back as part of annual property taxes based on an assessment of the home.
In other words, if you want residential clean tech projects to get rolling toss the cost into the tax bill. Note that the majority of people 56 percent didn’t want an additional financial liability. Pike Research surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. adults and 669 single family homeowners in that sample.
PACE programs have largely been put on ice due to worries over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government mortgage agencies that may ultimately be phased out.
Respondents said the two most popular home energy efficiency projects would be tankless hot water heater and solar panels (63 percent of respondents) followed by high efficiency air conditioners and insulation (58 percent).
