At a special meeting two days ago, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education approved plans for solar installations at nine schools throughout the district. The projects will be financed through an agreement with REgeneration Finance LLC. The Santa Monica Mirror reports that “The offer will save the district almost $1.1 million in energy costs and avoid the production of 23,822 tons of greenhouse gases over the next 25 years”. The luck schools are:
- Grant Elementary School
- Franklin Elementary School
- McKinley Elementary School
- John Muir Elementary School
- Will Rogers Elementary School
- Roosevelt Elementary School
- Juan Cabrillo Elementary School
- Pt. Dume Marine Science School
- Webster Elementary School
Since the special meeting was an opportunity for community members to voice any concerns or point out roadblocks to the plan, we can assume that Santa Monica-Malibu families are only too happy to see solar energy start offsetting the energy usage at their local schools.
California solar installations grew to a total capacity of 1,102 megawatts last year, but projects for non-profits and government buildings continue to be the trickiest to finance. Since the bulk of available solar incentives are tax-related, these entities are at a disadvantage financially; but this is where developers and financiers like REgeneration come in, often owning the solar installations and simply selling the clean electricity they produce back to the nonprofit at locked-in rates. The nonprofit benefits from lower, predictable energy costs and the use of clean energy, while the owning entity gets a great financial investment–and solar becomes, as usual, a win-win situation.
