NY on-bill financing legislation

I am looking for more details on the Power New York Act, which the New York State legislature recently passed as a companion to the 2009 Green Jobs/Green New York law. The bill enables utilities to enact "on-bill financing" that will allow homeowners to pay back the cost of residential energy-efficiency retrofits through a surcharge on their monthly energy bill. Ideally, the surcharge will equal or exceed savings on energy use, resulting in a cost-neutral solution for families. More details are available here and here.

I am looking for a bit more information on implementation of the retrofit program: Does anyone have a sense of the timeframe for the retrofit program and/or estimates of per-unit costs? Are there provisions to conduct audits after the retrofits have been performed? Any sense of how the program will be marketed to consumers?

Any insights would be appreciated!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Carolyn Reid on August 18, 2011 at 1:00pm

I have been looking into this program, it looks like NYSERDA will be using a lot of the same program requirements that they are using for their unsecured loan program, ENERGY STAR Performance Loans, that launched in November 2010. ENERGY STAR Performance Loans can be used to finance energy efficiency upgrades on residences with 1 to 4 units, and it looks like on-bill will allow the same.

This article gives a good overview of the issues that the legislation has faced.

Permalink Reply by Rosemary A. Olsen on August 19, 2011 at 10:12am

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is implementing the On Bill Recovery Financing Program as part of their Green Jobs-Green New York loan program. Within 300 days of the signing of the legislation by Governor Cuomo, each of the utilities named in the legislation shall offer on-bill recovery financing. The legislation increased the loan size from $13,000 to $25,000 for single family homes (1 to 4 family) and from $25,000 to $50,000 for businesses. Single family home financing is available as part of NYSERDA's Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program (HPwES). The average per unit cost for a single family home is about $8,000. HPwES requires that an Building Performance Institute (BPI) audit be conducted both pre and post retrofit by a BPI accredited participating contractor along with eligible measures.

NYSERDA is marketing the program directly and through a grassroots marketing campaign conducted by consortiums of municipalities, not-for-profit organizations, and other community partners. Community Development Corporation of Long Island is administering the Long Island Green Homes Consortium, a consortium of towns and other partners conduction marketing and outreach on Long Island (www.longislandgreenhomes.org) . Energize Bedford is marketing Northern Westchester. NYSERDA is marketing the program statewide through Constituency Based Organizations such as Long Island Progressive Coalition who is a member of the Long Island Green Homes Consortium. NYSERDA provides marketing resources for participating Home Performance Contractors.