Overview of the Green Jobs – Green New York program

As clean energy policies and programs stack up throughout the country, one central question remains about how states will use any revenues collected from policies like a carbon tax. Will they use the money to incentivize growth in renewable energy, to pay for retraining for fossil fuel industry employees, to redistribute as a credit to all taxpayers in the state, or for some other purpose altogether? The Green Jobs – Green New York program provides an excellent case study for a successful, long-lived program that effectively uses the revenue from a carbon tax to further the state's economic growth and environmental actions.

The Green Jobs – Green New York (GJGNY) Act was passed in 2009 as a state-level program to encourage the adoption of energy efficiency and renewable energy to aid in meeting the state's energy goals. Specifically, GJGNY provides the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) with several different authorities to accomplish these goals, from establishing energy-efficient loan funds to issuing competitive solicitations for projects to providing job training throughout the state. In 2013, NYSERDA became able to provide financing to net-metered residential solar installations with GJGNY loans.

GJGNY is primarily funded through grants from the Department of Energy and state-level revenues from New York's participation in the Northeast's carbon market, RGGI, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. As a result, the program is robustly funded, with a budget of over $200 million, the majority of which is spent on energy audits and implementation or the residential loan fund. Workforce development also represents a sizable portion of the budget spent to date.

One of the primary goals of the GJGNY Act is to make energy efficiency and renewable energy more affordable for low- to moderate-income (LMI) households. As a result, the best known (and most successful) programs provide a 50% discount for energy efficiency upgrades to homeowners whose incomes are equal to or less than 80% of the state's median income, as well as a 100% discount to residents whose incomes are up to 60% of the state median income.

Beyond the audits and discounted efficiency measures, NYSERDA provides two types of loans for energy efficiency and net-metered solar for residential customers through the GJGNY program. The first, the Smart Energy Loan, functions similarly to other home-improvement loans or solar loans, where you pay off your investment through monthly payments to a third-party (i.e., not your utility nor the installer of your efficiency measures or solar panel system). The second, the On-Bill Recovery (OBR) Loan, provides a unique mechanism to pay off your investment by rolling your monthly payments onto your utility bill through "on-bill financing." Importantly, this allows you to only pay one bill per month.

For solar specifically, the GJGNY loan is provided in addition to federal and state tax credits and performance incentives. It's additive to NYSERDA's Affordable Solar incentive, which helps make solar more accessible for all state residents.

Energy efficiency upgrades and solar installations can immediately impact a home's electricity costs and improve home health and safety. In fact, NYSERDA has found that the typical home that participates in GJGNY reduces its total energy use by 15-20% through the program, which can significantly reduce a home's energy burden. Moreover, about 70% of homeowners who received an efficiency audit through the program ultimately installed energy efficiency measures, pointing to the importance of audit programs such as GJGNY.

The GJGNY program has provided almost 32,000 loans for solar PV installations in the state. The loans are about two-thirds Smart Energy Loans and one-third OBR Loans and cover an average of about $12,000 towards solar installations.

The GJGNY program has also been particularly successful in workforce training and development. This particular component of the initiative provides technical training, skills enhancement, certification, and on-the-job training incentives to help overcome the barrier of connecting skilled, trained labor with the companies that need them. One such workforce development initiative is NYSERDA's partnership with the Brooklyn-based Green City Force, through which the state has provided clean energy training to disadvantaged young adults.

You can read more about the success of GJGNY to date in the program's annual and quarterly reports, which are available here.

When you participate in the clean energy revolution, you support green local jobs. Energy efficiency audits, upgrades, and solar panel installations require onsite, hands-on work, meaning investing in energy efficiency and solar amount to an investment in your community.

To get started with solar, check out the easy-to-use EnergySage Solar Calculator, which can help estimate how much you can save with solar. To take the next step, sign up for a free account on the EnergySage Marketplace to receive custom solar quotes from local solar installation companies.