By Molly Cox and Mark Pignatelli
The Residential Green Building Committee met on February 13th, 2017. Although it was a smaller meeting, Kimberly reviewed some great upcoming USGBC events, and we had some exciting policy updates.
Oren Richkin and Bill Womeldorf (members of the committee) have been doing some research around current legislative events including attending EEAC (Energy Efficiency Advisory Council), and they gave an overview of solar related news including the SREC (Solar Renewable Energy Certificate) program in MA. The DOER filed a change to the program in hopes of an extension and to keep incentives intact. The new SMART (Solar Massachusetts Renewable Energy Target) program is not expected to come online until January 2018 at the earliest (See HERE for the new tariff structure we can expect, which includes a declining block program). While we wait for SMART to kick off, the SREC II deadline has been extended to the beginning of January, 2018, but the compensation rate for the SREC will decrease from 80%, down to 70% of the SREC value. This extension gives solar customers assurance of compensation for new projects, and the SMART program will provide customers the confidence they need to predict ROI’s on any given project, and lock them in with rates from the beginning.
We have some exciting upcoming events! Join Craig Foley for Understanding the Legislative Process on March 14th. Register here. See you at the next RGBC meeting on March 13th!
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PE | Associate, LeMessurier
Vice President, AEW’s Architecture & Engineering group
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Senior Vice President, Market Transformation and Development U.S. Green Building Council
AIA LEED AP BD+C | Senior Associate, Gensler Boston 
LEED Fellow, WELL AP | Founder and Principal, Ecoworks Studio
AIA, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP
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Assistant Professor of Exposure Science | Director of the Healthy Buildings program
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