The roll-out of the Green Energy Market Securitization program (GEMS) has had results that can charitably be described as disappointing. Of the $145 million available for loans intended to help Hawai`i homeowners and renters avail themselves of advances in energy-saving technologies, just three loans had been approved by the end of last January.<\/p>\n
Officers with three solar installers who were willing to talk with Environment Hawai`i <\/i>discussed some of the reasons they felt were behind the program\u2019s limited results. None was willing to be identified in print.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a difficulty not only in getting customers approved, but in dealing with the program in general,\u201d one company officer told Environment Hawai`i.<\/i> \u201cIt was time consuming. Weeks would go by with no response, customers would be calling, saying they\u2019d never been contacted.\u201d<\/p>\n
One thing in particular he found upsetting: \u201cA lot of homeowners are putting their homes in trust to qualify for Medicaid. They\u2019re being turned down by the GEMS program, because the property is in a trust. We had quite a few customers who had to put their homes under a trust for medical purposes. They wanted to apply for the program but got rejected.\u201d Even though the lack of fee ownership of property was cited in these cases, he went on to say, GEMS did entertain loan applications from Hawaiian Homes lessees.<\/p>\n
Another executive with a solar company said the very process of getting authorization to work with GEMS was a hurdle. \u201cIt was a difficult process to become authorized,\u201d he said, blaming that in part on a \u201clack of leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program \u201cgot off to an extraordinarily slow start. \u2026 We still think that conceptually it makes sense, as something that could benefit portions of the consumer market that might not otherwise have funding for solar energy. It\u2019s a good theory. It\u2019s just a matter of making it work in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the Public Utilities Commission closed the door on net-energy metering last fall, \u201cthat had an enormous damper effect on the entire solar market.\u201d Both of the customers of this installer who had been approved had applied before the PUC decision to end NEM. Since then, he has received no GEMS applications.<\/p>\n
He mentioned yet another disadvantage for solar installers under GEMS: \u201cwe had to front all costs before we could get paid,\u201d he said. Not until a system was up and running are solar installers able to recover their costs under GEMS.<\/p>\n
A representative of yet a third solar contractor who spoke with Environment Hawai`i <\/i>said that he had been an enthusiastic proponent of the bill when it made its way through the Legislature in 2013. After passage, however, when the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism was working out details of GEMS, \u201cit felt, at times, like there were 100 cooks in the kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most frustrating thing,\u201d he said, \u201cwas that GEMS was supposed to help create on-bill financing. That hasn\u2019t happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
His company \u201cinitially looked into working with GEMS,\u201d but decided against it in the end, judging the process to be \u201ctoo complicated. \u2026 If the solar energy industry has a certain process, you have to find out how it works and adjust to that. You can\u2019t just do it how you want things to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
— Patricia Tummons<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The roll-out of the Green Energy Market Securitization program (GEMS) has had results that can charitably be described as disappointing. Of the $145 million available for loans intended to help Hawai`i homeowners and renters avail themselves of advances in energy-saving … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[398],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-8805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-march-2016","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}