From the New York Times' Green Inc. blog:
Connecticut’s touted solar rebate program, which experts have pointed to as exemplary, may not be so perfect after all. Six months into its current two-year budget cycle, it is nearly out of cash, leaving homeowners, businesses, and nonprofit and governmental organizations that want to buy solar electric systems out of luck.
All that remains is money for residential solar leases, but there’s an income cap, and so far, they haven’t caught on.
As I wrote in Sunday’s New York Times, representatives of the Clean Energy Fund, which administers the program, describe it as being a ‘victim’ of its own success. But as Connecticut joins a growing list of states — including Maryland and Minnesota — that have run through their solar rebate allotments, there is growing concern that such situations could critically damage a solar industry trying despeartely to get off the ground.
“The biggest concern is that we don’t lose the momentum that’s been hard-won over these last 2 or 3 years because of these incentive programs,” said Monique Hanis, a spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association. “It could really take off,” Ms. Hanis said of the solar industry. “Or we could have a repeat of what happened after the Carter years when it got snuffed out.”>>>MORE
