US announces new measures to boost renewable energy

The U.S. government announced Monday new actions to help households to use renewable energy and improve energy efficiency.

The measures are expected to help states meet targets in the Clean Power Plan announced earlier this month, to cut U.S. power plants' emission of carbon dioxide by 32 percent by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, said the White House in a press release.

The federal government will provide financial incentives for households to use more renewable energy and improve their homes' energy efficiency.

Federal Housing Administration (FHA) under the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will unlock residential Property-Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing for single-family housing to make. The PACE financing programs allow homeowners to pay the cost of installation of renewable energy or the improvement of house energy efficiency overtime through property taxes.

The HUD and the Department of Energy (DOE) will also launch a new program to increase homeowners' borrowing power to help them adopt renewable energy and improve their homes' energy efficiency.

"Last year there were about 7,000 megawatts of solar coming on line. About half of that was utility but about half of that was residential and commercial. So we are seeing the beginning of this transformation. We really feel this is a major opportunity to expand this dramatically and to contribute to the clean energy," said Ernest Moniz, U.S. Secretary of Energy in a press call Monday morning.

The DOE's Loan Programs Office will provide additional one billion U.S. dollars loan guarantees to support commercial-scale distributed energy projects, such as rooftop solar with storage and smart grid technology.

The DOE will also award 24 million dollars for eleven high-performance solar power projects that could lower the cost and improve the performance of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems.

President Barack Obama is expected to announce these new measures at the National Clean Energy Summit held in Las Vegas, Nevada, when he unveils a "broader vision" of the United States to fight climate change at 5 pm PDT on Monday. 
  Xinhua - china.org.cn
25/8/15
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