Canada’s Alberta province has announced it will route some of the revenue from its carbon levy into a multi-million-dollar rebate scheme for rooftop solar power.
The new Residential and Commercial Solar Program will direct CAD $36 million in rebates to households, non-profit organisations and businesses for the installation of rooftop solar power systems.
The government said the program will cut the cost of going solar by up to 30 percent for households and up to 25 percent for commercial and non-profit buildings.
Alberta’s carbon levy came into force on January 1st 2017. It imposes a rate of CAD $20/tonne in 2017 and $30/tonne in 2018 on fuels that emit greenhouse gas emissions; with some exemptions.
As we reported at the time, the levy is expected to raise $9.6 billion. Of that, $3.4 billion will be go towards supporting large scale renewable energy, bioenergy and technology. $2.2 billion will be directed into green infrastructure, including public transit; and $645 million is earmarked for the Energy Efficiency Alberta program.
The Residential and Commercial Solar Program is listed as a reinvestment of the carbon levy.
“There’s a lot of buzz in Alberta around small-scale solar,” said Shannon Phillips, Minister of Environment and Parks and Minister Responsible for the Climate Change Office.
“This program will make solar power affordable for more Albertans, leading to new panels on 10,000 Alberta rooftops by 2020. Along the way, we will create jobs and local expertise in an emerging industry.”
Late last year, Alberta changed the rules governing micro-generation, increasing the size limit on small-scale solar power systems from one megawatt to five megawatts. The change meant more flexibility for customers, allowing for installations of larger systems on commercial buildings and university campuses.
That measure, combined with initiatives like the Alberta Municipal Solar Program and the On-Farm Solar PV Program, has seen solar uptake double in Alberta since 2015.
Launching the program at Alberta’s Gridworks Solar Energy Training Centre, Phillips said the new scheme will directly support the creation of approximately 1,000 jobs in Alberta’s commercial and residential solar sector. It’s also expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the province by about a half million tonnes, the equivalent of taking 100,000 passenger vehicles off the road.
The Alberta government is urging eligible parties to sign up to for the incentives, with rebates expected to flow by mid-2017.
