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news for Sonoma, Marin & Napa Counties

“Official Newspaper of Never Wearing White Shoes Anyway�

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Robert Bulterman installs a 20-watt solar panel system at a Central Coast farm. Sonoma County is the only participating county that still supports PACE.

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Sonoma County sues to keep solar program going By Curtis Cartier

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obert Bulterman never counted on PACE to save his business. The 46-year-old electrician and solar technician, like a lot of greencollar workers, had admittedly held high hopes that the Property Assessed Clean Energy Program would infuse the overcrowded sustainable-energy industry with a slew of much-needed jobs. But to count on it doing so, he says, would have been “just plain stupid.� As it turns out, Bulterman’s skepticism was well-founded.

“When I heard PACE got put on hold, I just thought, ‘I knew it,’� he says from the driver’s seat of his white Chevy Cheyenne utility truck en route to one of the few solar jobs he was able to land in the ruthless Central Coast solar market. “When it takes off—if it takes off—I think it could quadruple my business, and there would be enough to go around. But I’m not going to assume that’ll happen.� “PACE� is a general term used for a host of different alternative-energy financing schemes that evolved from a program pioneered in Berkeley in 2008 and which are

now being replicated in 22 states nationwide. Indeed, the programs are so promising that the Obama administration has committed $150 million in stimulus money to help them get off the ground. Under a PACE program, a homeowner who wants to buy green technology like solar panels but can’t qualify for a bank loan for the $15,000 to $30,000 needed for a typical system can receive funding from a local municipality. The homeowner then pays back the money, with interest, over a 20plus-year time frame through property taxes. The plan, which attaches a tax lien on % -

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