I follow the SRECTrade blog for New York related solar news. You can find the latest update here. It contains this bit of unwelcome news.

On another note, the much anticipated, “NY Solar Jobs Act” legislation, formally bill A05713 has been watered down under a renamed Assembly Bill A09149. This new bill, proposed by Assemblyman Steven Englebright eliminates language creating a state-wide SREC market due to push back from the New York Senate and Governor’s office.

See the full text of Assembly Bill A09149.

Interesting how they say, “due to push back from the New York Senate and Governor’s office.” I’m sure the push back is from the utilities that supply money to the Senate and Governor’s political campaigns.

I understand the logic of letting the utilities decide how to best meet their solar targets, but I also imagine the utilities will choose options that put the most money in their pockets rather than the many small local producers of solar power in the state. I do not see any advantage to letting each utility determine it’s own path to meeting the targets and will only make the sale of solar systems to residential customers more complicated and costly.

SREC’s may not be the best way to encourage solar adoption in the state, but there doesn’t seem to be any better state-wide options being proposed by Cuomo’s administration.