Concord, NH The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment), USDA Forest Service (USFS) and New Hampshire-based Innovative Natural Resource Solutions LLC (INRS) revealed the establishment of the New Hampshire T-RECs Enterprise Fund (www.t-recsfund.org) to provide capital financing for community-scale wood heating projects.
The New Hampshire T-REC Fund is the first program funded under the Local Energy for American Fund (LEAF) joint-venture between the Endowment and USFS. LEAF identified New Hampshire as one of two states (with Oregon) to pilot creative finance programs for advanced heating systems that use sustainable wood biomass as fuel. The fund will be capitalized with an initial $750,000 investment and will build on New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) wood biomass heating incentives.
“A major obstacle to developing innovative solutions to conversion to wood-to-energy systems is capital. In New Hampshire we’ve found a way to leverage the RPS to create both creative financing and more importantly forest-based solutions that promise to improve the forest environment and rural economies across the state,” said Endowment president Carlton Owen.
INRS, a New Hampshire-based forestry and renewable energy consulting firm, will administer the program. “We are excited to be working with the Endowment and the USFS on this effort. Through LEAF these two leading organizations have shown vision in trying something new that will help N.H. institutions and businesses reduce fossil fuel use while also reducing their carbon footprint and cost of heating. This is a win-win-win for sustainable heating NH buildings with a local fuel,” said Charles Levesque, president of INRS.
The fund will be used to “capitalize” thermal renewable energy certificates for community-scale wood heating projects in schools, municipal buildings, institutions, and businesses. Under N.H.’s RPS program, building owners can receive thermal renewable energy certificates (T-RECs) based on heat output from qualifying renewable heating systems (wood, solar, geothermal). These certificates are then purchased by N.H. regulated utilities and retail electricity suppliers, thus providing a revenue source that creates incentives to develop additional renewable heating systems.
Instead of the traditional approach of receiving T-REC income after the project is built, the T-REC Enterprise Fund will “pre-purchase” future T-RECs for up to five years and provide project developers with much needed up-front cash to help lower capital cost thus addressing a major hurdle for deploying modern wood heating systems.
Once the project is built and generating T-RECs, the certificates will be sold, thus re-capitalizing the fund. By proving this finance program can generate a market return, program sponsors hope to attract private capital to grow and expand the fund for the future.
The T-RECs Enterprise Fund is now accepting applications and expects to begin funding projects in the coming months.