Senator Montigny –
I’m located at zip code 02748. Professionally, I’m a consultant in the solar industry – but with a lot of project development, management and brokering going on. I try to piece together big puzzle pieces. I’m writing because there is a renewable portfolio standard being talked about right now.

My #1 argument – velocity of money. Mark – may I call you that? – if we build local, with local labor and local finance, and then we the people – we receive the income from the electricity because its on our businesses and our homes – then a whole lot of money comes back to Massachusetts. Its a virtuous cycle.
The reason this point is best pointed out, is because it adds a variable to add to the edge of your budget equations. Does the state break out the amount of revenue that goes into people’s pockets every year from solar electricity generation? There are a few job reports that show more than 10,000 solar jobs in the state – 100,000 advanced energy related.
In Massachusetts, the total amount of electricity from solar power grew 37% from 2016 to 2017. The actual difference was 691,000MWh worth of new solar electricity generated in 2017 – worth $200-300/each for the people that built the new solar power.
That’s $138-207 million in electricity revenue that is flowing to locals – to homeowners, to business owners and investment groups. That amount of money is just the NEW portion for 2017.
I write on this stuff for a living – so I’m good with the numbers (something I wrote recently specifically on this topic).
Please give some thought to looking at the long game, and structuring the system smartly to let us build with locally sourced labor, leading to stay at home electricity revenue broadly distributed across the investing middle class and business owners.
John F. Weaver
ps. – note there wasn’t a single environmental plea, I aim for the wallet.

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