A $1.13 fee each month on your electric bill — intended to fund a state renewable energy loan program that failed — has cost ratepayers millions of dollars in payments to bond holders, investment banks, consultants and state employees.
The “Green Infrastructure Fee” pays for a program that never lived up to its billing Opens in a new tab as a way for renters, low-income homeowners and nonprofit organizations to benefit from rooftop solar systems.
GEMS
Green Energy Market Securitization
Green Energy Market Securitization, or GEMS, is set up using proceeds from selling $150 million in state bonds to investors. The program offers qualified homeowners100 percent financing for solar energy systems.
What do you pay?
$1.13 per month on your electric bill.
Where does the money go?
Most goes to pay $33 million in interest and $150 million in principal to the owners of state bonds.
What has bond money been used for so far?
Funded 12 residential rooftop solar systems since the November 2014 start of the program.
After a year of offering loans for rooftop solar systems, only 12 have been installed. Meanwhile, Hawaii residents have made $6 million in interest payments to bond holders; paid $1.22 million to Goldman Sachs & Co. and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. for underwriting the bonds; spent $1.7 million on attorneys, accountants and rating agencies; written a $761,649 check to California consultant Renew Financial; and covered about $188,000 in salaries to the executive directors overseeing the program.
State lawmakers approved the Green Energy Market Securitization, or GEMS, program in 2013 and raised $150 million in a November 2014 bond sale. The program had a goal of lending all the money for solar and other renewable energy systems by November 2016.
To date, the program has loaned only $385,000. To accomplish those modest results, the program has spent $21.5 million of ratepayers’ money.
Now the GEMS program director is largely giving up on the solar loan idea and looking for another use for the money. On Thursday the agency in charge of GEMS will issue an official call for ideas on how the state might deploy what’s left of the $150 million.
Most of what’s left, about $146 million, is sitting in a Bank of New York Mellon custodial account earning less than 0.2 percent interest.
The money may not be doing much, but ratepayers are still on the hook for paying back the full $150 million borrowed plus $33 million in interest over the 15-year life of the bonds.
When Gov. David Ige was asked if he has considered giving the money back to ratepayers, he said in an email, “We are looking at ways to make the program successful.”
That will likely mean finding another renewable energy related program to fund.
As of July 1, ratepayers have paid about $15 million to cover the principal on the bonds and $6.39 million in interest to bond holders, who earn up to 3.24 percent on their money. The next biggest payments went to the companies involved in issuing and selling the bonds.
CASHING IN
Besides bond holders, others made money off the GEMS program.
>> Goldman Sachs and Citigroup got $1.22 million for underwriting the bonds.
>> Attorneys, accountants, rating agencies and others working on the bonds got $1.7 million.
>> Interim Executive Director Richard Lim got $9,583 a month from Dec. 1, 2014, to Feb. 27, 2015.
>> Interim Executive Director Cyd Miyashiro got $9,583 a month from March 2, 2015, to Oct. 15, 2015.
>> Executive Director Tara Young is paid $11,500 a month.
Richard Lim set up the GEMS program when he was director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Lim was appointed by Gov. Neil Abercrombie and left the post when Ige appointed a new director in December 2014. Lim then became the interim executive director of the GEMS program, a position he held from December 2014 to February 2015 at a salary of $9,583 a month.
In May 2014, Lim agreed to pay $1 million to Oakland, Calif.-based Renew Financial for the design, full implementation and operation of the GEMS program. According to the contract with the state, Renew was responsible for loaning out all the money by November 2016.
The state and Renew mutually decided to reduce the company’s responsibilities and Renew was no longer obligated to deploy the full fund by November. The state paid Renew $761,649 for the company’s work through November 2015.
“Soon after we were hired, market conditions changed in the solar industry that caused the state to dramatically reduce the role we were hired to play,” said Cliff Staton, executive vice president of Renew Financial. “We were happy to provide consulting services and remain supportive of the state’s efforts to achieve its goals.”
After Lim left the program, it was managed by interim Executive Director Cyd Miyashiro from March 2015 to October 2015. As with Lim, she was paid $9,583 a month.
In October 2015 Tara Young was hired as executive director, earning $11,500 a month. Young has a staff of five full-time employees and one part-time employee, who collectively earn $414,400 a year.
“I won’t comment on startup costs that had been incurred prior to my arrival,” Young said in an email. “It’s the view of our board and stakeholders that there are still opportunities to deploy GEMS capital in the public interest, and so long as that’s the case I believe the new resources we have brought on have the right skill sets and experience to get the job done.”
The failure of the GEMS program to lend more than a small fraction of its bond proceeds is due to changes in the solar marketplace, Young said.
The program was designed in 2012 and 2013. By its launch in 2014, Hawaiian Electric Co. was trying to hold the line on additional rooftop solar systems due to concerns about the impact on its grid. Also, private companies were offering to install solar systems with no money down, taking away the need for a government program that did essentially the same. Finally, the state ended an attractive incentive program for rooftop solar last year.
“The initial focus on solar was based on the needs of the market at the time, but was never contemplated as the sole program,” Lim said, adding that the money could be used for other clean energy technologies, such as energy efficiency and storage.
Chris DeBone, managing partner at Hawaii Energy Connection, which sells the KumuKit solar systems, said the State Energy Office, which helped put together GEMS, should have known there was no need for a $150 million loan program.
“The State Energy Office’s purpose is to understand the energy market of Hawaii,” DeBone said. “I think the GEMS program was more emotional than logical.”
Young said the current loan options for residents were designed for the 2013 solar market when there were fewer financing options for solar.
“By the time the GEMS program came to market in summer 2015, we were competing in a crowded marketplace with financial institutions that developed products for those who had previously been unable to obtain financing back in 2013,” Young said.
Young said her staff’s goal is to put in place new loan options for customers looking to fund renewable technology beyond solar, including battery storage, commercial energy efficiency and community solar. The goal is to get “considerably faster at bringing new programs to market.”
The soonest her office can bring a new program to market is the fourth quarter of this year with the first loans funded in 2017 — nearly three years since the bonds were issued.
