Hatfield, Harvard, Scituate and Winchester will be pilot communities.
SPRINGFIELD - The state’s energy chief is leading a new initiative to launch what has thus far been a surprisingly tough sell in Massachusetts:
Sun.
Or, sun power, to be precise.
Though certainly not stagnant, solar power has been slow to catch on in Massachusetts despite the state’s international reputation as a leader in biotechnology research and development, according to Richard K. Sullivan Jr., secretary of the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
Sullivan, who attended an editorial board meeting at The Republican on Wednesday, said Gov. Deval L. Patrick’s push to have 250 megawatts of solar power installed by 2017 will be advanced by a pilot program in four Massachusetts communities to adopt solar technology.
“We’re going city by city, town by town, house by house, to ask people to rethink how they use energy - and that will be truly revolutionary,” said Sullivan.
As chairman of the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, created by the so-called Green Jobs Act of 2008, the Patrick administration is partnering in a grassroots marketing effort to raise the sun’s profile as a fuel source. The four pilot communities are Hatfield, Harvard, Scituate and Winchester.
The “Solarize Massachusetts” pilot project will provide education and marketing to help the four towns to push residential and small-scale commercial solar projects and provide a business model to reduce costs.
Although solar cells are costly to install, Sullivan emphasized the state and federal renewable energy credits businesses may recoup to offset the start-up price. The value of the credits depends on the volume of energy produced. Highly efficient cells may cost more than $1,000, according to industry experts. The average start-up cost for a home or business is difficult to estimate, Sullivan said.
He noted that utility companies are mandated by law to use renewable energies and there are special provisions for solar power. Proposed state legislation would pass a percentage of solar costs to the consumer, Sullivan conceded.
Despite the front-end costs of installing solar, the power source has broad possibilities in terms of creating jobs and expanding the green industry, while reducing the reliance on foreign oil.
Sullivan said clean energy jobs have increased 65 percent over the past five years.
Proposed solar power projects have been cropping at closed landfills in communities across the region, plus two planned sites by Holyoke Gas & Electric, but residential consumers and smaller businesses have been harder to persuade.
“It’s been tough to find the customer,” Sullivan said.