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Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA)

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bonding needs. What Is the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act? The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) was signed into law in 1998 and reauthorized by the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2015. It established a federal credit assistance program operated under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Transportation to provide financing for certain surface transportation projects that DOT considers to be of national or regional importance. These may include projects to construct, expand, or upgrade highways, railways (primarily passenger lines, but also some used to transport freight), intermodal freight transfer facilities, or port terminals. Only projects valued at $10 million or more are eligible for TIFIA financing. Qualified state and local governments, transit authorities, transportation companies, and public/private partnerships (P3s) can apply for loans, loan guarantees, or standby lines of credit. TIFIA offers 35-year fixed-rate loans with no prepayment penalty and the option of deferring payments until five years after substantial project completion. Interest is...

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A Guide to Construction Bonding Requirements with the New Infrastructure Investment Jobs Act

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bonding needs. What Is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act? The November 2021 passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act authorized a total of $1.2 trillion in spending, including $550 billion in new spending on a variety of infrastructure projects intended to upgrade, expand, and/or replace the nation’s aging and overburdened infrastructure—roads and bridges, the electric grid, rail systems, transit, ports, airports, water systems, and so on. Broadband expansion and the creation of a network of electric vehicle chargers address two pressing 21st century infrastructure needs that didn’t even exist only a couple of decades ago. The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in August 2022 added another $369 billion to the total funding for infrastructure-related projects. As a result of this unprecedented investment in infrastructure, the construction industry is likely to see a similarly unprecedented boom. Impact on Construction Bonding Requirements One rule included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is intended to address a gray area in...

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Succeeding with Solar Power

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. Why Invest in Renewable Energy Generation? Companies around the world are strategizing to determine how they can reduce their carbon footprint and aid in the transition to a zero-carbon future. Reducing their dependence on energy from fossil fuels invariably plays a big part in their planning. Smaller businesses can move toward their energy goals by investing in community solar projects by buying or leasing a few panels and benefiting from selling their excess electricity output. Larger businesses may be in a position to install their own solar systems on company property. Companies that can bear the upfront cost of installing a solar energy system and generate their own electricity can reduce or even eliminate their need to acquire energy from the grid. They also may be able to gain another revenue stream by exporting their excess power to the grid, for a price. What’s Involved in Installing a Solar System? The seeds of success must be planted from the...

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A Guide to Solar Surety Bonds

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. What Are Solar Surety Bonds? All surety bonds required in conjunction with the permitting, construction, operation, or decommissioning of a solar generating facility fall into the broad category of solar surety bonds.  Solar surety bonds are a form of financial security used to mitigate risk in the solar energy industry. They are an alternative to letters of credit, cash deposits, and other ways to protect the financial interests of project owners and government entities—federal, state, or local—related to various phases of a solar generating facility’s life cycle. Each solar surety bond is a legally binding contract among three parties: the “obligee” requiring the bond, the “principal” purchasing the bond, and the “surety” guaranteeing the payment of valid claims against the bond. Solar Surety Bonds have certain advantages over other types of financial security. The main advantage from the principal’s standpoint is that a surety bond does not require a large initial outlay of cash or tie up the principal’s...

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What Is a Power Purchase Agreement?

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your bonding needs. See more about purchase power agreements here. What Is a Power Purchase Agreement? Power purchase agreements are bilateral (2-party) contracts allowing customers to purchase energy and renewable energy certificates from a renewable energy supplier generating either solar or wind energy. A PPA allows a third party developer to install, own, and operate an energy system on property owned by a customer. The seller produces or generates power for sale. The buyer is the “offtaker” of that power. There are a number of ways in which PPAs can be configured. Some deals involve the actual physical delivery of energy. Some do not. Virtual or remote PPAs don’t involve a physical delivery of energy to the buyer. In more than half of the states in the country, PPA provides a way to finance energy projects in the absence of government subsidies. The renewable energy supplier can charge a fixed price, which yields a guaranteed ROI with minimum risk. These contractual agreements typically...

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Solar PPA vs. Lease

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. What’s the Choice? Many people have reached the point where their choice is not whether to acquire solar energy capability but rather how to acquire it. Solar power purchase agreements (PPAs), and lease arrangements are the two options that do not involve the actual purchase of a solar energy system by a property owner. The need to choose between a solar PPA and a solar lease only arises when the property owner has concluded that purchasing a solar system outright or financing the purchase of a solar system is not feasible. That usually has more to do with the property owner’s credit history and financial stability than with any technical matters. And owning a solar system may not make sense for those whose tax liability is so low that they are not incentivized by the 30% investment tax credit (ITC) or other tax benefits derived from solar energy system ownership. Assuming that purchasing or financing a solar system is...

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A Guide to Decommissioning of Solar Sites

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. Why Is a Decommissioning Plan Needed? In most jurisdictions, a project owner applying for a permit to construct a solar generating facility must provide a decommissioning plan. Without a decommissioning plan, these jurisdictions will not issue a permit in the first place. Decommissioning a solar generating facility includes dismantling the equipment and returning the site to its original condition, may involve tasks including: Removing rack wiring Removing panels Dismantling racks Removing electrical equipment Breaking up and removing concrete pads or ballasts Removing racks Removing cables Removing ground screws and power poles Removing fencing Transporting materials from the site Grading the site Seeding/replanting disturbed areas There are costs associated with these tasks. What Does a Decommissioning Plan Include? A decommissioning plan typically is developed by, or at least reviewed by, a qualified engineer and includes such information as: The anticipated useful life of the solar generating facility to be constructed The estimated cost of decommissioning in terms of present value...

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Solar Bond Demand Goes Up

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. Is the Demand for Solar Energy Still Growing? Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware that the demand for solar energy has been increasing steadily and, with the incentives created by recent legislation, is poised for explosive growth. One sure benchmark for growing demand for solar power in the residential market is the increasing popularity of solar bonds as an investment vehicle. These are financial securities, debt instruments, backed by loans made by financing companies—not to be confused with solar surety bonds (more on those in a minute).  Investors are buying up solar bonds because they view the growth of the solar energy industry as an attractive investment opportunity with excellent potential for profit. Drivers of Solar Energy Demand For a long time, demand for solar energy was primarily the result of concerns about the environmental impact of emissions from burning fossil fuels. Now, there also are substantial financial incentives for moving toward electricity generated from...

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Community Solar Subscription Management Surety Bonds

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your solar bonding needs. What Is Community Solar? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, community solar is “any solar project or purchasing program, within a geographic area, in which the benefits of a solar project flow to multiple customers such as individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other groups.” Typically, the energy producing those benefits is being generated by solar panels at an off-site array. Community solar customers have the option of buying or leasing a subset of the solar panels in the array and receiving a credit on their electric bill for the power generated by those panels. Not everyone can have solar panels installed on their own roof, usually because they are renters rather than homeowners, or because their home is not well situated in terms of exposure to sunlight, or because of the design or size of their roof, or for financial reasons. Community solar allows these folks to participate in and benefit from solar energy generation, nonetheless. There also are...

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