This commentary was originally posted on the EDF California Dream 2.0 Blog.
Next week, the California investor-owned utilities – Sempra, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric – will be hosting a workshop to announce their proposals for energy efficiency financing programs as mandated by the California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”) in their May decision. The proposals are being developed by Harcourt, Brown and Carey (“HBC”) and are expected to include an On-Bill Repayment (OBR) program for commercial and other non-residential properties.
As I’ve mentioned before, OBR programs allow property owners to finance energy efficiency and/or renewable energy projects with third-party banks or other investors. Property owners repay their loan via their utility bill and that obligation stays linked to the meter upon a sale of the property.
Based on conversations with HBC and other stakeholders, EDF is optimistic that the program will be the first on-bill program in the country that funds energy efficiency retrofit projects entirely with private capital at no cost to ratepayers or taxpayers. The program will be flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of property types, retrofit measures, financing structures and customer acquisition models.
The workshop will be open to the public and held from 9:00am-5:00pm on Tuesday, October 2nd in the Auditorium at the California Public Utilities Commission (505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA).