Energy Exchange

Record-Setting ‘PACE’ for Commercial Buildings in California

By EDF Blogs / Published: February 6, 2014

iStock_000008305519XSmallLos Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Hilton Hotel executives were all smiles last week, and for good reason: they had just cut the ribbon on the completion of a $7 million energy efficiency upgrade to the Universal City Hilton – the largest project of its kind in the U.S.

LA’s record-setting project is the third in a string of major commercial building retrofits in California in just the past two years, all thanks to Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), a program that allows customers to finance clean energy upgrades and pay them back, over time, on their property tax bills.

What’s made PACE so successful is that it allows customers to avoid the sizeable up-front costs of major building upgrades, while saving energy and money. Read More »

Posted in California, Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, Energy Financing, State / Tagged , | Comments are closed

EDF’s Energy Efficiency Protocols Serve as a Model at ESCO Europe 2014

By EDF Blogs / Published: February 6, 2014

By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant 

1ICP LogoAs interest in and adoption of EDF’s Investor Confidence Project (ICP) protocols has continued to grow in the United States, so too has interest internationally. The Investor Confidence Project was invited to showcase our efforts at ESCO Europe, the continent’s largest conference for energy service providers. This year, the conference was held in Barcelona, Spain and drew an array of participants from across Europe and the public and private sectors, including representatives from finance companies, governments, and non-profits with interests in the energy industry.

I was privileged to serve as both a panelist in a roundtable discussion on barriers to ESCO financing, and a speaker on “Improving Access to Finance,” a well-attended session with representatives from the European Investment Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and European Energy Efficiency Fund.

EDF was invited to attend this conference based on a series of conversations over the last year with European stakeholders facing the same barriers to investing in energy efficiency as their American counterparts. With policymakers in Europe similarly counting on a vast expansion of the market in building retrofits and an expected influx of private and public capital, there is a focus on standardization and policies that can enable capital and investors to enter the market with fewer transaction costs. Read More »

Posted in Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, Energy Financing, Investor Confidence Project / Read 1 Response

PACE 2.0: California Leading the Next Evolution in Clean Energy Finance

By EDF Blogs / Published: January 23, 2014

Economy_iStock_000019093094_RFProperty Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is an innovative financing technique for clean energy retrofits that was first developed in Berkeley in 2008, giving energy efficiency projects a huge boost throughout the U.S.

Here’s how it works: Property owners agree to a long-term tax assessment on their home or building in exchange for the upfront funding to pay for a retrofit. What’s great about the program is its ability to essentially eliminate one of the biggest barriers to energy efficiency retrofits: up-front costs.

And, just as with any other property tax assessment, the obligation transfers to the new owner upon a sale of the property.  This transferability allows property owners to consider projects with longer payback periods as the obligation does not become immediately due upon sale. Read More »

Posted in California, Clean Energy, Energy Financing, State / Tagged , | Comments are closed

Upcoming Webinar: How Commercial PACE and ICP are Raising Investor Confidence in Energy Efficiency

By EDF Blogs / Published: January 16, 2014

By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant

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The Investor Confidence Project (ICP) and Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs offer many opportunities for collaboration in the buildings and energy efficiency sector.  We will be exploring this potential for partnership in the upcoming webinar, Commercial PACE: Raising Confidence in Energy Savings to Ramp-Up Investment and Demand, held on January, 30th 2014, at 2pm ET/ 11am PT.

This one-hour, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) / PACEnow webinar is designed to help Commercial PACE administrators, investors, project developers and building owners understand how standardization can facilitate multiple stakeholder alignment, ensure underwriting needs are met and enable energy efficiency investment while lowering transaction costs.  It will include a brief presentation on EDF’s Investor Confidence Project, followed by panel discussion focusing on how Commercial PACE programs are using ICP to address the owner and investor projected savings-confidence challenge, which has been an impediment to energy retrofit financing nationwide.  Moreover, the panel will share how ICP is enabling energy efficiency financing to become a mainstream financial asset class with the high degree of standardization, predictability and scale that investors demand. Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Investor Confidence Project / Tagged | Comments are closed

New Protocol Will Help Create Investor Confidence in Small-Scale Energy Efficiency Retrofits

By EDF Blogs / Published: January 8, 2014

##logoBy: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant

The Investor Confidence Project (ICP), which aims to bring transparency and accountability to the energy efficiency market by introducing a system of standardization, is pleased to announce the release of the Energy Performance Protocol for Targeted Commercial projects.  Unlike whole building retrofits, targeted commercial projects are typically projects that can upgrade a single measure, such as lighting or windows, or multiple measures that are very basic. The protocols standardize how projects are baselined, engineered, installed, operated and measured, and are aimed at boosting investor confidence in the resulting savings.

The Targeted Commercial Protocol complements the ICP’s two existing Energy Performance Protocols: 1) Large Commercial Protocol, which involves a whole building retrofit greater than $1 million and with annual energy savings of more than 20%, and 2) Standard Commercial Protocol, which is a whole building retrofit priced at below $1 million.

The Targeted Commercial Protocol further develops the ICP family of protocols and addresses the range of project types increasingly common in the growing energy efficiency retrofit marketplace. Reflecting market realities for smaller projects, this protocol was developed in collaboration with industry experts, including organizations that are part of the ICP Ally Network.  It strikes a balance between the need to minimize overhead for less complex projects, while maintaining the necessary rigor to attract investment for smaller projects.  Read More »

Posted in Energy Efficiency, Investor Confidence Project / Tagged | Comments are closed

EDF and Allies Defend EPA Emission Standards for Oil and Gas Pollution

By EDF Blogs / Published: January 6, 2014
Source: Angela Keck Law Offices LLC

Source: Angela Keck Law Offices LLC

By: Tomás Carbonell, EDF Attorney, and Brian Korpics, EDF Legal Fellow

A new year may be upon us, but – unfortunately – some members of the oil and gas industry would prefer we roll back the clock on common sense, long-overdue emission standards for oil and gas equipment.

Oil and natural gas production continues to expand rapidly in the United States – and with it the potential for emissions of climate-destabilizing pollutants (especially methane), smog-forming compounds and carcinogenic substances, such as benzene.  We urgently need rigorous national standards that comprehensively address the full suite of pollutants from oil and gas facilities, protect public health and the environment and conserve needless waste of our nation’s natural resources.

In August 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took a promising first step by issuing emission standards for new natural gas wells and other oil and gas equipment, including the thousands of large storage tanks built near gas wells, pipelines and processing facilities each and every year.  These “New Source Performance Standards” (NSPS) were based on proven and highly-effective emission control technologies that leading companies have been using for years.  Many of these control technologies also directly benefit a company’s bottom line by reducing avoidable waste of natural gas from vents and leaks – saving money while protecting our climate and air.  Read More »

Posted in Climate, Natural Gas, Washington, DC / Read 1 Response