Energy Exchange

LA Better Building Challenge Partners with EDF’s Investor Confidence Project to Accelerate Citywide Energy Efficiency Goals

By EDF Blogs / Published: April 2, 2014

By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant

Source: LA Better Buildings Challenge

Environmental Defense Fund’s Investor Confidence Project^SM (ICP) is pleased to announce a partnership with the Los Angeles Better Buildings Challenge to help develop a more robust marketplace for energy efficiency retrofits in the city. Los Angeles has set a goal of achieving 20% energy savings across 30 million square feet of existing buildings by 2020 as part of the Better Buildings Challenge, a national leadership initiative sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. If achieved, it is estimated that this 20% reduction in energy costs will create over 7,000 high-quality local jobs, and avert annual carbon emissions equivalent to taking more than 18,000 cars off the road.

The LA Better Buildings Challenge will be promoting the ICP Protocols through its network of building owners and industry stakeholders to help bring even greater transparency and accountability to the energy efficiency market by introducing a system of standardization in the way commercial building retrofits are developed, funded, and managed. The ICP framework assembles best practices and existing technical standards into a set of protocols that define a clear roadmap for developing projects, determining savings estimates, and documenting and verifying results. Read More »

Climate Action is Turning Green to Gold for Californians

By EDF Blogs / Published: March 31, 2014

By Lauren Navarro and Emily Reyna

What would you do with extra cash? Starting this April, customers of California’s biggest utilities will experience first-hand how the state’s fight against climate change is actually paying off – in the form of real money.

Wait… real money? How does that work?

Source: Flickr/Mike Schmid

Yes. Millions of household customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and other investor-owned utilities will automatically receive a “Climate Credit” twice a year through 2020 – every April and October – as a line item on their utility bill. This money comes from California’s cap-and-trade program, which holds the state’s largest emitters, including electric utilities, accountable for their climate pollution. With cap and trade, regulated companies must buy “allowances,” or permits, if they plan to emit carbon pollution –equivalent to nearly $1.7 billion to date. Now, part of this money is being returned to these utilities’ customers. For average Californians, the Credit will cover the slightly higher rates that cover California’s green transformation. But if you’re conscientious about your energy use – and are a below average energy user – your Credit will be a bonus for you. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Climate / Comments are closed

Transitioning to a Clean Energy Future Will Require Lots of Private Capital, but How Do We Get There?

By Victor A. Rojas / Published: March 25, 2014

Source: 401(K) FlicThe past two decades have seen a tremendous growth in our understanding of the climate change imperative and in the enormity of the challenge that confronts us. It has become clear that meeting climate change mitigation objectives will require the aggressive deployment of clean energy technologies, substantial amounts of capital, and creative methods of engaging that capital around these activities.

Transitioning to a low-carbon economy costs money (and lots of it). In fact, the International Energy Agency has estimated that $10.5 trillion will be required between 2010 and 2030 to fund this transition worldwide. Given the continuing challenges confronting global economies, the bulk of the capital needed to transition to this clean energy future will, by necessity, be private capital. As a result, creative financing solutions are essential to engaging and unleashing private, institutional capital, and accelerating the flow of those funds toward clean energy projects.

But the question of how to most effectively unlock the enormous amounts of capital necessary to pay for our transition to a low-carbon economy still remains. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Climate, Energy Financing, Investor Confidence Project, On-bill repayment, Renewable Energy / Tagged green bonds | Read 1 Response

PACE Financing for Clean Energy, Part 2: Lowering the Funding Costs

By Brad Copithorne / Published: March 21, 2014

Yesterday, my colleague Scott Hofmeister described an insurance pool that California has introduced to help communities integrate Property Assessed Clean Energy (“PACE”), a unique program that allows homeowners to finance money-saving clean energy retrofits through their property tax bill. These programs are popular in Sonoma, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern, and Fresno Counties, and we expect them to spread rapidly throughout the state.

Home Energy Renovation Opportunity (HERO), a residential PACE program run by Renovate America that has partnered with the Western Riverside Council of Governments, has funded over $180 million of clean energy retrofit projects in a little more than two years of operation. These investments are expected to save homeowners more than 2 billion kilowatt-hours, reduce consumers’ utility bills by almost $500 million and avoid more than 1.4 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, or the equivalent of removing almost 300,000 passenger vehicles from the road for a full year. And notably, the HERO program is entirely funded by private investors. Read More »

Also posted in California, Clean Energy, Energy Financing / Read 3 Responses

EDF Wins Business Achievement Award for Efforts to Advance Clean Energy Financing

By EDF Blogs / Published: March 20, 2014

By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant

Each year the Climate Change Business Journal (CCBJ) awards businesses and non-profits for their outstanding work in the climate and environment industry. This year, we are thrilled to announce that EDF’s own Investor Confidence Project (ICP) was named a winner of CCBJ’s Business Achievement Award in the category of Finance. Winners of the 18 categories – ranging from solar and wind power to transportation and energy efficiency – were recognized this month at an Environmental Industry Summit in San Diego.

The Investor Confidence Project received recognition for its efforts to help create a market for investor-ready energy efficiency projects. From the CCBJ award website: “ICP is moving the energy efficiency industry closer to the Holy Grail of securitization, in which energy efficiency projects can be valued based on consistent parameters with little project-specific analysis and vetting-processes that ratchet up soft costs quickly.” Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Energy Financing, Investor Confidence Project / Comments are closed

On World Water Day, Why Talk About Energy?

By Kate Zerrenner / Published: March 20, 2014

Source: UN Water

The theme of this year’s World Water Day on March 22nd is the “energy-water nexus,” and the timing couldn’t be better. According to the United Nations (who first established World Water Day in 1993):

780 million people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water.
1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity.
90 percent of the power generation in the world comes from water-intensive fossil fuels.
As countries progress and develop, there is an increased risk of conflict between power generators, other water users, and environmental concerns.
By 2035, global water withdrawals for energy are predicted to increase by 20 percent, and water consumption for energy is expected to increase by 85 percent.

For the past year, I’ve been trying to bring awareness to the connection between energy and water in Texas, but this issue is much bigger than a single state. Energy and water are both basic components of life and economic progress, and they are also inextricably linked. Energy is used to secure, deliver, treat, and distribute water, while water is used (and often degraded) to develop, process and deliver energy. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Climate, Energy-Water Nexus, Utility Business Models / Tagged World Water Day | Read 2 Responses