Energy Exchange

EDF Adds Multifamily Homes to its Energy Efficiency Protocols

By EDF Blogs / Published: April 25, 2014

By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant

The Investor Confidence Project (ICP) is pleased to announce the release of a new series of Multifamily Energy Performance Protocols (EPP) that build on ICP’s successful commercial protocols to bring the benefits of standardization to a broader array of project types. This suite of three protocols include Large Multifamily for whole building projects over $1M, Standard Multifamily for smaller whole building projects typically less than $1M, and Targeted Multifamily for single measures.

The multifamily protocols were developed with the collaboration of industry experts including participating members of the ICP Multifamily Development Team and the ICP Ally Network. The bulk of the protocols are comprised of the same market tested methodologies that can be found in all of ICP’s Energy Performance Protocols. However, the multifamily versions have been designed to address considerations that apply to the multifamily sector including the issues of split incentives and tenant privacy. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, Energy Financing / Comments are closed

EDF Helps Standardize Energy Efficiency Projects in Texas

By EDF Blogs / Published: April 15, 2014

By: Matt Golden, Senior Energy Finance Consultant

Texas currently has the highest rate of energy consumption of any U.S. state and accounts for 10% of the country’s total energy consumption. Most of that energy goes to energy-intensive industries, such as aluminum, chemicals, forest products, glass, and petroleum refining, which consume 50% of the state’s energy, compared with a national average of 32%.

Last year, the Texas legislature passed statewide legislation enabling cities to use their property assessment as a way to finance clean energy and energy efficiency for industrial, agriculture, water, and commercial buildings. This innovative financing tool, generally referred to as property-assessed clean energy (PACE), has the potential to unlock a considerable amount of funding for both renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in the state, while simultaneously offering building owners cheaper financing options and secure repayment through their property assessment. Read More »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency, Energy Financing, Renewable Energy, Texas / Tagged PACE | Read 1 Response

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 »

Also posted in Clean Energy, Energy Efficiency / Comments are closed

Conference on Clean Energy Financing Signals a Shift in Funding the Low-Carbon Economy

By Brad Copithorne / Published: March 28, 2014

Source: eProGuide

In 2010, I began working on financial policy at EDF. Our objective was to implement policies that would allow private sector companies to profitably deliver financing solutions to residential and commercial property owners footing the upfront cost of money-saving energy efficiency and clean distributed generation (such as rooftop solar) projects. While the residential solar market was already gaining steam at the time, most of the other markets had very limited momentum. But after attending the clean energy finance conference that EDF co-hosted yesterday with Citi, energy efficiency solutions provider Elevate Energy, and law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, it appears that the market for financing clean energy projects is beginning to accelerate rapidly.

The agenda featured 12 private companies from the clean energy sector (Kilowatt Financial, Clean Power Finance, Renovate America, AFC First Financial Corp., Renewable Funding, Clean Fund, Joule Assets, Noesis Energy, SCIEnergy, Metrus Energy, Hannon Armstrong, and Honest Buildings), plus a few more in the audience, that are executing a wide range of transactions using Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), On-Bill Repayment, Energy Services Agreements (ESAs), and many other innovative techniques to fund the transition to a low-carbon economy. Read More »

Also posted in Energy Financing, Grid Modernization, New York, On-bill repayment, Renewable Energy / Read 1 Response

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 Efficiency, Energy Financing, On-bill repayment, Renewable Energy / Tagged green bonds | Read 1 Response

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 Efficiency, Energy Financing / Comments are closed