PACE Financing Concept Provides Hope for Renewable Energy Projects

Simon Property Group Inc., the largest U.S. shopping mall owner, and Prologis Inc. the world’s biggest warehouse owner, are among borrowers funding projects from rooftop solar panels to energy-savings systems using so-called PACE financing. PACE bonds, sold by cities to investors, are repaid over decades by property owners through their real estate taxes.As banks become less eager to provide long-term capital for renewable energy, PACE bonds offer a way for property owners to fund projects and for investors to capitalize on clean power. Formally known as property-assessed clean energy, the format failed to catch on big with homeowners and is making headway with commercial borrowers. Agencies that arrange these types of loans estimate more of them will be made in 2013 than in the past four years combined.

“This will be the year that we start seeing deal flow,” said Jessica Bailey, director of a PACE program in Connecticut that began arranging loans in January. “This will be the year where the concept of PACE as security for investment is proven out.”

Deutsche Bank AG estimates that U.S. building owners will spend $280 billion through 2022 on systems that reduce power bills, including LED lighting, solar panels and software that manages electricity usage.

Assessment Bonds

The PACE model is an update of so-called special assessment bonds, a financing tool devised more than 100 years ago to fund infrastructure projects that are repaid through property taxes.

There may be a record $150 million in PACE loans extended for rooftop solar panels, energy-efficient LED lighting and power-management systems this year, according to David Gabrielson, executive director of PACENow, a Pleasantville, New York-based advocacy group. It’s an example of the new sources of financing that have been created in recent years as investors show growing interest in renewables.

PACE loans had a slow start since the first program was created in Berkeley, California, in 2008, partly because of doubt over their treatment in defaults. They have supported just $121 million of clean-energy projects at U.S. residential and commercial buildings in six states, according to estimates from PACENow.

In contrast, about $17 billion in special assessment bonds were issued for projects such as street lights, community centers and underground water systems just in the past decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Prologis Project

Prologis began its first PACE-funded project in November, a $1.6 million effort at its San Francisco headquarters that includes energy-efficient lighting and rooftop solar panels. The company is considering similar financing for retrofits at some of its Southern California buildings, according to Aaron Binkley, director of sustainability programs.

“Our hope is that in a short amount of time the market far eclipses this one individual, small project and there’s a lot more volume,” Binkley said. The San Francisco project is expected to reduce the building’s energy use by about a third, shaving off $98,000 in annual costs.

Clean Fund LLC, a San Rafael, California-based company that provides PACE financing, funded 90 percent of the project by buying a 20-year PACE bond that pays 6.93 percent, according to Managing Director Derek Brown. That’s more than double the yield on 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds, which are about 2.87 percent.

“It’s got a really nice yield” that’s taxable by the federal government and not the state, he said.

Residential Disputes

PACE financing was initially intended to fund residential and commercial projects. Loans to homeowners sparked legal disputes over concerns that debts used for clean-energy projects may take priority over mortgages in a default.

PACE programs are now focusing on business properties, a move that may spur widespread use, said Bailey, from the Connecticut Property Assessed Clean Energy program. The state has 36,000 commercial buildings, and retrofitting a tenth of them with systems to cut their power bills by about 20 percent will take at least $164 million in investments, she estimated.

More Projects

The program may finance about $20 million worth of projects within six months to a year. Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc., Clean Fund and Ameresco Inc. are among the eight lenders that have agreed to provide loans.

Simon Property of Indianapolis, Indiana, used about $2 million in PACE financing for three energy-efficiency projects in California and Ohio. The long repayment period makes the loans attractive, said George Caraghiaur, Simon Property’s senior vice president of sustainability.

“You can finance these projects over a long enough period of time that the energy savings pay for the assessment,” he said in a phone interview. “It makes sense.”

Once PACE financing becomes more widespread, the debts may be bundled together, Caraghiaur said. “Ultimately, they’ll be able to securitize these loans in bigger chunks and sell them off like mortgage-backed securities,” he said.

“That’s the big goal, to bundle a bunch of these PACE loans together and create a secondary market,” said Clay Nesler, vice president of global energy and sustainability at Johnson Controls Inc., the energy-efficiency technology provider that’s working on the Prologis project.

Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have approved the use of this type of financing and there are 16 programs arranging loans in seven states, according to Nesler.

“We are very hopeful that 2013 is a bellwether year for this,” he said.

Ygrene Energy Fund Inc. arranges PACE loans in Sacramento, California, and expects to expand into Miami and Atlanta later this year, according to President Dan Schaefer.

“We’ll probably have 1,000 contractors on board by the middle of this year,” Schaefer said. “We think it’s going to be an incredibly powerful momentum builder for us.”

Copyright 2013 Bloomberg

View the original article here

Report from the Commission provides recommendations, to double US energy efficiency financing

The Commission's action plan would use funding programs and policies, capital to support billions of dollars in savings to unleash hundreds of billions of dollars.
According to the Commission, energy savings contracts for services and utility energy service contracts, focusing on government buildings, are the most important energy efficiency of financing methods on the market involved. Although these models work well, its scope is not wide enough, to nationwide have far-reaching effects on energy efficiency.

To open the door to new energy efficiency funding, the Commission recommends:
Create a secondary market for efficiency Loanssetting State and local programs to resell loans to investors in secondary Marketsinitiating on Bill-repayment and on-Bill financing Programsimproving federal regulations financing efficiency through property taxes and Trustsattaching energy efficiency incentives for Mortgagessetting, control strategies for the promotion of investment of in Efficiencyincreasing the industry real estate buyers to assist customers with their energy use data awareness through ratings and Informationproviding

Creating a secondary

Since there is no uniform system for the evaluation of these loans, there are no robust secondary market for energy-efficiency loans. On the secondary market, investors purchase loans have already been issued. When institutional investors could buy large amounts of energy-efficiency loans, would create a market for energy efficiency loans.

To remove this barrier and investors, access to the market, recommends that the Commission produced consistent underwriting guidelines, contract, language and data requirements for energy efficiency investments.

The report also recommends that State and local governments set up programs, sell to groups of loans to investors on the secondary market. These programs would be similar to the new camp for energy-efficiency loans (wheel)-program.

Revision of guidelines and to initiate programs

New State and local programs can on invoice refund or taxes to finance energy efficiency. On-Bill-repayment programs offer customers the option to pay improvements in energy efficiency in the course of time through their utility bills. Third lending figures for the investment costs. On invoice financing programs programs are similar to the repayment account, but by the utility or taxpayer capital financed.

Revision of federal regulations could develop energy efficiency financing easier. In real terms, for example, a possible tool for efficiency are estate investment trusts.

Improvement of federal regulations, that of residential property assessed clean energy the current roadblocks would remove (PACE), which interfere with these programs. There are no federal restrictions to commercial speed.

Federal regulations can build energy efficiency incentives in mortgage programs. If programs of incentives for energy efficiency include mortgage, would the housing market towards more efficient decisions draw. It would also people their homes upgrade before selling them stimulating.

Federal tax rules change could encourage industries to make investments that could support energy efficiency. This policy could also target specific energy efficiency improvement measures.

Efficiency to visualize information

The Commission recommends that awareness of the energy efficiency at national level. A step towards improving public understanding of energy use is to make energy data transparent, available and easy to understand. It is also important for the financial markets, which require high-quality data on the actual energy savings, associated with different types of energy-efficiency projects.

Energy efficiency rating systems for building real estate buyers and sellers to a Visual stimulus energy can give attention. Manufacturers can also reviews for appliances and other products.

Utility customers and third can track access to standardised energy data customers authorize their energy savings. For this approach, to succeed State agencies would have to set up rules to ensure the privacy of our customers.

This story was originally published by the Energy Finance Center (CEFC) clean. You can subscribe future stories from the clean energy source for financial services by visiting the CEFC-news page.

View the original article here

Energy Department provides $12 million to accelerate solar cell efficiency.

The Energy Department on January 25 announced a new $12 million funding for innovative, to develop highly efficient solar equipment, the the gap with the theoretical limit of efficiency. This limit is defined as the highest possible proportion of sunlight converted directly into electricity. Currently there is still a considerable gap between the efficiency of laboratory and commercial solar photovoltaic (PV) and the predicted maximum efficiency of different solar cell materials. Shortening of the breakthroughs in solar cell efficiency helps reduce the total cost of solar energy.

The new initiative - the Basic program for the advance cell efficiency II (FPACEII) - aims to speed up record-breaking conversion efficiency, the gap with this theoretical limit for a wide variety of PV cells, including silicon-based technology and thin-film materials such as cadmium telluride and Cooper-Indium-Gallium diSelenide. The new possibility of funding initiative FPACEI builds the SunShot projects awarded in September 2011, which reached cells in the laboratory and produced the efficiency of typical cells on production lines to eliminate the gap between the efficiency of the best prototype.

In the current advertising FPACEII seeks proposals by collaborative teams of researchers from national laboratories, universities and industry, the materials of model systems develop and manufacture prototype devices that the theoretical limit can achieve efficiency in the vicinity. See the alert DOE progress and the funding opportunity announcement.

View the original article here

Geothermal energy provides baseload electricity for Christmas in California

California independent system operator (ISO) maintains, reliability and accessibility to one of the largest and most modern power grids in the world. Its target of 33 per cent of electricity produced from renewable energy sources meets each day it Golden reported State on the production of renewable energy in the because it tries by end of 2020.

Families available on Christmas day as California sat down for a meal of Turkey, ham or tamales, renewables candied 2,000 MWe, of the approximately 26,000 MWe load on 06 in the early evening.

The Sun went down, and it was not a windy day in the West. However, geothermal energy offered a reliable base load supply of 928 MWe.

In addition, geothermal power delivered most on Christmas day 21.354 MWh, about 40 percent of the total renewable on this day. Geothermal energy helped bring Christmas to California! The information and opinions in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily the RenewableEnergyWorld.com or companies, the advertising on this Web site and other publications. This blog has been directly by the author and has not been reviewed for accuracy, spelling or grammar.

View the original article here

Michigan company provides production EV systems

The Energy Department on 16 April announced the opening of an electric vehicle (EV) component production plant in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. Factory Magna E-car systems received $ 40 million in American recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 funds from the Department of energy of the system is Ford focus EV components to the EV systems, including those in the 2012. It supports EV anywhere the Department challenge to have a broad-based initiative of EVs within the next 10 years making today's gasoline-powered vehicles more affordable and more convenient.

The production site of 50,000 square metres will produce a variety of EV components in the high-volume under one roof, and next year it will produce 500,000 EV components. Production has already begun, and at full production, the plant be full electric vehicle drive systems allows for the production of electric motors, power electronics, battery chargers and vehicle controller to assemble. The Magna E-car systems plant is one of the 30 battery and electric drive expanded production facilities from the Recovery Act supports. See the press release of DOE and the vehicle technologies Web site.

View the original article here

DOE provides up to $2 million for hydrogen fueling stations data collection

DOE announced on 13 March that up to 2 million dollars available this year to collect and fueled, analyze performance data for hydrogen refuel stations and advanced components. DOE tracks performance and technical progress innovative gas stations to find systems ways to reduce costs and improve operations. The funding is part of the Department of obligation to help, bring hydrogen technologies in the mainstream market and provide new opportunities for vehicles that are not dependent on petrol.

Many car manufacturers have announced production plans for fuel cell electric vehicles for retail sale or lease as 2015, and some States invest in hydrogen fuel infrastructure to accommodate these vehicles. The new funding supports projects to monitor the performance of several hydrogen filling stations and advanced components for up to five years. The data and analyses resulting from this initiative help also hydrogen the designs of existing systems to improve fueling equipment manufacturers.

DOE is seeking applicants for this funding opportunity new petrol stations technologies test that could significantly reduce the hydrogen. These include advanced compressor design, the the required number or size of the compressors, at petrol stations commercial premises; reduce Hydrogen supplied tanks with higher capacity and optimal tank pressure, which can reduce the need for compressors and the frequency of deliveries to petrol stations websites and advanced electrolysis, potentially producing hydrogen at higher loads, reducing the cost of hydrogen by reducing the amount of post production compression required. Answers are by May 11. Find out the DOE progress and funding opportunity announcement on funding opportunity Exchange Web site.

View the original article here

Obama administration provides $ 35 million for biomass research

The biomass research and development initiative will help, economically and environmentally sustainable sources of energy develop renewable biomass.
Credit card: Todd Johnson

The White House on 22 March announced an offer of up to $35 million products over three years to support research and development in advanced biofuels, bioenergy and high-value Biobased. The projects are financed by the biomass research and development initiative (BRDI), a joint programme of DOE and the U.S. Agriculture (USDA). The programs help economically and ecologically sustainable energy sources develop renewable biomass. Increasing the availability of renewable fuels and bio-based products that will help the need for petrol and diesel to replace can.

For the fiscal year 2012, applicant BRDI must propose funding, projects, the integration of science and research in three areas of technical engineering: feedstock, bio-fuels and organic products development, and biofuels development analysis. These technical areas are crucial to the continued success of the alternative bio-fuel production. Grants Awards and national program leadership for the BRDI program are managed by the USDA National Institute of food and Agriculture and the DOE Office of energy efficiency and renewable energy. Applications are by 24 April 2012, and must be submitted electronically. You will find on the DOE press release and the funding opportunity announcement FedConnect.

View the original article here

Army provides first military fuel cell fleet

This is an excerpt from EERE network news, a weekly electronic newsletter.

The army introduced a fleet of 16 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on 22 February, the army, Navy, air force and Marines test in Hawaii in an effort, the research of renewable energy sources and dependence on oil. The zero-emission vehicles Development Engineering Center, research by the army tank automotive Office of Naval Research and air force research laboratories financed. The renewable hydrogen, fuel cell vehicles up to 200 miles on a single charge of travel and refuel in five minutes.

The fleet of fuel cell vehicles is the latest effort of the Hawaii-hydrogen initiative, a partnership of 13 agencies, companies and universities. The group is also hydrogen infrastructure elements test, so that other States a similar approach to can take. DOE's Office of energy efficiency and renewable energy is the technical and economic analysis of vehicles. DOE has the research and development of hydrogen and fuel-cell technologies, such as catalysts, and membranes, in the last ten years have been the grants. Such technologies are the provision of fuel-cell vehicles and enable stations such as in Hawaii. See the press release of the army and DOE's fuel cell technologies program site.

View the original article here

DOE provides support for breakthroughs in alternative fuels

President Obama announced on 23 February new funding, to groundbreaking technologies for two alternative fuels to catalyze natural gas and bio-fuels. Office of energy efficiency and renewable energy will make DOE $ 14 million to support research and development in biofuels from algae. Also by using the advanced, research projects Agency - energy (ARPA - E), DOE is $ 30 million for a new research, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs find ways, to domestic natural gas for vehicles use involved is available make. Aims to stimulate American innovation and encourage scientific breakthroughs, energy portfolio, U.S. companies grow the diversification of the nation and the development of alternative vehicle technologies help.

DOE will seek proposals from small businesses, universities and laboratories to algae change existing facilities for long-term research and test new production processes, could lead to commercial bio-fuels from algae. Winners will erect and conduct research "Test bed" for algae biofuels, the development, test, new approaches for the production of algae and discover innovative ways to make water and nutrients needed to mass produce algae for commercial bio-fuels can minimize. This advanced research projects should significantly improve the sustainability of algae-based biofuels and accelerated technological breakthroughs. The prices make the first phase on $ 30 million investment in algae biofuels in fiscal year 2012. are applications by April 18. Find the algae biofuels possibility of funding opportunity Exchange Web site for more information.

ARPA-E is funding projects which develop light fuel tanks for cars that runs on natural gas, and can fit in modern cars. This approach includes to develop affordable natural gas compressors, which efficiently at home, fuel can a natural gas vehicle. ARPA-E is to finance projects which holds much like a sponge of water absorbing materials that are in the situation will develop, gas. Such materials could low pressure vehicle tanks that hold and release makes safer and more convenient for consumers gas, it. The ARPA-E natural gas opportunity, see the DOE press release and the funding opportunity Exchange Web site for more information.

View the original article here

Success of the Middle East oil and gas show and Conference in Bahrain provides industry confidence

  General Manager for Unicom graphics Sonjoy Monteiro, who has done business in Bahrain more than 16 years, appreciate the organizers efforts to companies.

"We are very excited and grateful that the organizers." It was important to strike the negativity and squash the rumors ", he said." "Bahrain needs this kind of exhibitions." "I hope this is just the beginning, and it will open the floodgates."

Although planned originally for March, but postponed because of unrest, the delayed Conference date hold not participants or participants.

"The Expo will delay had to, but I don't think that it has violated the exhibition." "Bahrain is fine to be and this is an indication of that be it," said ARAMCO professional development Advisor Melanie Steiman.

Business Development Manager of the golf strategic partner Paul Mitchell agreed: "I think it is very refreshing to see that there a lot of interest." Before coming here, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it's nice to see, people come back to do business. "It shows that more people are willing, the past behind them and try things back, where they, before were."

Organizers look to future exhibitions, which will boost the economy and further aim to different areas, such as the upcoming jewelry Arabia, the largest jewelry exhibition in the Middle East.

"I think that was a test for us, and it was a success." I think the jewelry Arabia go ahead as planned. Slowly and gradually we will get back to normal. "Hotels are full and taxi drivers are happy," said S. Fawzi Al A., Director of sales and marketing for Arabian project management.

Jenan al Musawi
Media relations & return on investment reporting Executive
PR Newswire Europe
Phone + 44 20 7454 5295
Fax + 44 20 7454 1255 written by Nadeen El Ajou
Saturday, October 08-2011 in the United Arab Emirates local time 15: 52 (GMT + 4)

Replication or redistribution in whole or in part info FZ LLC is expressly prohibited without prior written consent of AME / Emap limited.

Articles in this section serve primarily directly from the company appear or PR agencies who are responsible for the content alone. The above content on their respective Web sites can use the undertakings concerned, provided that they to http://www.ameinfo.com link

Opinions, advice, statements, offers or other information expressed in this section of the AMEinfo.com Web site are the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of AME Info FZ LLC / Emap limited. AME Info FZ LLC / Emap limited is not responsible or liable for the content, accuracy or reliability of material, advice, opinion or statement in this section of the AMEinfo.com Web site.

Details to send your stories, please read the instructions - all published content is subject to our terms and conditions

View the original article here

TNK-BP provides $8.16 billion BP participation buy: report

LONDON | Tue Mar 1, 2011 9:35 pm EST

LONDON (Reuters) - TNK-BP TNKBP.UL has offered to buy a 5-percent stake in BP for deal in an attempt, a dispute over BP proposed 5 billion pounds ($8.16 billion) with Rosneft (ROSN.)(MM), the times said on Wednesday.

BP's Russian joint venture would to buy the BP shares and then Exchange it for a 10-percent stake in Russian State-controlled Rosneft, mirroring the original BP Rosneft deal, told the times.

But would under the new proposal at a meeting on Friday discussed are, the TNK-BP Rosneft, instead of BP and BP participation possession would be ? 5 billion in cash, the newspaper win added.

BP and Rosneft struck an agreement in January, to develop Arctic oil and gas, and you also a share-swap agreement signed.

But Russia associated shareholders of TNK-BP, said the deal violated the shareholder agreement with BP and won an injunction in a London Court to keep.

(Reporting by Karolina day OS;) (Editing by Bernard Orr)

View the original article here