It seems that soap operas did not, in fact, go away after the 80s. Because the ongoing saga of efforts to establish Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs play like an energy wonk’s version of ‘As the World Turns’.

We’re writing with an update, and a request to take (more…)

Some bad news for PACE financing. As you may remember, after FHFA took action to stop residential PACE programs, a number of entities sued FHFA, claiming their action was not lawfully done. In a previous decision, the District Court for the Northern District of California forced FHFA to go through a rulemaking process on its PACE actions, and over (more…)

PACE programs have been waiting for the FHFA to finalize their court-ordered rulemaking on residential PACE efforts (background here). Today, the court approved FHFA’s request for an extension of the deadline for issuance of the final rule to September 16, 2013. FHFA must submit a status report by June 1, 2013. The status (more…)

A couple of PACE-related updates: FHFA rulemaking comments filed, and CaliforniaFIRST launches

First, for the wonks, we prepared a response to the FHFA rulemaking, and co-filed with 62 other major organizations. You can find all the responses here, and our specific comments, here. The cliff-notes version: we rebut FHFA’s (more…)

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a property assessment used to finance the upfront costs of energy efficiency upgrades.  A local government provides funding, and the assessment is paid back as a line item on a property’s tax bill.

PACE became a controversial issue in 2010, when (more…)

As a result of a lawsuit, a federal judge has required FHFA to conduct a public rulemaking on their actions to derail PACE energy efficiency and renewable energy retrofit programs.

This is a great chance to 1) make the case on the merits of PACE, 2) defend local government rights to (more…)

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs allow local governments to loan money to homeowners to do energy efficiency projects.  The PACE loans are generally repaid as a property tax line item.  PACE programs were initially very popular, and more than 25 states passed PACE-enabling legislation.

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In the case of the federal government overreach on property assessed clean energy (PACE) financing — this overreach — Fannie, Freddie, and the FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency) took issue with the fact that the PACE lien on the property is senior to the mortgage. To recap, a senior lien is the thing that really gives PACE its value and is well explained here. (more…)