Commercial and industrial property owners in Stamford can now make their buildings more energy efficient thanks to the city’s new partnership with a clean energy group.

“I have no doubt the city will help lead the state going forward in green energy,” Bryan Garcia, president (more…)

Butte County is taking the lead in a program that provides an alternative funding source for businesses or agricultural interests that want to invest in green energy or water-efficiency projects.

The totally voluntary program allows a borrower to get the funding without going through all of the (more…)

Ygrene Energy Fund Florida, a leading provider of commercial and residential property upgrade programs for Floridian governments, announced that it has formed a strategic joint venture with EcoAsset Energy Solutions, a subsidiary of Lykes Bros. Inc., a 100-year old local, family-owned company and the largest private landowner in Florida. (more…)

The Texas House and Senate passed Senate Bill 385 in May. If Governor Rick Perry approves the bill, the state will break new ground by developing plans for commercial and industrial property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs. This bill will redesign Texas’s approach to PACE, focusing on the commercial and industrial sectors rather than on (more…)

With the year nearly half done, here’s the solar scoreboard–updates from things we’ve been working on, and a selection of other notable solar victories.

New state solar programs

New York is our biggest market-building campaign in the East. Last month the Senate unanimously (more…)

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…)

In case you missed it, Vote Solar presented a webinar last week on a new financing model that may help unlock the pent up demand for solar among small commercial property owners. Check out the recording of the webinar below.

Many would argue that the small commercial market (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…)