在2018年，弹性将成为新的常态

This year’s hurricane season is the most expensive on record, with赔偿2026亿美元according to Bloomberg. These storms across the Atlantic had devastating impacts on people’s lives and homes, on communities and on infrastructure in the hardest-hit areas.

实际上，哈维飓风的损害对于休斯顿居民仍然非常明显。暴风雨三个月后，成千上万的居民缺乏稳定的住房。In Puerto Rico, it is even worse: two months after Hurricane Maria, most of the island is没有电力，每10名居民中就有1名无法获得清洁水。落基山研究所在波多黎各和其他加勒比海岛屿工作to help rebuild smarter and better— that is, rebuilding in a way that increases resilience.

The summer’s events have reinforced the importance of resilience for cities and states across the country. For Florida and Texas, improved resilience is at the core of rebuilding efforts. For others, it has become an elevated priority for new construction and infrastructure investment. But for all, the "new normal" caused by changing weather patterns associated with climate change means more frequent, stronger storms and other natural disasters, and that means that resilience in the face of disaster is important as never before.

无论是反应性还是积极性，都有为城市采取整体方法来在建筑物领域采用复原力的工具减少对气候变化的未来影响。

近期机会

One such tool isProperty Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing.PACE allows the incremental cost of energy-efficient and hurricane-resilient reconstruction to be covered through financing secured by a special incremental property tax assessment. The ongoing savings to the owner — whose energy bill would be negligible — more than covers the payments due under the PACE financing.

We believe PACE can help Florida rebuild a more resilient real estate market while providing a boost to the local job market at no up-front cost, and Florida needs it. Florida usually has had a booming real estate market. More than500,000单户住宅和100,000租房have been built in the Miami area since 2000. But frequently there has been destruction as well as creation in Florida’s building sector.

就在去年，马修飓风造成了27亿美元的损失佛罗里达总体150亿美元。今年，艾尔玛飓风伤害了更多的佛罗里达州房主。联邦紧急管理机构管理员布罗克·朗（Brock Long）表示，初步估计表明25 percent of the homesin the Florida Keys were destroyed by Irma and 65 percent sustained major damage. "Basically, every house in the Keys was impacted," he said.

While homes in the Keys sustained severe damage this time, many thousands of other homes in Florida continue to be at risk. According to a recent CoreLogic report, South Florida’s tri-county region around Miami has 784,773 homes at risk from storm surge, more than any other region in the nation. In total, these homes have a重建成本价值（RCV）为1435亿美元。(Threatened areas ofNew York Cityhave a higher RCV at $264.3 billion, but fewer homes at risk.) When a hurricane next makes landfall directly over the tri-county area, resilience added with PACE financing could help save much of that value.

We believe PACE can help Florida rebuild a more resilient real estate market while providing a boost to the local job market at no up-front cost, and Florida needs it.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Hurricane Harvey compounded a heavy demand for housing. Texas had been on pace for 30,000 housing starts in 2017. Now, an estimated200,000还需要修理或重建更多房屋。根据最近的穆迪分析的初步估算, the combined destruction from hurricanes Harvey and Irma could range from $150 billion to $200 billion. Texas hasn’t seen its last hurricane either, and PACE financing could help to finance more resilient reconstruction there, too.

佛罗里达passed PACE-enabling legislation in 2010 and five programs are operating in the state — all offer commercial financing, and two offer residential financing. In addition to covering energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements, many Florida PACE programs finance hurricane protection improvements. Active R-PACE (residential PACE) programs are in 16 Florida counties, nine of which are among the counties where FEMA has made residents eligible for individual assistance. Most homes in these counties were affected severely by Irma. As of November, 144,407 applications have been approved for assistance within Florida and FEMA has awarded insurance payments to individuals and households to the tune of $124 million. These funds should be used to rebuild for resilience, and PACE financing can augment and multiply the resilience that insurance payments can secure.

It’s not just Texas and Florida

在这些令人恐惧的证据表明，大规模自然灾害可能并且在美国确实发生的证据引起了Attom Data Solutions的一份令人担忧的新报告。该报告发现，美国最有天然灾害风险的地区也是财产价值最高，最快增加。In fact, the riskiest 20 percent of U.S.counties是经济强国，拥有平均房屋价值最高的房屋最多，并且近年来经历了最大的价格升值。在财产中锁定了如此多的价值，这是没有弹性的，并且处于灾难的道路上是令人不安的和不可持续的。图1来自ATTOM数据解决方案的自然危害指数，该指数将地理区域与政府有关洪水，地震，龙卷风，野火，野火，飓风和冰雹的风险的数据匹配。

图1

PACE financing must be extended

PACE is an important tool for increasing resilience to natural disasters, and the need for that is dire and widespread. Even so, many states still don’t allow for PACE financing. What’s more, some states have limited the use of PACE to retrofits and reconstruction by making it ineligible for new residential construction.

如果要发生变化，州政府可能会催化数十亿美元的私营部门投资，以建立新的高性能和有弹性的房地产基础设施，为美国各地的房主提供加速融资，不仅可以建造这些房屋，不仅可以弹性飓风，地震和洪水，但也可以抵御网格故障，并提供卓越的舒适性和能量性能，尤其是当它们建造为净零能量（NZE）或零零净现成标准时。

在最近出版的洞察摘要（PDF）, RMI proposed leveraging R-PACE for existing and new construction to help scale net-zero energy homes, which can transform the entire country’s real estate landscape. According toRMI的研究，NZE Homes的能源弹性要高得多，比标准房屋更高的标准和更高的性能更高，并且平均价格比美国的平均新房屋贵24,811美元 - 在考虑税收抵免和其他州/地方折扣之前。

根据最近的穆迪分析的初步估算, the combined destruction from hurricanes Harvey and Irma could range from $150 billion to $200 billion.

这项前期增量成本可以通过R-Pace来资助，使房主和建造者赋予该费用的负担。此外，根据RMI分析，即使在支付其R-PACE评估后，房主也将平均每年获得160美元的高性能房屋收益。该主张不仅是政策制定者，建筑商和房主，而且针对整个房地产社区的双赢解决方案。

Scaling NZE homes across the U.S. presents an incremental market opportunity of $33 billion by 2037 that will help make our homes and our cities smarter, efficient and more resilient — helping us build a new America. Along with instituting robust state-level consumer protection measures, leading states and cities have an opportunity to invest in scaling NZE development by enabling R-PACE for new construction.

Resilience in the buildings sector and beyond

RMI认为，NZE构造的R-Pace可以是重建的强大工具，但这只是一种工具，应该是一组强大的策略和计划，专注于高性能建筑物，以减轻气候风险并改善长期的风险- 期弹性。步伐融资在州一级受到监管，但是许多最有希望的弹性机会也可以在城市一级解决。

Fortunately, there is growing city leadership across the U.S. to address climate risk and opportunity head-on in the buildings sector and beyond. Many cities are putting in place solutions such as distributed energy — especially solar and battery storage sited on distribution grids —这为电网提供了弹性， 例如。如今，比以往任何时候都可以使用更多的工具来分享对他人有用的最佳实践，计划和想法。

例如，代表美国一半以上经济的各州和城市宣布他们对《巴黎协定》的支持。If these nonfederal actors were a country, they would be the world’s third-largest economy。State commitments and progress toward these commitments are encouraging, as detailed in the美国的承诺报告recently unveiled at COP23 (although states do need to accelerate and deepen their efforts to hold within reach the U.S. pledge to reduce its emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025 compared to 2005 levels). The America’s Pledge report recommends that, to make headway in the buildings sector, cities work together to adopt and enforce ambitious energy codes for buildings. Today, 35 of the 51 largest U.S. cities are developing or already have adopted energy-reduction goals. To help meet these goals, cities can work with both states and the real estate industry on new and ambitious energy codes to optimize the energy and environmental performance of both new and existing buildings.

另外，无碳手册, also released at COP23, is another resource developed by RMI to help cities implement climate policies and actions that place their communities on a path toward sustainable, low-carbon economies. For many cities, buildings are the largest cause of carbon emissions. That’s why five of the 22 recommendations in the handbook are focused on transitioning buildings toward net-zero energy while making those buildings healthier, more comfortable and more resilient — all while creating an economic boon for the city.

总体而言，城市领导人认识到需要解决弹性的必要性，但是在这一点上，行动比继续计划要重要得多。整个经济体和人们的福祉 - 他们的房屋，健康，工作和家人 - 取决于它。