碳战争室旨在削减建筑能源改造的障碍

2011年9月20日

今天的碳战争室建立了一个新的联盟that aims to cut through the Gordian knot of barriers that has made it tough to finance commercial building retrofits. In the process, the groups involved hope to pick off billions of dollars worth of the lowest-hanging fruit of building energy efficiency.

碳战争室的方法为中期和中小型改造打开了零上前期交易的大门，过去，只有一组有限的较大项目才能为此类交易筹集资金。

为了解决这个技巧，新计划升级了一种称为PACE的现有融资模式。它还依靠私人资本，而不是公共补贴。

"This is game changing. It has the potential to solve the problem of the commercial retrofit market that has lingered for 35 years," said Jigar Shah, CEO of The Carbon War Room at the BusinessClimate 2011 event today in New York City.

Across the country, older buildings are ripe with some of our economy's largest concentrations of energy waste, and thus offer some of the least-costly fixes. Improving the world's building stock offers the opportunity to save 5 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year, and amounts to a $2.5 trillion investment opportunity, said Shah.

Dubbed PACE Commercial Consortium, or PCC, the approach brings into alignment the interests of a series of players that in the past have failed to find the right profit motives, risk levels, or technologies to get beyond one-off, complex deals to finance major green commercial retrofits.

For commercial building owners, the PCC offers a turnkey model that delivers financing, the building upgrade and deal insurance, all paid through a increased tax assessment that is more than offset by reduced energy costs.

The players debuting today with the PCC's first round of deals are:

•Lockheed Martin(Bethesda, Md.) will provide building technology and services to audit, install and authenticate efficiency gains.
•Energi(Peabody, Mass.) insures the deals, using proprietary  energy engineering underwriting standards, to help guarantee the savings promised by Lockheed. As a reinsurer,Hannover Rewill back Energi's policies.
•巴克莱资本将筹集资金以资助这些交易，并伊格伦能源基金(Santa Rosa, Calif.) will administer the financing.

新计划以较旧的改造融资模型为基础，称为财产评估的清洁能源计划或步伐。随着2008年在加利福尼亚州开创的PACE立法，PACE立法使业主能够接受自愿税收评估，以此作为偿还能源效率和可再生能源改善的预先融资的手段。在美国，有26个州制定了立法，实现了安全可扩展的融资步伐结构。

由于它们与税收评估并驾齐驱，因此PACE评估已经被认为是非常低的风险融资选择。领导碳战争室参与的高级顾问Murat Armbruster表示，PCC以多种方式走得更远。

First, PCC lowers the risk of retrofit deals by having Energi insure the energy savings contracts that Lockheed signs with building owners. With reduced risk on the payment stream derived from these energy savings deals, Barclays Capital and Ygrene Energy Fund can offer lower-cost funding by bundling a number of these deals into an investable asset sought out by pension funds and institutional investors.

How do the players make money in this complex relationship? Here, I'll crib from the纽约时报, which has the best explanation of this process I could track down. (There's also a graphic from Ygrene at the bottom of this post showing the process graphically.)

Ygrene及其合作伙伴将获得五年的独家权利，向特定社区的企业提供此类能源升级。他们将积极销售该计划，帮助业主弄清楚哪种升级对他们有意义。洛克希德·马丁（Lockheed Martin）有望在许多较大的项目上进行工程工作。

The retrofits might include new windows and doors, insulation, and more efficient lights and mechanical systems. In some cases, solar panels or other renewable power might be included. For factories, the retrofits might include new motors or other gear.

巴克莱资本提供的短期贷款将用于支付升级。承包商将提供保证，他们承诺的公用事业储蓄实际上将实现，保险承销商，马萨诸塞州皮博迪的Energi将备份该保修。这些保险合同反过来将得到世界上最大的再保险公司之一汉诺威RE的支持。

As projects are completed, the upgrade loans, typically carrying interest rates of 7 percent, will be bundled into long-term bonds resembling those routinely issued by governmental taxing districts. Barclays will market the bonds. Retirement funds have expressed interest in buying these bonds, which will be repaid by tax surcharges on each property that undergoes a retrofit.

在公共绿色改造的资金正在枯竭的时候，挖掘私人资本池的魅力很大。“这些投资是100％的私人资本。不涉及政府债务或成本。市场可以提供这种融资，因为经济学是合理的，工程绩效是保险的，安全性强，清洁能源资本资产是有利可图的。”Energi Insurance Services首席执行官Brian McCarthy在一份准备好的声明中。

In the deal announced today, the Carbon War Room unveiled details about the size and location of the first round of investments to be place: $650 million in PCC deals will be focused on two commercial markets.

First, Miami-Dade County, Fla., a market estimated to have $550 million in retrofit funding potential. This funding can, in turn, generate up to $1.8 billion in economic activity in the Miami-Dade region.

联盟在第一轮中关注的第二个地点是加利福尼亚州萨克拉曼多市。估计有1亿美元的市场和另外5.3亿美元的潜在经济活动。

As a side note, least year, the Federal Housing Financing Agency (FHFA) -- which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- issued a letter thatall but froze PACE financing for residential mortgages.

However, because they are not backed by the housing agency, commercial PACE deals were not impaired by the ruling. That said, the ruling has had a broad chilling effect on PACE backed business models. In the meanwhile, court challenges to FHFA's ruling are proceeding in California and elsewhere.