PACE – Helping Homeowners with Energy Costs
E-newsletter
05.03.2010
How can PACE help your residents?
The state of Maine's Efficiency Maine agency recently received $30 million in federal money to fund a PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) program that will allow homeowners to get long-term loans for energy efficiency and weatherization. The federal money will create a loan fund that a homeowner can tap through a mortgage administered by their hometown.
What do you have to do for your municipality to be eligible?
Only those homeowners living in a participating municipality will be able to receive the funds. To participate in the PACE program, a municipality must be approved by Efficiency Maine. Although not officially announced, Efficiency Maine is expected to issue an RFP to towns wishing to participate. According to staff, they will be looking for municipalities that have envisioned a place for PACE in their communities, established administrative procedures, and drafted or enacted ordinances enabling them to offer the program quickly if approved.
How can we help?
Originally, Efficiency Maine had intended to provide support to municipalities in applying for the program. Unfortunately, the state received less than half the federal money expected and will not be able to staff out much of the support services they had intended. Thus, municipalities will need help in developing successful applications. Preti Flaherty attorneys with substantial experience with Efficiency Maine's programs can provide that assistance through our expertise in successful grant writing (see RGGI), government relations, and energy policy.
PACE programs have proven highly successful and popular with homeowners - by offering the program, towns will provide a valuable service for residents while updating their housing stock and reducing wasted energy.
About Efficiency Maine
Efficiency Maine is a state agency established in 2002 to support programs and policies that save energy, reduced energy costs, help the environment and promote sustainable economic development. It provides a series of programs to government agencies, municipalities, institutions and individual citizens to reduce inefficiencies in the state's energy use. It's program include industrial scale projects and initiatives targeted at consumers, such as promotion of Energy Star appliances and CFL light bulbs.
About Preti Flaherty
At Preti Flaherty, we believe we have a duty to help our civilization meet the challenge of climate change, the most pressing issue of our time. Our Climate Strategy Group is designed to help businesses, government and NGO's reduce society's greenhouse gas emissions quickly, effectively and at the lowest reasonable cost. Our Energy Group is a leader in the rapidly evolving energy marketplace, counseling industrial consumers, energy project developers, energy service companies, Maine's Industrial Energy Consumer Group and most of the state's independent telephone and cable television companies. With key expertise from our energy, environmental, intellectual property, business and legislative practice groups, Preti Flaherty helps clients deal with both the risks and the opportunities presented by climate change.