The City of San Francisco is paving the way for owners of residential and commercial buildings to conduct green upgrades to their properties through an innovative financing program. The San Francisco Sustainable Financing Program (SF2) will provide owners with affordable financing for green retrofit projects, with the repayment obligations tied to the property rather than the owner. The loan repayments and interest will be added to the building’s property tax bill, and paid back over the loan period.
Energy-saving upgrades, such as solar installations and replacement heating systems, are often unattractive to owners because they require sizable upfront expense, whereas it takes many years for the benefits from these improvements to accrue in the form of lower energy bills. In a traditional financing arrangement, the owner who arranges the financing is responsible for future repayments, even if they were to sell the property during the life of the financing. The property tax assessment model takes this problem away and allows owners to invest in the sustainability of their property and enjoy the many benefits that are gained from a cleaner, more efficient and healthier building.
The San Francisco program is based on the PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) framework that was pioneered in Berkeley and has since been adopted by municipalities across the nation. Unlike some other property tax repayment models, which are solely for solar installations, the San Francisco program will also be used for energy efficiency and water conservation initiatives. Under the program terms, participants are required to conduct an energy audit and install energy efficiency upgrades before any renewable energy improvements are allowed.
Also, in contrast to many similar government-funded programs, the San Francisco initiative will be financed using up to $150 million of private capital, plus any available state and federal grants.
As one of the leading global real estate services firms, CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) made an early commitment to the promotion of sustainability in real estate, both in its work with clients and in its own operations. Reflecting this, the firm released corporate responsibility reports in 2007 and 2008 and declared its goal to be carbon neutral in operations by 2010.
CBRE’s December newsletter, “6 Degrees of Sustainability”, provides a good insight to the kind of activities that CBRE is initiating across the green building spectrum. These include:
Real estate professional service firms like CBRE have a key role to play in the promotion of green building practices, and we expect to see that role – and their influence – increasing as sustainability becomes mainstream in the commercial real estate industry.
Wind turbines in Copenhagen
Copenhagen, December 13, 2009 – I am writing this early Sunday morning as my flight arches across the North Sea and begins a slow descent over the Danish Archipelago. It is clear day and the sun is catching the graceful rotations of hundreds if not thousands of windmills that dot the Danish countryside. I am headed to Copenhagen to attend the climate meetings there this week, and as the plane begins its final approach I am thinking about how my journey from Toronto to Copenhagen really began over twenty years ago.
Climate change first burst on the international agenda in the sweltering summer of 1988. Throughout the 1980’s there had been a growing sense of concern among climatologists (scientists who study the physical and chemical processes in that thin layer of life-giving gas that surrounds our planet) that human activities were altering the atmosphere in potentially dangerous ways. In June of 1988 Canada hosted the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere which brought together climate scientists, energy experts, policy makers and others from around the world to address the problem. I had been working on energy and environment issues for over ten years by then, and the Canadian government asked me if I would organize the energy workshop for the Toronto conference.
Already by 1988 the case for human-induced climate change was strong. The greenhouse effect itself had been understood since the 19th century and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere was clearly on the rise. Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion were double the level that the ecosphere could absorb, and the surplus was accumulating in the atmosphere. This in turn was enhancing the natural greenhouse effect, and the result would be an increase in the average global temperature. The theory was sound and well established, but in 1988 the signal – the actual increase in global average temperature – was difficult to detect amidst the natural temperature variations.
If the consequence of climate disruption were not so serious, a “wait and see” attitude might have been justified in 1988, but therein lies one of the central dilemmas of this issue. Increases in greenhouses gases today continue to affect climate for decades and even centuries into the future. Every day we continue to emit greenhouse gas emissions at current rates or higher, we lock into place the long term consequences of those emissions. And the consequences of upsetting the global climate system go far beyond simple warming. It’s not unlike the fever we get when suffering from the ‘flu; the average global temperature increase is a symptom of deeper problems. By the time the global atmosphere is running a fever of even one or two degrees Celsius, it represents a significant destabilization of the planetary climate system and anything that is connected to it. And everything is connected to it, including us.
This is where the “precautionary principle” comes into the picture. Read more…
