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So you’ve heard about it, with the passing of PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) , many homeowners, municipalities and home performance contractors had great expectations of easy and accessible financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy installations.  However, something happened…  Call it a glitch but PACE, as of today, is still not available.  There is a solution though.  Keep reading… 

An innovative tool for financing, PACE provided a solution to declining home values in much of the nation by offering financing that the homeowner repaid as a tax assessment rather than a mortgage lien.  PACE Programs were active or soon to be implemented in California and 22 other states.  

However, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) that regulates Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, declared that the PACE programs presented “significant safety and soundness concerns” to the housing finance industry on July 6, 2010.  This declaration closed the door on PACE funding.  Even though legislation and lawsuits are still pending against the FHFA, no funding is expected to be available before the end of the year from any PACE program.  Talk about taking the wind out of one’s sails. 

Although PACE funding is now unavailable homeowners still have many options. There are many (more…)

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First off, a few burning questions… Have high upfront costs derailed your renewable energy or energy efficiency projects? Would receiving positive cash flow from day one make your clean energy project more attractive? Are you worried that it may be difficult to recoup your investment in clean energy if you sell your property?

To resolve these issues and accelerate the implementation of energy upgrades to commercial and residential property, cities and counties across the nation are offering PACE, a new financing model for clean energy projects.

To learn more about how PACE works and how it can benefit businesses and homeowners, I recently spoke with Dennis Tsu, who manages Business Development for Commercial PACE with Renewable Funding. Based in Oakland, Renewable Funding is the leader in the turnkey administration of PACE programs.

What is PACE?

William Dinkel: Could you please provide a brief summary of PACE programs for our readers?

Dennis Tsu: First off, PACE is an acronym for Property Assessed Clean Energy. The basic concept is to allow residential and commercial property owners to borrow money from their local governments to use for making energy efficiency or alternative energy improvements to their properties, and then to pay that money back through a (more…)

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If you’ve never been to Newby Island Landfill in Milpitas (near San Jose, California) you would be up for a treat if you visited.  It would totally blow all of your concepts on how our trash is managed.  During an annual Earth Day event, organized by Allied Waste, one can go on a romantic date with one’s trash in a comfy limo bus.  

State of the art landfills like Newby Island are quite effective at managing food scraps for compost materials, yard waste for mulch, concrete for paving the roads at the facility and many other great things.  Perhaps you would be most impressed to learn how the methane from rotting organic matter is captured and then used for electricity production that helps power some of the surrounding homes in the area. 

The thing that hit me during that trip is that no matter how well our waste is managed it takes tremendous amount of energy and resources to further sort, downcycle and burry our trash.  Furthermore, when I asked whether they truly “recycle” plastic bags, the lowered tone response was not a very clear one – “Yes, but into lower grade plastic bags that are further shipped to China.”  You be the judge whether this makes any sense to you or sounds anything close to the truth.  

Frankly, you can’t blame the guys if these plastic bags simply go up in fumes.  Recycling plastic bags is a total financial disaster; it’s nothing but a big headache and a huge expense.  It’s really up to us to use more bio-degradable trash bags and cloth or at least paper bags at the grocery stores.  

Enjoy the short video of the tour that started with a wonderful lunch and a few speeches.  (Make sure to click off on the Google ad so that it’s not in your way of viewing.)

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When many of us think of a solar home we normally envision a specially designed, carefully crafted construction .  Hardly ever we can think of a modest 1,200 square foot tract home in South San Jose as being a model for passive solar benefits that almost all of us can achieve.  This is exactly what Frank Schiavo did when he retrofitted his 1978 home to harvest our greatest energy source – the Sun. 

Frank was an extraordinary man.  He was an enthusiastic passive solar home consultant, environmental educator at San Jose State and an avid social change advocate.  One of his most fascinating qualities was that he produced no trash.  That’s right; he composted everything and never bought anything that he couldn’t recycle.  He even stopped paying garbage bills to the city which was a highly controversial and highly publicized move.  Gotta love this spirit of sustainability! 

Unfortunately Frank passed away very unexpectedly last January, just a week before we planned to meet, but he leaves his solar legacy behind for all of us to marvel at and learn from.  He really wanted to use his house as a way of teaching others about benefits of a green solar home “on a budget”. 

As a very tiny way of repaying his years of kindness to the community I would like to share with you some of the things that Frank was able to accomplish in his home (more…)

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Bay Area water suppliers expect there will not be enough water for their customers by 2018.

Water. It’s difficult to say we lack it during this el-nino year.  You look outside, nothing but rain.  You open your faucet, it doesn’t run out.  It seems like it’s always there in unlimited quantities.  Hence lies a dangerous illusion that water has always been there and always will.  However, there’s been a lot of buzz lately about the shortage of this precious commodity.  Some even call water the next gold.

After all, gold values have risen in the last several years. Will water too? Bay Area water suppliers expect there will not be enough water for their customers by 2018. So what does this mean for us and our homes? It means we can expect the water bill to get bigger.  Much bigger.

Have you seen all the hub-bub being made about the EPA filing on rainwater runoff? You can read the actual filing if you like.  Basically, the tax would be levied on new and newly redeveloped sites that do not meet certain requirements for control of storm water discharge. Closer to home, Deputy GM of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Michael Carlin indicated that San Francisco Bay Area households that pay $63/mo for water can expect to pay $128 in 2018. To top it off, the cap on the water that can be drawn from the Hetch Hetchy in 2018 won’t be enough for residents – it will be short by (more…)

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Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the greenest of them all…?  As if we didn’t already have hundreds of eco labels to worry about every time we visit a store, now there are green home certifications that are mushrooming up all over the Bay Area and the country.  Understanding these new ways of classifying quality and operation costs is becoming a must, especially when you build, remodel or in the market for a home.  Yet another chief reason for being able to decipher these new terms is to avoid growing generalizations or greenwashing. 

Frankly, most folks could careless about “green” homes. Very few want to pay extra for labels they don’t understand.  And why should they?! Price and quality are and should be the two high priority areas of concern.  However, if you remember from a previous post called “What’s a Green Home and Why Do We Care?“, green homes address much more than just fancy “eco-friendly” building materials.  They also encompass elements like energy efficiency, indoor air quality, water efficiency, materials use (recycled, reclaimed, sustainable), community and environmental impacts.   

Third party sources play an important role in verifying that green homes are truly are as they are cracked up to be in their marketing.  Here are the three most prevalent green home titles you are most likely to see in our Bay Area neighborhoods:  (more…)

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Love and relationships are our biggest assets

Before you bought your home or rented an apartment, did you consider how green is your community?  Chances are you haven’t.  Most people don’t.  Not only majority of folks have no clue as to what a “sustainable” community really is but for years, there has not been much need for it.  Today, however, we’re much more aware of our carbon paw prints, wasteful lifestyles and the ever growing need to just simply connect with people around us.  Fact is, sustainability of the community is becoming a huge factor when choosing a place to plant our roots for the future. 

So what is a sustainable community?  After looking at many definitions, perhaps the UK Sustainable Communities Plan defines it best: “Sustainable communities are places where people want to live and work, now and in the future. They meet the diverse needs of existing and future residents, are sensitive to their environment, and contribute to a high quality of life. They are safe and inclusive, well planned, and offer equality of opportunity and good services for all.”  Ahhh… the English, they do get some things right, don’t they?  

So ideally, a true gage of sustainability is where the environment prospers along with the people who are living in it.  In order words, the housing developments must be incorporated in the natural environment already present on the ground and not the other way around which was much too common years ago.  

Such an idealistic concept as community living in harmony with the environment and local ecosystems may sound far fetched but its not.  In fact, one such example in Bay Area is (more…)

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Green homes stand out from the pack

Whether one takes global warming seriously or not, one truth stands tall for any home buyer – energy efficiency, resource conservation and healthy indoor air is becoming a must.  But with the economy still unraveling and the cloud of uncertainty hanging over our heads, a question looms… Can green homes gain traction in the real estate market?

As you may be aware, our real estate market in the entire Santa Clara County has been quite unpredictable.  It went from four months of inventory into less than one month of inventory in one year and no one really knows what the future holds.  Even some of the biggest market experts have been embarrassed and increasingly keep their Nostradamus like market predictions to themselves. 

At the same time, for the past few years, we may have noticed a quiet revolution taking place in our hearts…  Not only we are craving to live happier, healthier and more empowered lives, we are seeking friends and environments that will support that earning.  Also, with raising energy costs and ever growing health problems, many of us are looking for answers right where we sleep – our homes. 

So what has kept more people from seeking out these eco and health friendly homes?  Mainly, (more…)

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So you’ve heard the benefits of CFLs.  When it comes to energy savings, CFLs or Compact Fluorescent Lamps simply blow the regular incandescent light bulbs out of the water.  According to the Energy Savers Website, CFLs last 10 times longer and can save up to $105 over the life of lamp use.  Now that alone should launch every eco and budget conscious home dweller to the store to stack up on these and start saving. 

Unfortunately though, too many still get stuck on that initial price tag.  A single CFL can cost up to 6 times more than a regular light bulb.  Ouch, a hefty price tag indeed.  Much too often we’ll shut down our common sense down in order to avoid that initial price pain.  The photo below was taken at a local Rite Aid Store.  Five buks for a light bulb!  Hang on though, I am about to tell you how to buy these for pennies on the dollar.

Now here’s a small secret with big savings.  If you go to any of the Asian stores, you may find a pleasant suprise.  Some stores sell the CFLs for (more…)

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You’ve seen it on TV, you’ve heard it on the radio, you’ve read it in the papers – PG&E wants you to conserve energy and save the planet.  They’ll even send you rather substantial rebates in the mail if you are willing to upgrade some systems in your home or purchase new appliances.  

Now all of this is enormously helpful and commendable but I couldn’t rid myself of that nagging question…  How does all this make financial sense for our friends at PG&E?    Never before had I seen in our capitalistic society a company encouraging its customer to consume less of its product.  Can you imagine McDonalds saying – “Eat less hamburgers!  There are no happy meals here… they will all make you fat!”  

So what’s going on with PG&E?  Is this truly enlightened business that wants to save the environment or does it all in some convoluted way actually make business sense?  I set out to find the answers at the last West Coast Green Show in San Francisco where I interviewed lovely Katie Romans, an Environmental Communications representative from PG&E.  (The video is about 3 minutes.) 

So now you know.  The answer is “Decoupling”  – a novel approach towards utility pricing that separates a utility’s ability to make money from the amount of electricity that it sells.  So while PG&S forest conservation and methane capture efforts appear genuine, it was nothing but a California Decoupling law, enacted in 1982, that effectively disincentivized PG&E to sell more energy for profit.  

No need to worry about them though; they have other ways to make the bank.  In fact, last year the utility filed for, and received shareholder earnings based upon energy savings they delivered to customers, and the program costs were already recovered in their rates.  Besides that, the utility company also benefits from increased customer satisfaction, a boost in its “environmental” image and gets a lot of community and political support.  

You have got to love the business model.  The company is required to sell less of its product and help its customers save money.  And in return, it makes more and appears as an environmental hero.  Not bad at all, is it?  Go PG&E, or to be more accurate – go California!

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