Author: mmyrtetus

UPDATE July 7, 2022: Governor Tom Wolf signed the C-PACE expansion legislation now known as Act 43. The Act will take effect September 6, 2022, 60 days after signing. PEA and SEF are working on updating C-PACE program guidelines. Stakeholder sessions were held in February for resiliency and IAQ. A stakeholder session to discuss multifamily properties will be announced soon.

Philadelphia C-PACE is accepting “intent to submit” forms for multifamily projects. If you have a multifamily project you intend to use C-PACE funds for, the form can be found in the Program Resources page of the website or downloaded directly here.

UPDATE June 29, 2022: C-PACE Expansion Legislation Has Passed! With the final passage of SB 635 by the House, the bill is awaiting Governor Wolf’s signature. The act will take effect 60 days after signing. Last week, in its final session before recess for the summer, the City of Philadelphia passed expansion language contingent on the passage of state legislation. With the passage of both state and local enabling legislation, Philadelphia will be able to finance multifamily, resilience, and indoor air quality projects once our program guidelines are updated, no sooner than the end of the aforementioned 60-day period. During this period, we will continue our robust stakeholder engagement efforts to collect feedback to inform program guidelines. Philadelphia C-PACE is accepting “intent to submit” forms for multifamily projects. If you have a multifamily project you intend to use C-PACE funds for, the form can be found in the Program Resources page of the website or downloaded directly here.

UPDATE June 22, 2022: The House Commerce Committee passed SB635 unanimously. It now goes to the House floor for 1st consideration, then it is moved to the House Appropriations Committee. There will then be two more House floor votes. The votes all expected to take place the week of June 27th. Upon final passage, it will go to Governor Wolf for signature.

UPDATE June 14, 2022: The House Commerce Committee hearing was cancelled. More updates to follow once a new date has been scheduled or a different path to passage has been announced.

UPDATE June 9, 2022: Exciting news! The PA House Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing to consider SB 635 on Tuesday June 14, 2022 at 10:00 A.M., Room 515, Irvis Office Building.  The House Commerce hearing to consider the already-passed Senate Bill 635 is a critical step toward final passage of the C-PACE Expansion bill. As a reminder, this bill has passed favorably out of both the House and the Senate but one chamber must pass the other’s bill in order for the bill to become law. If voted out of Committee favorably, it then is referred to the House Appropriations Committee. Since there is no financial impact, the Appropriations Committee will forward it to the full House for a vote which requires three considerations to pass and be sent to the Governor for signature. There are 12 session days between June 13th and June 30th.

UPDATE March 21, 2022: Since the House passed HB 1760 on January 24th, no action has been taken to advance C-PACE expansion legislation despite broad, bipartisan support. Either the House or the Senate must vote to approve the other chamber’s bill for C-PACE legislation to be sent to Governor Wolf for his signature. 

If you are a developer or capital provider with a project that is impacted by this delay and are willing to contact key legislators to demonstrate your support of the bill’s passage, please contact Matt Stern at mstern@philaenergy.org for more information.

Please also note that should the C-PACE expansion bill be passed into law at the state level,  there is a 60-day waiting period before it can take effect. Upon passage at the state level, counties must also implement necessary local updates including amendments to ordinances and program guidelines to allow projects to be financed under the expanded guidelines. Implementation timelines will vary county by county.

UPDATE January 24, 2022: HB 1760 passed the House 200-0! Both the House and Senate bills have made it through their respective chambers. One chamber will need to approve the other’s bill before it can be sent to Governor Wolf for signature. 

UPDATE January 12, 2022: HB 1760 was referred to House Appropriations on January 12. Before being referred, the bill was amended to ensure that the language of the bill was identical to its Senate counterpart SB 635, a procedural step that helps prime the bill for passage. 

UPDATE December 15, 2021: On its last day in session in 2021, SB 635 was passed by the Senate by a vote of 42-8! The House and Senate are now adjourned until the new year. When they return in late January, HB 1760 will first need to be passed out of Appropriations before it’s ready for a full House vote.

UPDATE December 13, 2021: HB 1760 was voted unanimously out of the House Commerce Committee!

Adopted in 2018, Pennsylvania’s Commercial Property-Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing allows commercial property owners to borrow money for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water conservation projects. Repayments are made via a special assessment similar to a property tax assessment. 

In the program’s first two years, C-PACE brought $72 million of private capital to the Commonwealth to make its buildings more efficient, more comfortable, and less expensive to operate. 

Given the success of the C-PACE program to date, Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA) and many other organizations are supporting proposed legislation to expand C-PACE-eligible projects in Pennsylvania. 

The legislation would expand eligibility for C-PACE funding to include:

• Multifamily commercial buildings of 5+ units
• Indoor air quality improvements (such as COVID-19 mitigation)
• Resiliency improvements

Legislation to expand the scope of C-PACE-eligible projects has been introduced in both the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate. To expand the benefits of C-PACE financing to Pennsylvania’s businesses, clean energy workforce, and residents, we need your help. 

House Bill 1760 and Senate Bill 635 both need to be voted out of their respective committees to keep the momentum going on C-PACE expansion. 

For more background on the expansion legislation, please visit Keystone Energy Efficiency Alliance’s C-PACE website.  

Nuveen Green Capital, the Philadelphia Energy Authority and the owners of 4002-22 Ridge Avenue closed the 10th C-PACE deal in Philadelphia with $3,083,268 to finance energy efficiency and water conservation measures for a new 756-unit self-storage facility. Fact sheets for this project and all PA C-PACE projects can be found here. 

More than $69 million of private capital utilizing the C-PACE program has been invested in energy efficiency, water conservation and solar energy during the first two years of the program’s inception in Philadelphia. 

The property owner’s representative, Jeremy Terr of Argo Property Group, noted that “C-PACE filled a hole in our capital stack that would have made completing the project much more difficult. Going through the process we learned we were also benefiting from environmentally smart building methods and technologies and we were pleased there is a program to move more developers into this mindset during the design phase.”

This project is notable because of the speed it was approved and closed. It took just under two months from submission of the pre-application to recording the C-PACE assessment. 

Interested in learning more about C-PACE? Contact us at cpace@philaenergy.org and/or attend our C-PACE Open Meetings which take place on the last Thursday of each month from 2:00-3:00PM. 

The Sustainable Energy Fund (SEF) and Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA) are organizing stakeholder meetings in anticipation of C-PACE Expansion legislation passing in Pennsylvania. 

The Pennsylvania House and Senate have passed legislation to expand eligibility for C-PACE projects. Both the House bill (HR 1760) and Senate bill (SB 635) have made it through their respective chambers. One chamber will need to approve the other’s bill before it can be sent to Governor Wolf for signature. We do not know when this will happen.

SEF and PEA need to modify the C-PACE Program Guidelines in order to implement the expansion legislation that includes a newly-eligible building type (multifamily) and measures (Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and Resiliency). In anticipation of bill passage, we are scheduling stakeholder engagement meetings on the newly eligible measures. We are starting with IAQ and Resiliency because, unlike multifamily, they will require developing new technical guidelines. Once the legislation is passed, we will schedule the multifamily stakeholder meeting.

All meetings will be held via Zoom.

You are invited to attend any or all of the meetings. We only ask that you register at least 24 hours in advance. That way we can be prepared for the numbers of people attending.

Meetings

Indoor Air Quality: Friday February 18th 1:00-3:00 PM EST. Click here to register. You can register for this meeting and the Resiliency meeting simultaneously if you plan to attend both.

Resiliency: Friday February 25th 1:00-3:00 PM EST. Click here to register. You can register for this meeting and the IAQ meeting simultaneously if you plan to attend both.

Multifamily: To be scheduled. Please check back here for updates on meeting dates and times. You may also email cpace@philaenergy.org and ask to receive an email when new meetings are scheduled.

Additional background:

The purpose of the C-PACE expansion stakeholder engagement meetings is to gather input from subject matter experts, C-PACE capital providers, consumer advocates and other interested parties in a way that everyone has an opportunity for their viewpoint to be expressed and heard so that revised C-PACE Program Guidelines can be developed which fulfill the intention of the state statute to allow for investments in clean energy, healthy indoor environments and resiliency that benefit the public good.

Definitions from the legislation:

“”Indoor air quality project.”  A project that improves the rated performance in indoor air quality by reducing exposure to indoor airborne contaminants.”

“”Resiliency improvement.”  Any fixture, product, system, equipment, device, material or interacting group thereof intended to increase resiliency or improve the durability of real property needed to withstand natural disasters, including, but not limited to, flood mitigation, wind resistance, energy storage and microgrids, as defined by a local government.”

Philadelphia C-PACE completed its second year of operation with five projects receiving C-PACE financing. Details on the projects, outlook for C-PACE in Pennsylvania and more can be viewed here.

Thanks to those of you who shared comments on the proposed Philadelphia C-PACE Program Guidelines. They will be updated shortly and posted in the Program Resources page.

As Philadelphia’s C-PACE Program Administrator, the Philadelphia Energy Authority regularly updates our C-PACE Program Guidelines. PEA is offering C-PACE stakeholders an opportunity to provide comments on the changes before they are finalized.

Three documents are available for review:

1. Redlined version of the Program Guidelines against the version which is currently in effect. 
2. Clean version of the proposed Program Guidelines
3. Slide deck of major changes made to Philadelphia’s Program Guidelines since the original version published in October 2019.

The deadline for submission is January 18, 2022. 

A Google Form has been created to submit comments. 

Please submit only one response per organization.

Email CPACE@philaenergy.org if you have any questions. If you are unable to use Google Forms, email CPACE@philaenergy.org and we will make other arrangements.

The Philadelphia Energy Authority and CounterpointeSRE (Counterpointe Sustainable Real Estate) announced the closing of $25.57 million in Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing for the Class A office building, 100 S. Independence Mall West. It is the largest C-PACE financing in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

Philadelphia City Councilmember Mark Squilla (District 1) is “thrilled to see C-PACE being used in Center City Philadelphia for energy efficiency improvements to this large commercial office building. $25.57 million invested in energy and water conservation for this iconic building is a big deal. This is by far the largest C-PACE financing in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. This deal shows that C-PACE is a great solution for building owners to significantly reduce energy consumption thereby lowering operating costs, improving property value and combating climate change.”

Philadelphia City Council President Darrell Clarke noted that “using C-PACE to finance energy efficiency improvements for this iconic building, overlooking our historic Independence Mall, provides an excellent example of how commercial office building owners are using this important new financing tool to improve the value of their properties. It is also about job creation, fighting climate change, and improving the health of our residents. C-PACE is the mechanism that allowed Keystone Property Group to make this very significant investment in our city.”

Through C-PACE financing, occupants of 100 Independence Mall West’s 400,000+ square feet will benefit from improved energy infrastructure via upgrades to interior and exterior lighting, HVAC, building envelope and low flow water fixtures.

“This project is a great example of how clean energy financing enables important capital improvements and creates economic development. At the Philadelphia Energy Authority, we use energy as a tool for positive local impact, and this project exemplifies that. Congratulations to Keystone Property Group.” said Matt Stern, Senior Director of Commercial Programs at the Philadelphia Energy Authority, which administers the Philadelphia C-PACE program.

The Philadelphia C-PACE Program approved eligible improvements that will provide an estimated reduction of 852,000 pounds of CO2 equivalent per year and 10,000 fewer metric tons of CO2 equivalent over the next 26 years.

“We are pleased to complete a second transaction with the Philadelphia C-PACE team this year,” stated Michele Pitale, M.D., Managing Director at CounterpointeSRE. “100 Independence Mall West is important because it will serve as an example of how sophisticated commercial real estate investment firms can use PACE to improve a building’s performance and cash flows in large metropolitan areas where programs are also new such as New York, Chicago, Boston and Seattle,” Dr. Pitale continued.

100 Independence Mall West was originally designed by Pietro Belluschi and completed in 1965. The nine-story property was formerly known as the Rohm and Haas Building and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is itself located within walking distance to several Philadelphia landmarks including the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.

About Philadelphia C-PACE

Commercial Property-Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) financing allows commercial property owners to borrow money for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and water conservation projects. Repayments are made via a special assessment similar to a property tax assessment. Key features include: 100% of project costs can be financed; repayment terms are up to 30 years; the special assessment stays with the property in the event of a sale. For more information, visit www.philadelphiacpace.org.

About Counterpointe Sustainable Real Estate

Counterpointe Sustainable Real Estate (CounterpointeSRE) is the leading commercial real estate finance provider specializing in sustainable infrastructure improvements through PACE financing. Since 2013, Counterpointe and its affiliates have financed commercial real estate construction and upgrades that have reduced annual electricity consumption by greater than 51,000 MWh per year and reduced water consumption by 23 million gallons per year.

About Philadelphia Energy Authority

The Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA) is an independent municipal authority created in 2010 to advance energy affordability and sustainability. PEA has facilitated over $167 million in clean energy projects in Philadelphia since launching the Philadelphia Energy Campaign in 2016, creating more than 1,700 jobs. As Program Administrator, PEA reviews and approves applications, manages the billing and lien processes, engages in market education, and supports the growth of the Philadelphia C-PACE program. For details, visit www.PhiladelphiaCPACE.org.

View the 100 Independence Mall case study and disclosure here.

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