Some towns in Maine may go ahead with a program that provides federal money to residents who want to make their homes more energy efficient, despite the objections of federal mortgage backers.
According to a report by Susan Morse of Seacoastonline.com, grassroots advocates of the PACE program -- "Property Assessed Clean Energy," also called "cash for caulkers" -- are working with local planning boards, energy commissions, and town councils to pass ordinances that would pipe as much as $30 million in Obama administration stimulus funds to the energy-efficiency improvements.
The loans would help homeowners pay the high up-front costs of retrofiting their homes, creating green jobs for contractors in the process. The municipalities would recoup the money as property tax assessments.
At least one local official seems convinced:
Eliot Energy Commission Chairman Jenny Isler believes these less glamorous improvements help sell a home, as buyers today are more green savvy. Isler recently had an energy audit performed at her 1865 house. After the audit revealed heat loss, she insulated the attic, baseboards and joists. She couldn't insulate the walls without ripping out the siding of the historic home, she said.
Still, after making the changes, she ended up burning half the heating oil this past winter she had burned the year before, prior to the insulation.
"Last winter I burned 400 gallons of oil, the year before about 800," Isler said. "I think anyone who's smart these days is looking at that. Infrared cameras (are showing) our roofs are glowing red, we're burning dollar bills."
Martin Chavez, the executive director of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, recently sat down with E&E TV's Monica Trauzzi to discuss the Federal Housing Finance Administration's (FHFA) objections to PACE financing programs, which had been backed by $150 million in federal stimulus funds. Chavez, former mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., used very cautious wording on the potential for passage of legislation to restore the funding:
Trauzzi: Is there a focus in Washington on this program and getting it moving again?
Chavez: Well, I'm a local guy. I'm a former mayor and so sometimes the ways of Washington are beyond my grasp I think. It does seem that there's some legitimate concern about elections coming up, but we're looking to this lame-duck session, or maybe even before that, for something that will get us started. There is legislation pending on the Hill on both sides of the aisle.
In early July, the FHFA, which regulates mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, told mortgage lenders around the country to avoid municipalities issuing PACE loans. The agency believes that a PACE loan would have a "first lien" status, putting it ahead of a defaulted mortgage for a full payoff. PACE supporters counter that the loans, made the form of tax assessments, would only need to be brought up to date, not paid off in full. Some say FHFA is interfering with the rights of local governments to set taxes.
It seems like an arcane debate, but FHFA's instructions to lenders effectively halted PACE programs nationwide, and with them the creation of scores of new green jobs in over 20 states. (See "Long Island Town Fights To Keep Energy Efficiency Program.")
It is unclear whether bills introduced in both the House and the Senate to save the program will go anywhere before the end of the current Congress.
