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  • Fannie and Freddie to clean-energy program: Drop dead

    Grist has been covering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s attack on Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), a promising tool that helps homeowners finance green improvements to their properties. Here’s the latest: On Tuesday, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended their radio silence nine weeks after sending cryptic letters warning lenders against permitting the use of […]

  • Fannie and Freddie won’t let this teacher green her home

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have shut down most of the nation’s programs using Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), an innovative tool that helps Americans finance green improvements to their homes. Here’s a homeowner’s perspective on the story: Thomason and her Boulder County home. Kayla Thomason spent last winter wondering if the furnace would hold […]

  • Exclusive: Obama admin unable to resolve shutdown of PACE clean-energy program

    Obama administration officials have failed to resolve a dispute with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that has shut down Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), according to an email obtained by Grist. The impasse will likely kill the promising clean-energy financing tool until Congress passes legislation addressing it, according to Cisco DeVries, who first created the […]

  • Fannie and Freddie bring down Boulder clean-energy finance program

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac claimed the first casualty in their attack on a promising clean-energy financing tool when Boulder County, Colo., canceled the latest round of its popular ClimateSmart Loan Program on Tuesday. “We are extremely disappointed by the lack of flexibility and vision we’ve encountered with the FHFA [Federal Housing Finance Agency], and […]

  • Greening homes requires credit, which Fannie and Freddie should understand

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have essentially shut down an innovative program that helps Americans green their homes.  Here’s more on the story: Jeanine Cotter, CEO of California solar installation company Luminalt, has a good explanation of what keeps homeowners from investing in rooftop solar and retrofits that cut energy waste. In her experience, people […]

  • Fannie and Freddie attack clean-energy plan

    Few new ideas brighten the faces of clean-energy advocates as much as Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, the Berkeley-born financing tool that’s spreading quickly throughout the country. The three-year-old model has put rooftop solar panels, high-efficiency furnaces, and other home improvements within reach of thousands of American homeowners, and there’s hope it could reach […]

  • Municipal Energy Financing is Expanding: Is It Working?

    Twenty states now allow cities and counties to finance energy efficiency retrofits and on-site renewable energy generation, with property owners repaying the loan with a property tax assessment.  Five municipalities launched Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs in the past two years and these programs have spent $37.5 million to help enable close to 2,000 […]

  • Cisco DeVries

    Art: Nat Damm Cisco DeVries President, Renewable Funding Oakland, Calif. Sure, you’d love to have solar panels on your roof, but where would you get tens of thousands of dollars to install them? Cisco Devries, 36, has come up with an innovative answer: Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a new type of financing program […]

  • Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) makes partners of solar PV and energy efficiency

    Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) does not make energy efficiency the enemy of solar PV. Instead, it helps optimize the use of solar PV for participating property owners. PACE programs are a new tool for promoting residential (and commercial) energy efficiency improvements and on-site renewable energy.  The municipality issues bonds to provide financing for voluntary […]