Author: Tom Mills

It’s the oldest story in getting energy savings — I want the cash flow and the carbon reductions, but how do I pay for it?

For big commercial properties and for the “MUSH” sector (Municipal/State, Universities, Schools and Hospitals), multi-year Energy Savings Performance Contracts (“ESPC”)  and more recently, Efficiency as a Service (“EaaS”) structures have provided zero-upfront-cost ways to get to positive cash flow quickly from energy efficiency projects.

But there’s been a big and largely unmet need for these no-money-down structures for Small-Medium Commercial buildings and, even more importantly, for the residential sector.  The U.S. has over 83 million single-family detached homes, and many, many of those homes, plus multi-family and small commercial buildings, could achieve 20%-50%+ annual reductions in their energy bills within 2-3 weeks, with the right kinds of projects.

Our PACE AI partner Liberty Homes, with a founding team of U.S. Department of Energy veterans, is answering this need with its innovative Pay As You Save® (PAYS) structure.  PAYS not only pays 100% upfront for energy efficiency and demand reduction projects, but also gets you the verification of your savings via metered data.  Major utilities and electric cooperatives across America are adapting PAYS into their customer offerings — contact us to learn more.

We’re excited to be advancing the applications of PACE AI with Hitachi, in a critical area of need in this era of climate change: water conservation in irrigation and in water and wastewater municipal operations.  Especially given this summer’s searing heat across much of the U.S., applying smart technology in water conservation has seldom been more important.

California has recognized that the old power industry saying that “you need water to make electricity and electricity to make water” is still true, as this Los Angeles Times article talks about in reviewing statewide programs in combined water/energy conservation: https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2021-03-04/want-to-save-energy-and-fight-climate-change-try-using-less-water-boiling-point