I am a building performance contractor here in Sonoma County, California. Our PACE program is the largest in the nation, only 16 months in operation, with lots of details to be worked out, but in that time over 1100 projects have been funded. About 16 of those retrofits were done by our company Applied Building Science. Because of FHFA’s ruling, I will soon have to lay off about half of our 15 employees. Our projects are typically deep energy retrofits that usually cuts our client’s utility bills significantly and greatly increases their comfort and occasionally even the healthfulness of their homes.

PACE financing programs, if allowing to resume, will be a valuable tool in the coming transition from fossil fuel based economy to a renewable energy future. The fastest, cleanest, and most economical way to produce energy and to achieve energy independence is to stop wasting the energy we are producing now.

The national banks don’t want competition, which wouldn’t be so bad if they were lending, but they’re not. Our grandchildren will not consider FHFA’s killing of the option of PACE funding by local governments as a reasonable and prudent act. This decision must be overturned for them.

Well, as a lifelong Democrat, it’s not so much that I oppose it, it’s that I see it as much ado about nothing. There is no proof that this tool will significantly move comprehensive weatherization retrofits. In fact the scattering of programs (except for Long Island) point in the opposite direction — that it is a “windows-and-patio-doors plus solar” program. Most of the folks I know, who have been in this business for a significant amount of time, have been more likely to simply ignore PACE as a small boutique tool with limited value in limited communities, but not really worth fighting for (or against.)