Develop the procurement, outreach, and loan support resources required to perform your financing activities.
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Launch your financing activities in coordination with other program components.
Establish program goals and objectives to clarify what you want your program to achieve and to guide program design and implementation over time.
Establish an evaluation plan that will allow you to determine how your financing activities are impacting the market.
Determine if enhancements to existing financing products or the development of new products are necessary to allow you to achieve your goals and objectives.
Develop a plan to implement your financing activities, with defined roles for financial institution partners, contractors, customers, and your program.
Decide on priority target audience segments, messages, and incentives that will motivate customers.
Identify and partner with financial institutions that can provide capital, underwriting, and other functions to enable your customers to access financing.
Determine how your target audience currently funds energy efficiency services, to what extent upfront cost is a barrier, and whether improvements to their financing options would increase the uptake of energy efficiency measures.
Ensure that your program’s customers will have access to affordable financing, so they can pay for the services you offer.
Establishing strong, collaborative partnerships with one or more lending partners is critical for successful delivery of affordable home energy lending. These partnerships are typically created through a request for proposal (RFP) process which can encourage market competition and help to attract...
In order to overcome lenders’ concerns over the risk associated with energy efficiency loans, many Better Buildings Neighborhood Program partners offered credit enhancements to lenders (e.g., loan loss reserve funds) to attract lender participation and to mitigate lender losses in the event of loan...
Historically, energy efficiency financing have required two sources of funding: credit enhancement funds to mitigate risk and support attractive financing, and senior capital to fund the majority of the loan principal. Some residential energy efficiency programs have successfully assembled loan...
Financing can be a complicated topic for programs, and having staff with financing knowledge and expertise can be very valuable. Financing program administration involves working with lenders and understanding how they operate as well as understanding financial regulatory issues and loan product...
Developing new energy efficiency loan products requires financial expertise and resources that not every program has available or that might not even be necessary. Finding and promoting existing energy efficiency loan products, such as loans that may be offered by a local credit union, your state...
Some lenders perceive home energy lending to be too risky or not profitable enough for them to get involved. Programs have found that engaging potential lending partners early in the program design process, especially in face-to-face meetings, helped them understand both lender needs and the risks...
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This webcast highlights lessons learned from programs that have used loan loss reserve funds.
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Organizations or Programs
BetterBuildings Northwest Ohio
This presentation covers lesson learned for PACE from the Toledo Port Authority, innovative real estate finance solutions from the Ygrene Energy Fund, and financing energy improvements on utility bills.
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This database (in development) contains information about existing energy efficiency loan programs in the United States. For each loan program the following data is presented: financing mechanism (e.g., credit enhancement, on-bill financing), market (e.g., city, state), sector (e.g., residential single family, residential multi-family), and program sponsorship (e.g., DOE programs, ARRA, private lenders).
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Organizations or Programs
Energy Upgrade California
Example loan loss reserve fund agreement.
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A template competitive procurement procedure to award loan loss reserve funds to a financial institution partner.
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A template agreement demonstrating how to address the deposit and use of loan loss reserve funds.
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Organizations or Programs
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
This paper investigates the credit enhancement value of NYSERDA's on-bill energy efficiency financing program relative to its similar conventional unsecured loan program. In the raw data, while both loan pools perform well
relative to credit card lending, the on-bill loans default more often than the unsecured loans. This paper shows that this result persists: on-bill loans default more often, and this finding is not sensitive to model specification. This paper also shows that NYSERDA's alternate underwriting mechanism based on mortgage and utility bill repayment history performs well, and that projected dollar savings from the installed projects do not significantly influence loan performance.
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Organizations or Programs
Energize Connecticut,
Michigan Saves,
Warehouse for Energy Efficiency Loans (WHEEL)
This report provides an overview of credit enhancements available, such as loan loss reserves, loan guarantees, debt service reserve funds, and subordinated capital. It also discusses key issues related to credit enhancement, examples of how others have successfully implemented credit enhancements as part of their energy efficiency financing programs, and additional information on existing resources that provide further information on credit enhancement design and implementation.
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Organizations or Programs
ClimateSmart Initiative,
Efficiency Vermont,
Sonoma County Energy Independence Program
Outlines five public-private financing mechanism options for energy efficiency upgrades programs, including on-bill financing, PACE financing, and loan loss reserve funds.
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This website provides an overview of financing as it pertains to state, local, and tribal governments who are designing and implementing clean energy financing programs. Residential financing tools include residential PACE (R-PACE), on-bill financing and repayment, loan loss reserves and other credit enhancements, revolving loan funds, and energy efficient mortgages.
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Presents the loan loss reserve guidelines for the Arkansas Residential Energy Efficiency Loan Loss Reserve Program.
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Organizations or Programs
Michigan Saves
This loan loss reserve fund agreement sets the terms and conditions of the loan loss reserve fund between Michigan Saves and partnering lenders.
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Organizations or Programs
RePower Kitsap,
RePower Bainbridge,
RePower Bremerton
A sample request for proposals from Washington state to develop an energy efficiency credit enhancement grant program.
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Organizations or Programs
RePower Kitsap,
RePower Bainbridge,
RePower Bremerton
A sample request for proposals from Bainbridge Island, Washington, related to establishing a revolving loan fund and loan loss reserve.
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A sample competitive procurement procedure to award loan loss reserve funds to a financial institution partner.
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Highlights the EcoHouse Project Loan Program, which provides fixed interest rate loans as a tool for enabling energy improvements among households that are otherwise unlikely to be able to access affordable financing at market rates.