OAKLAND, Calif. (PRWEB) January 20, 2022
Today, PACENation announced the release of A PACE Enabled World, a new report and web-based resource that highlights the opportunity and the need for Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing for millions of homes and commercial buildings and the significant economic and environmental benefits that result from PACE investments.
In the United States, PACE has proven to be an essential public policy to scale up investment in energy efficiency, clean energy, and resilience upgrades to homes and commercial buildings. To date, over 300,000 building owners have used PACE to invest more than $9 billion in necessary improvements to their properties.
In the communities that have enabled PACE, these investments have significant effects on local job creation and economic activity, energy savings, and carbon abatement. Over the lifetime of measures installed to date, PACE projects will result in:
- $19 billion in economic impact
- 152,000 job-years created
- 11 million metric tons CO2e emissions avoided
- 36 billion kWh energy saved
If PACE is enabled nationwide, the potential impacts will be far greater. If 15% of eligible homes and commercial buildings use PACE for energy efficiency, clean energy, and resilience improvements, these investments are estimated to result in:
- $1.3 trillion in economic impact
- 9.9 million job-years created
- 840 million metric tons CO2e emissions avoided
- 2.3 billion MWh energy saved
A PACE Enabled World explores the climate-related risks communities face and the potential benefits of PACE retrofits to make homes and commercial buildings more resilient to natural disasters. The risks of inaction are clear: the costs of climate change to global economies could reach $1.7 trillion per year by 2025, and the total costs of extreme weather events in the United States are projected to reach over $4 trillion per decade by 2050.
If 15% of U.S. homeowners used PACE to upgrade their homes, the resulting investments in hurricane and flood resilience would prevent an estimated $223 billion in economic damages from weather-related disasters and relocation costs. In the commercial buildings sector, PACE can substantially strengthen buildings against earthquakes, floods, fires, and hurricanes, and protect against outages and price shocks through investments in energy storage and local microgrids.
“In communities across the United States, PACE has created jobs, reduced carbon emissions, and made homes and businesses more resilient to natural disasters,“ said Mary Luevano, Acting Executive Director of PACENation. “PACE has proven to be one of the most effective policy tools for getting this necessary work done.“
“To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must dramatically increase energy efficiency, decarbonize, and strengthen homes and other buildings in communities as we face rising temperatures and increasingly severe extremes," said Ellie Cohen, CEO of The Climate Center. “Rapidly decarbonizing tens of millions of homes and commercial buildings will require innovative policy and financing solutions. A PACE Enabled World shows how PACE could contribute.”
Estimates of PACE’s impact are based on research published in “Impacts of the Property Assessed Clean Energy Program on the Economies of California and Florida,” a 2019 study by researchers at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy.
For more information, view the interactive microsite, “A PACE Enabled World,” or click here to download the complete report.
About PACENation
PACENation is the national nonprofit association that works alongside policymakers and community stakeholders to strengthen and expand access to assessment-based financing for residential and commercial projects that increase energy efficiency, clean energy, clean drinking water, and resilience against natural disasters. Our membership community includes state and local governments, environmental and faith-based organizations, energy efficiency and climate policy experts, small businesses, PACE administrators and PACE lenders. Members may have different individual goals, but they share a desire to create resilient and resource-efficient communities.
For more information about us or to join PACENation, please visit PACENation.org, register for our newsletter, or follow us on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter.