$20.5 million from DOE helps communities turn trash into cash

The Department of Energy has just announced funding $20.5 million for several community-scale renewable energy projects.

UC Davis & West Village

One of the recipients is West Village, next to UC Davis, which generated a bit of criticism among Green Journey readers the last time we covered them. In partnership with UC Davis, they’ve now received $2.5 million in funding for a waste-to-renewable energy (WTRE) system. The DOE provides an explanation of how the new system should work:

The system would generate power from a renewable biogas-fed fuel cell.  The organic waste will enter a digester to produce biogas from organic wastes. The biogas will power a 300-kW fuel cell, which will work in combination with an advanced battery system to provide power to the campus’

Montpelier, VT

A second community level energy system of interest is the funding of $8 million to the City of Montpelier, Vermont, for a combined heat and power district heating system that will burn sustainably-sourced wood chips and provide 1.8 million KWh to the grid.

The CHP system will be sized to provide heating to the Vermont Capitol Complex, city owned schools, the City Hall Complex, and up to 156 buildings in the community’s designated downtown district for a total of 176 buildings and 1.8 million square feet served.

We follow these announcements with lots of interest, since we work with partners to identify the best combination of financing streams for achieving community-level sustainability.

As we continue to study eco-districts and similar low-carbon neighborhoods in various stages of design and planning around the world, district-level renewable energy infrastructure  — particularly waste-to-renewable-energy comes up time and time again within the case studies of the more successful communities.

A more in depth discussion of the ’success factors’ within green communities will definitely make for an exciting post in the near future as we consolidate our findings.

Video explains value of district energy

Some of these technical terms might be outside of the typical real estate finance and investment discussion, so I found a 40 second video that explains how district energy saves buildings money. Email subscribers should click on this link to go to the video.

Solar Sonoma County Pushes Consortium Sustainability Financing District

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: sustainability financing districts are THE most innovative green finance solution out there. The whole AB811 snowball just keeps getting bigger.

Case in point: Solar Sonoma County’s creation of a solar financing program for all Sonoma County residents and businesses.  When the city of Sebastopol tried to create its own sustainability financing district, it was too small. Their upstart solution?  Put together a consortium of cities and groups to achieve the scale needed and create a county wide solar financing program. The creation of this program is still in the works, however the article documents the fact that they are gaining the most desired quality in today’s shaky capital markets: t-r-a-c-t-i-o-n!

We know from our own work that Sonoma County touts itself as America’s greenest county. Nearly every major city there has enacted green building ordinances in one form or another.

Our suggestion: They should change their name to “Smart Solar Sonoma County”.

More Calls for Sustainability Financing Districts

Photo credit: LA WadCalifornia Assembly Bill 811 fans: here’s another update.
Yet another call was issued recently for a sustainability financing district; where the city would offer residential green tech financing via property tax assessments - one of my super faves among the green finance moves out there.

Back in May, I posted about how legislation authorizing cities to create sustainability financing districts has been gaining traction.

That traction continues.

In this latest item, you basically have a key staff member of a state senator’s very green leaning Santa Rosa  district, calling for a sustainability financing district for their city. I’m not saying that enacting this type of program is a no brainer, but given the headway already made by Berkley, San Francisco and others — Santa Rosa should have an easier time envisioning how to get it done and reaping the benefits. Once legislation authorizes them to take action.

I can’t stop singing this song: AB 811 represents one of the best new strategies in green real estate finance. It can foster the rapid adoption of green technology via sharing a city’s cost of capital with homeowners. It empowers cities to step up and address climate change using their own unique financial advantages.

As a result, the proposed sustainability financing districts could create a mega-win for the cities, homeowners, green tech companies and the future green collar job holders involved.

Oh yeah, and let me sing my other AB 811 song: Banks and other consumer financiers, that currently shy away from residential lending should be taking notice of a very big horse that has taken another step out of the barn in California.