Four Texas cities eye PACE program
In a recent Texas Tribune article, Chris Winland of Good Company Associates is quoted as saying that four Texas cities are “most aggressively” pursuing PACE financing deals.
Those four are San Antonio, Austin, Houston and El Paso. The CenTex cities of Austin and San Antonio were widely regarded as the most likely candidates as Austin already is the most progressive with its green building codes and much of the push to pass the state law came out of San Antonio.
Houston, the “Oil Capital of the World”, has a recently appointed Director of Sustainability, Laura Spanjian, and she told the Texas Tribune that her city was “not going to wait” for the PACE problems to get solved. “We have set aside funds to help commercial property owners with the upfront costs of energy efficiency improvements,” she said in an e-mail. “We’re going to find another model in the short-term while the issues with PACE are being worked out.”
Kudos to Ms. Spanjian on her aggressive approach.
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If you have missed some of the prior discussion on PACE on this blog, I recommend the following reading:
The USGBC is now asking member companies to write their Congressmen to support PACE legislation.
http://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=7630