And if it makes it into a paper like the USA Today, it is certainly mainstream.

What are solar carports?

Take typical surface parking lots — like ones you see in strip malls and many office buildings and apartment complexes — and add carports with solar panels as the roof.

You get covered parking for customers and tenants (you normally pay extra in apartments and office buildings for covered parking).

And the space becomes an alternative source of energy.

Here’s a picture from the Dell Computer campus in Round Rock, Texas.

We have been discussing these types of arrangements with several companies recently, so I am starting to think they are starting to take off in terms of acceptance.

Initially, we just explained what it actually is back in February, (What is PACE financing?).

And there is this YouTube video which does some explaining in PACE 101.

We also touched on the new Florida law that was enacted just last month, and also touched on some of the obstacles around PACE spreading.

If you forgot or missed the earlier posts on what PACE financing is, it is simply a program that creates local bond financing districts, which then lend back capital to building and homeowners to fund energy retrofit projects. Owners repay the loan through their property tax bills, typically over a 15- to 20-year term.

Randyl Drummer also recently penned (can you still use that verb in this virtual world?) his own case for PACE financing. Drummer does a solid job touching on not only the promise but also the drawbacks of the plan.

Here are some of Drummer’s high points:

“The opportunities are really tremendous from an energy retrofit perspective,” Florida State House Majority Leader Adam Hasner said. “A lot of the hesitation from building owners comes from the upstream expenses and not wanting to make those expenditures. This type of financing can help alleviate some of those concerns and convince owners to make these types of investments, which are going to be cost effective as well as energy efficient in the long run.”

I love this quote from Hasner too: “It will take time to educate people. We’re still early in the first quarter of a four-quarter game. Everyone is very quick to recognize the innovations in technology in energy efficiency and new technologies. But PACE is really about an innovation in financing. It can be a very useful financial tool for commercial property owners to complete energy efficiency projects that will help them save money.”

Drummer cites a new Pike Research Report which says PACE will continue to grow in popularity in the U.S., with investment in PACE financing for commercial buildings totaling a projected $2.5 billion annually by 2015.

“Until now, private buildings such as these have had minimal access to financing for energy retrofits,” the Pike report said.

Some of the concerns are, according the Drummer’s article:

+ Potential buyers and lending institutions may be wary of existing PACE liens, including whether lenders may one day restrict the ability to tack significant energy projects onto the property tax bill (because they hold superior lien positions to the bank’s debt)

+ The lack of clarity in how GAAP treats (loan or as a lien) on a company’s balance sheet

+ Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have expressed concern about how the agencies will be repaid if homeowners participating in PACE later default on their mortgages. (Boulder County, CO., canceled its PACE program for residential, although its commercial program is still active.)

In closing, despite the concerns noted about, Drummer quotes Clean Fund CEO John Kinney, “Frankly, taking an inefficient building and making it more efficient is much more valuable than taking a new building that is already highly efficient and simply certifying that it is in fact, highly efficient.”

Kudos, Mr. Kinney, you get it.

And there are just so many more existing buildings than new buildings, that our ability to impact the environment and our bottom line is staggering.

That is Green Squared’s tagline if you didn’t know.

In a new healthcare study reported by FMLink, nearly four out of five (79%) hospitals surveyed cited cost savings as the top reason their facilities are committed to environmentally sustainable operations.

Also, very interestingly, at least to me, nearly 70% of the respondents say they measure their energy savings and half (50%) conduct energy audits. 41% say their facilities measure water savings.

Google initially announced its intentions with PowerMeter in early 2009.

Cisco has also recently announced its intentions to be in the Home Energy Management space.

Below is a picture of the Cisco product.

The installations were to be performed by a company call SunRun. On Tuesday, June 29th, SunRun announced it closed a Series C round of funding for $55 million led by Sequoia Capital and joined by existing investors Accel Partners and Foundation Capital.

For those of you not wise to the VC world, Sequoia is the biggest and baddest Silicon Valley VC that there is. You may have heard of prior early stage investments like Google, YouTube, Apple, Yahoo!, and Cisco, among others.

Original investor, Accel Partners, is bigtime too with investments in Facebook, Veritas, and comscore.

Similarly, a recent report from Matter Network states that Goldman Sachs has begun covering the solar sector, including First Solar and SunPower.

We’ve talked quite a bit on this blog about green investment, so if you’d like read more here.

Athens spent 10 years as an administrator with the City of Seattle’s sustainability programs, where she led policy development efforts. Her 25 years of experience also include time spent as a board member of the U.S. Green Building Council and the International Green Building Certification Institute.

Hat tip to Strategic Partnerships out of Austin for this heads up.

Underlying image CC licensed by Flickr user supafly.

Green Squared admission… I am a Top Chef fan.

So, I was particularly intrigued that Top Chef Master Rick Bayless had two of the highest certifications with Frontera Grill and Topolobampo.

I love the notion that they are trying to aggregate data on the energy savings that are being retrofitted.

More interesting to me is the discussion further into the article that touches on what might be Deutsche Bank’s ultimate motivation.

Mr. Hattem, who said Deutsche Bank would have no proprietary stake in the data, hopes that lenders will not only finance more retrofits as a result of the project, but also use the information to create a new securitizations market.

“The idea here is that if underwriters can determine a predictable savings from retrofits,” he said, “then they can create a financial instrument backed by these savings to sell on the open market.”

Now this type of thinking will jump start the retrofit business as capital for the improvement projects has always been the biggest impediment.

I also found this quote from a project manager at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and a member of the advisory committee spot on:

“There is an almost universal lack of understanding of building energy usage,” said Luke Falk.

I agree wholeheartedly, Luke. More building owners and managers need to wrap their heads around that usage and controlling the costs surrounding it.

The fund, managed by a P.G.&E. subsidiary, Pacific Energy Capital II, is the largest single solar leasing pool to date, according to the company, and marks the growing interest of utilities in the renewable energy financing business.

The $100 million in financing is expected to fund solar installations for 3,500 homes in Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

I’m curious when funds like this will be created for Energy Efficiency projects. A solar kilowatt is just as effective as saving a carbon based kilowatt, so when will the smart money start to catch on?

Not surprisingly for us at Green Squared, energy efficiency, according to speakers at the conference, remains the most salient aspect of the industry’s move to sustainability, and is the one benefit that’s most easily recognized by consumers.

And this is the first I’ve heard of energy efficient mortgages, but I LOVE THE IDEA.

The energy efficient mortgage treats savings on energy as an addition to the borrower’s income. While these loans exist mostly in theory, “you need to start demanding these,” he said.

While no one to date has systematically estimated the actual value green adds to a home, Porter (along with at least one other speaker at the conference) referenced early research calculating that every $1 in annual energy savings brings roughly $20 in additional value. Finding enough data to reach such a conclusion is one problem, and further complicating things is that fact that the bottom line on how much energy is saved ultimately depends on the behavior of the occupants of the home.