Honolulu Weekly

Cisco DeVries / In 2007, Cisco DeVries, then an aide to Berkeley, Calif. Mayor Tom Bates, wanted to put his money where his mouth was. DeVries was deeply involved in energy and environmental issues but had not yet invested in renewable energy at home.

“I was working on a lot of these things and I thought, ‘I better walk the walk. I’m going to get solar,” DeVries tells the Weekly. “Then I went and got a couple of bids, and I double-clutched at the $24,000 estimate.” DeVries says his commitment to green energy was solid, but so was his attention to his finances. “When it came to write that check, I had a hard time with it, and I should be the first guy signing up for solar.”

While working on a community project, DeVries had a breakthrough. He wondered if Berkeley could use the same financial tool that pays for public infrastructure projects that benefit property owners–sewer and sidewalk improvements are common examples–to help homeowners pay the high upfront costs of solar energy installation.

Less than four years later, DeVries’ idea has become a sensation in energy, environmental and public-policy circles. Inspired by the success of the Berkeley First pilot program, municipalities and states across the nation are implementing an idea known as property-assessed clean energy, or PACE.

The concept is simple: through the issuance of municipal bonds, cities raise funds to pay the upfront costs of solar installation. The fees are then added to the property’s tax assessment and are paid off over a long period of time, typically 20 years.

The idea has been implemented in more than a dozen places, to great acclaim thus far. White House officials have made property-assessed clean energy among the centerpieces of President Obama’s energy agenda.

DeVries, who is now president of Renewable Funding, a company that administers PACE plans, says this funding mechanism solves the most vexing challenge in the renewable energy market. “That’s true nowhere more than in Hawaii,” he says, pointing to our highest-in-the-nation energy costs and relatively abundant solar energy.

This legislative session, Hawaii is close to embracing a version of the PACE model. House Bill 2643 would authorize a $50 million bond issuance and create a program to be administered by the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. Hawaii’s would be the first state-level program under the PACE model, but would in most other respects be similar to successful programs in other areas.

Robert Harris, local director of the Sierra Club, which is bringing DeVries to Honolulu next week, is enthusiastic about the program itself and about the state-level approach. “I see a lot of benefit to it. The state has the potential of providing the experienced administrator,” Harris says. “DBEDT is experienced and up to speed on these issues.”

No economic venture, DeVries cautions, is risk-free. The bond market fluctuates, and there remains the possibility, however carefully participants are screened, that a property owner will have trouble paying the assessment. “[These programs] need to be designed and executed well,” DeVries says. “You can’t guarantee against everything. But you can create a solid foundation.”

DeVries hopes Hawaii lawmakers will focus, as others have, on the wide economic and energy-security benefits the program can afford.

“This is not just an environmental issue,” says DeVries. “It’s also about saving money, putting people to work and economic security.”