from the ground up - The Tyee

spend the money wisely, says Hays. Clean EnergyWorks Portland, for example, received $20 millionfrom the program to scale up its program, which gave500 homeowners in the city access to low-interestloans for energy retrofits, and allowed them to pay itback on their utility bills.Now, Clean Energy Works Portland has become CleanEnergy Works Oregon, and is targeting 6,000 homesacross the state.Marlowe Kulley, an energy advisor with the city ofPortland who helped run the program, said they usedpart of the funding to set up an IT program.“There’s just a lot of data that has to come back andforth between a lot of different agencies,” explainsKulley. This includes information about utility billpayment and credit history, information from partnerutilities on energy use before and after, and informationfrom contractors on the work that was done andits impact.“It’s a huge undertaking that requires a fair amount ofcapital to start up,” says Kulley. “Right now there’sjust a lot of paperwork that’s being handled by hand...and it’s just not feasible when you’re looking at thousandsof units.”When asked whether programs like this one would bepossible without that federal stimulus funding, Hay’simmediate response is “No.”“Well, it would be possible,” he adds. “But it wouldbe happening at a very different scale than it is now.”Canada lags in green stimulusIn Canada, the federal government policies around energyefficiency and conservation have been spotty, atbest. The EcoEnergy program, which provides retrofitrebates and incentives to individual homeowners, hasstopped and started in various forms over the past severalyears, creating little stability for a retrofit market.Similarly, B.C.’s retrofit program, small rebates targetedtowards individual homeowners, was cancelledabruptly in 2009, shaking the retrofit and renovationsector here.Funding uncertainty around these popular programsindicates energy retrofits are not a priority for federalor provincial governments, which leaves Canadianmunicipalities to pick up the slack.Approximately eight years ago, the Pembina Institutebegan exploring how local governments could financeenergy efficiency and renewable energy retrofitsin their communities. In particular, they lookedat Local Improvement Charges, or LICs, a financingmechanism already used by local governments. Thesecharges are levied on residents, via their propertytaxes, when neighbourhood-specific improvementsare undertaken, such as fixing sidewalks.“What we started to explore was whether they coulduse this same mechanism, but use it as a way to provideloans to homeowners, so they could do energyefficientretrofits on their home, and they would pay itback over time through their property taxes,” explainsClaire Beckstead, who works in Pembina’s sustainablecommunities group.“The reason that this is sort of innovative and interestingis because the loan itself would be attached to theproperty, rather than the individual. The benefit andthe cost of those retrofits would be passed on shouldthe homeowner move.”Provincial regs ‘need clarification’Pembina even looked at testing this in Dawson Creek.What they found was that there was legal ambiguityaround whether communities in B.C. can use LICs forindividual homeowners.“The main challenge in B.C. around using localimprovement charges is that the Community Charterdoesn’t explicitly allow this use of local improvementcharges,” says Beckstead. “Provincially, there doesneed to be clarification of the legislation.”Beckstead says while the province has shown aninterest in how LICs could be used to finance homeenergy retrofits, the message needs to come from localgovernments.“We’re working out a way to move this forward. Weknow what the program could look like, it’s just amatter of getting that explicit permission form the78