News

Completion of Preliminary Research on PACE Program Benefits in Florida

 

Faculty from the Patel College of Global Sustainability, Professors T.H. Culhane, and Pradeep Haldar, as well as graduate student Zachary Oliphant, recently released a report on the benefits of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing program in Florida. PACE has become an important financial tool for homeowners, local governments, and policymakers to provide incentives to address the challenges of climate change and natural disasters like hurricanes.

The team used an economic model from a previous study to evaluate the effects of PACE since its inception in Florida. It found that the Ygrene Energy Fund, which contributed around 80% of the PACE financing in Florida, implemented nearly 40,000 projects for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and hurricane mitigation with around $848 million in investments from 2013 to November 2019.

These improvements have saved more than a billion dollars in insurance premiums over the lifetime of the improvements. It impacted the economic output by more than two billion dollars and created over 21,800 person-year jobs. More importantly, these projects have reduced greenhouse gas emissions in Florida, equivalent to driving 114,000 cars for a year and saved enough electricity to power 78,000 homes for a year. The program can save existing and new communities on their energy bills.

The researchers plan to further expand on this work on how PACE can integrate into existing and emerging state policies, to address specific challenges while managing resiliency and sustainability.