Tag: renewable energy

by Maria Gallucci, INSIDECLIMATE NEWS
A judge forces the federal agency that squashed the PACE home energy program to draft rules and start over.
In 2010, FHFA, overseer of the nation’s largest mortgage buyers and sellers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, issued a statement saying that PACE posed “significant risks” to mortgage companies and urged all local governments to suspend their programs. At Rod Stevenson’s sprawling country home in Santa Rosa, Calif., in Sonoma County, once-leaky walls and windows are now sealed tight for energy efficiency, and his roof and yard are glittering with two dozen solar panels.”We expect to save about $10,000 a year,” on electricity and heating bills, Stevenson says, a nearly 70 percent drop from last year.Stevenson, 62, runs a successful, century-old family business that sells construction supplies and materials to control soil erosion in Northern California. But retirement was hanging over him and his wife. “I really wanted to get to the point where we could get our [utility] bill down to virtually nothing,” Stevenson recalls.
via Home Energy Program in Sonoma a Beacon for Broken National Effort | InsideClimate News.