Recent Torchlight Articles
PACE Goes Poof!
Jul. 31, 2010
Till Human Voices Wake Us
May. 31, 2010
Home In The Dome
Mar. 22, 2010
Paving The Way
Jan. 29, 2010
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Contributing to New York's Climate Week, 2009, NYU-Poly's ACRE incubator spotlighted "New York City's Built Environment: Opportunity, Incentives and the Carbon Challenge". Participating on a panel organized by ACRE's Micah Kotch, Sallan's Executive Director, Nancy Anderson identified the contribution to a greener built environment that will be made by measuring and verifying the performance of innovative energy efficiency projects. For Anderson, public disclosure about the progress of carbon-cutting initiatives is worth its weight in green. So is capturing the power of the marketplace by requiring building owners to benchmark and post their assets' energy performance. She urged students, faculty and deans to find and foster the emerging professional and career opportunities in high performance building design, management, measurement and operations.
PACE Goes Poof!
July 31, 2010
PACE bonds — now you see them, now you don't. Property Assessed Clean Energy bonds are new power tools to provide upfront financing for improving energy efficiency or installing clean energy technologies in homes and office buildings. They were born in Berkeley, California, late in 2007, blessed by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Joe Biden's Middle Class Task Force, and have enabling legislation in twenty-two states. Now, it seems, this green dream crashed and burned in May 2010 when federal financial giants Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, which hold more than half of the nation's home mortgages, publicly refused to grant new mortgages to homes that sought PACE bonds loans. In July, the Federal Housing Finance Agency went a step further and called the PACE program a safety risk.
Finding the Proof of Energy Retrofits
August 02, 2010
Introduction: NYC Leadership on Energy Efficiency in Existing Buildings
New York City is poised to exert global leadership on energy efficiency in existing buildings. Much has been made of the "Greener Greater Buildings" laws that spell out an array of energy requirements pursuant to the goals of PlaNYC 2030. Over the next decade we will see what results are achieved in implementing legal requirements for energy code compliance, benchmarking, audits, retro-commissioning, and lighting improvements. Key players, led by NYC government itself, have committed to "early implementation" by 2017. The current administration is budgeting 10% of it municipal energy expense for annual funding of energy efficiency improvement projects in municipal buildings. This amounts to $100 million per year.
