Maximizing Green Building Project ROI with C-PACE Financing
Webinar: IncentiFind and CleanFund provide an overview webinar on financing clean energy and energy efficiency projects with C-PACE and sweetening returns by accessing relevant incentives with IncentiFind's SEARCH, VERIFY, and APPLY services.
Overall benefits
- Increase your property value
- Pass through expenses
- Finance equipment replacement
- Cash flow increase
- Preserve Capital
- Significant energy savings
Financing Terms
- 100% Financing
- Fixed Rate financing
- 20-30 years self-amortizing term
- Flexible pre-payment
- Non-recourse, non-accelerating
- Up to 20%-30% of asset value
Use of proceeds
- Fund construction cost overruns
- Pay down construction loan and/or facilitate ongoing debt service payment
- Replenish reserves
- Increase working capital
- CleanFund can fund proceeds directly to the developer for eligible equipment already installed
What kind of projects does CleanFund's C-PACE fund?
- New Construction
- Redevelopment
- Retroactive Financing
- Seismic Strengthening
- Retrofits
- Storm proofing
- Tenant Improvements
- Renewable Energy Improvements
- Building Expansion
What is PACE and how does it work?
Learn more about C-PACE with CleanFund to fund your next commercial real estate development.
Assessment Financing is a public improvement finance mechanism that has been around for more than 100 years to fund public works projects. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) was introduced in California in 2007 as a form of assessment financing to fund improvements to qualifying properties, namely projects that reduce energy and water usage, and which are deemed in the “public good” (like assessments for school bonds, fire districts, etc.)
Step 1: State approves PACE legislation (36 so far)
Step 2: Counties or cities “opt-in” to one or more PACE programs based upon state program parameters
Step 3: CleanFund underwrites PACE programs to ensure best practices
Step 4: CleanFund sources transactions:
Directly through relationships with property owners
Indirectly through channel partners (engineers, contractors, loan brokers, solar installers)
Step 5: CleanFund underwrites individual transactions, gets program approval and funds the transaction
Step 6: The county collector adds a line-item to the property’s tax bill, and collects the new PACE payments as part of ordinary remittances
An assessment contract sets forth the property owner’s obligation to repay the PACE financing over time along with their normal property tax payments and clarifies the various terms of the PACE financing. The contract is between the property owner and the municipality in which the property is located. In California, a Joint Powers Authority (“JPA”) often executes the contract on behalf of the municipality. CleanFund purchases a PACE bond that is backed by an assignment of the assessment contract (in California and certain other states).
This assessment is levied each tax year and included on the building owner’s property tax bill. The payments are due at the same time as ordinary property tax payments. This may vary depending on state and jurisdiction. Contact the CleanFund team for more information regarding the specific payment schedule in your jurisdiction.
No, in most jurisdictions, you cannot partially pay your property taxes (i.e., choosing to exclude certain line items). In the state of CA, a partial payment of property taxes or PACE assessment triggers a delinquency of the full amount of taxes and assessments due during that billing period.
Yes. Typically, a prepayment premium must be paid in connection with a prepayment, which is set forth in the assessment contract.
Yes, PACE can be used to finance improvements that are already installed and in operation should there be written acknowledgement of PACE as a financing option. As a safeguard, CleanFund’s Initial Application includes a clause on intention to reimburse prior to the start of construction, which preserves the Owner’s right to be remunerated for work that has already been completed. This might include engineering studies, energy audits, and other soft costs.
Yes, CleanFund can provide financing for up to 100% of costs associated with the improvements, including soft costs, such as engineering, site work, and energy audits.
What is PACE and how does it work?
Learn more about C-PACE with CleanFund to fund your next commercial real estate development.
Assessment Financing is a public improvement finance mechanism that has been around for more than 100 years to fund public works projects. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) was introduced in California in 2007 as a form of assessment financing to fund improvements to qualifying properties, namely projects that reduce energy and water usage, and which are deemed in the “public good” (like assessments for school bonds, fire districts, etc.)
Step 1: State approves PACE legislation (36 so far)
Step 2: Counties or cities “opt-in” to one or more PACE programs based upon state program parameters
Step 3: CleanFund underwrites PACE programs to ensure best practices
Step 4: CleanFund sources transactions:
Directly through relationships with property owners
Indirectly through channel partners (engineers, contractors, loan brokers, solar installers)
Step 5: CleanFund underwrites individual transactions, gets program approval and funds the transaction
Step 6: The county collector adds a line-item to the property’s tax bill, and collects the new PACE payments as part of ordinary remittances
An assessment contract sets forth the property owner’s obligation to repay the PACE financing over time along with their normal property tax payments and clarifies the various terms of the PACE financing. The contract is between the property owner and the municipality in which the property is located. In California, a Joint Powers Authority (“JPA”) often executes the contract on behalf of the municipality. CleanFund purchases a PACE bond that is backed by an assignment of the assessment contract (in California and certain other states).
This assessment is levied each tax year and included on the building owner’s property tax bill. The payments are due at the same time as ordinary property tax payments. This may vary depending on state and jurisdiction. Contact the CleanFund team for more information regarding the specific payment schedule in your jurisdiction.
No, in most jurisdictions, you cannot partially pay your property taxes (i.e., choosing to exclude certain line items). In the state of CA, a partial payment of property taxes or PACE assessment triggers a delinquency of the full amount of taxes and assessments due during that billing period.
Yes. Typically, a prepayment premium must be paid in connection with a prepayment, which is set forth in the assessment contract.
Yes, PACE can be used to finance improvements that are already installed and in operation should there be written acknowledgement of PACE as a financing option. As a safeguard, CleanFund’s Initial Application includes a clause on intention to reimburse prior to the start of construction, which preserves the Owner’s right to be remunerated for work that has already been completed. This might include engineering studies, energy audits, and other soft costs.
Yes, CleanFund can provide financing for up to 100% of costs associated with the improvements, including soft costs, such as engineering, site work, and energy audits.
Who can benefit from using C-PACE financing?
CleanFund's C-PACE benefits many stakeholders in the real estate industry. Discover how C-PACE Financing can benefit your organization.
What States have an established C-PACE program?
At CleanFund, we constantly track the evolution of PACE Policy and Programs in the United States. Everyday.
CleanFund is your partner for C-PACE Financing. Learn how we can make a difference for commercial property owners and developers
C-PACE Financing is one of 2022's best financing tools available to commercial real estate owners and developers. CleanFund's webinars and videos help you better understand how C-PACE can benefit you, even on recently completed projects.
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How does PACE Financing Works?
PACE in the capital stack
Payments & Disbursements
How pace financing works
Pace-eligible Improvements
IncentiFind and CleanFund provide an overview webinar on financing clean energy and energy efficiency projects with C-PACE and sweetening returns by accessing relevant incentives with IncentiFind's SEARCH, VERIFY, and APPLY services.
CPACE helps you unlock the hidden opportunities in your real estate assets.
okay I'm gonna get started this webinar is about maximizing green building
project ROI with CPS financing and incentive programs just you know who is
presenting today I'm Megan stoners I'm from and sent to find I'm the commercial ncpace National Account lead we are
based out of Houston Texas frank slaughter from clean fund is also on the
line he's the regional managing director for Texas for clean fund and actually
Frank if you want to and I and I hope you can join in I thought maybe this
might be a good place for you to discuss a little bit more about the partnership
that unsent Defiant has with clean fund terrific Thank You Megan well I appreciate the opportunity to share some
information the folks about clean fund and incent to find we are working together obviously clean fun and incent
to find are focused on the same area of real estate if you will and that's the
clean energy aspect of real estate you know clean fun looks for partners throughout the real estate industry from
various levels and incent to find really struck us as being a very valuable partner not only for the work that we're
doing the for our clients you know the the relationship that we have with them simplifying you know create look at that
burst enough only leverage pace financing for their project but also to identify the the myriad of other types
of incentives and rebates that are associated with utilizing clean energy aspects and focused on energy efficiency
and water conservation and resiliency so the the partnership is one that where we're both aligned in many ways and we
look forward to growing that relationship further and and of course introducing and set to find to as many
folks as we can just seeing the tremendous value that they bring to these these opportunities in these projects great thanks Frank absolutely
so a little bit more about and said to find just so you can understand who we
are in what kind of service we can provide to you as well so we're the only national database of green incentives
that's recognized by the Department of Energy there is no other database that has a comprehensive list of incentives
that covers what we consider the triple bottom line everything from energy efficiency to electric vehicles to
economic development and every year approximately 1 million green projects
are completed and that's actually just based on the number of publicly reported projects yet there's approximately 10
billion yes that's billion with the B incentives that go unclaimed every year that could
help to make these kinds of projects pencil so our job as a database we can
assist you with those projects whether they're new construction or existing buildings with helping them find
incentives and save money for work that often times they're doing anyway on these projects so again our database
houses over 12,000 incentives and continues to grow every day we have
incentives from across the United States from federal state county and city level
government as well as utility incentives in our database you'll find everything
from tax incentives to grants rebates fee waivers free assessments bill
credits and many other incentives that promote a wide range of green measures
as you can see here things like economic development energy efficiency water
conservation renewables etc and and our information the way it's categorized in
our database reflects the way that commercial buildings are actually designed and upgraded which is in a
holistic manner rather than piece by piece and there is no other database that shares that approach so simply said
what incentive fine does is help to connect green projects to green incentives and we do this by providing a
detailed report that indicates all of the applicable incentives for your project and how they can impact your
cash flow and this works really well for pace projects as Frank mentioned who are
pursuing these same kinds of energy and water conserving measures just by the nature of a pace prod
so how does our platform actually connect green projects to grant incentives we do this by working
directly with anyone in the real estate industry so you could be a contractor a building owner a property manager and
bring your project to us and once you do we have a three-step process step one is
to do a free search on our website for the incentives in your area if you find
that you're in an area with a lot of incentives you may want to move forward and find the specific incentives applicable to your project you would
move on to step two which we call verify there is a flat fee of $1,000 for a
detailed verify report and this report is actually a curated list of incentives
that includes their dollar value specific to your project and everything you're going to need to know to capture
that incentive step three is actually an optional step it's our apply step where
you can have incent to find help you apply for any of the applicable incentives for your project and I wanted
to note that I've highlighted here that we feel confident that we can give you a 10x return on your investment in the
form of incentives you can capture for your project so we'll go over the 3-step
process and a little bit more detail just to make sure everyone understands how it works so to start the search
process you must register an account on our website which is in sanctifying comm and fill out a 12 questions every day
about the project the questions include basic things about a project that you would have such as what is the project
address how old is the building what kind of green measures are you pursuing such as energy efficiency water
conservation are you pursuing a program like lead and this allows our database
to look up the incentives that are specific to your project once the survey is completed you can log back into your
profile on our website and you'll see a list of all of the incentives based on the projects area that exists in our
database this again lets you know are you located in an area with robust
incentive offering step to our verify report this is to
verify the eligibility of your project with the incentives in our database based on the specific characteristics of
your project so to obtain this more detailed report you have to accept our terms and conditions on the website and
make your payment online you'll then receive our report electronically which provides a curated list of all the
incentives for your project including detailed information about the funding available pertinent information such as
is a specific contractor required to pursue this incentive as well as things
like the timeline and I will actually show you a more detailed example of
exactly what this looks like for and in just a little bit so again our third
step is optional called apply we'd be happy to help you apply for incentives for your project some people like to do
it themselves and we're totally fine with that but this provides you detailed information about the process within our
verify report each incentive you'll see has a fee listed in the report for us to
apply for the incentive for you and our apply dashboard integrated into our
website seamlessly integrates with our database to make the verifying make
verifying your eligibility and applying for the incentives very quick and easy
so I'm going to pass it back off to Frank who's gonna go over a little bit more on the pace side Thank You Megan I
appreciate that guys this is Frank I just want to talk a little bit about pace financing and give
you a quick overview of what pace looks like commercial pace financing at sea
pace is a property assessed clean energy commercial property assessed clean energy that is it's a voluntary
assessment financing which is secured by a parcel tax assessment and repaid via
property taxes now the key to that be you know as most people look at this okay saying we're going to increase
poverty taxes but what this is is a special assessment that basically impact ad valorem taxes
that does attach to the property as a special tax assessment there was 20 to
30-year fixed-rate financing the the term is predicated on two things the
first is each state has a different maximum term allowable in some states
it's 20 there are several states of the law 25 and of course there are some states that allow up to 30 year
financing or the improvements that are performed on the real estate the the
other aspect of address is that in most cases there is a an expected life of the improvements that are performed and and
sometimes the term will either be that maximum term or it will be the expected
useful life of those components additionally there are no loan agreements or covenants or guarantees
associated with this project as well as the assessment does transfer with the
property upon sale which is a very key benefit to pace financing pace financing
is used to finance qualified energy water and seismic or resiliency related
improvements meaning that if you're performing an upgrade to an escort building and and putting LED lighting
into that project or if you're utilizing low-flow fixtures for that project those
are the types of items along with exterior windows building envelope a multitude of different aspects and
improvements that can be pace eligible you can utilize pace financing for those components legislation has been passed
in 35 states and including the District of Columbia right now 24 states have
active programs and and what does that mean so pace financing because it is
assessment financing the state's actually have to opt in to or pass legislation allowing property owners to
utilize pace financing very similar to the jurisdictions like the cities and
the counties that can utilize this assessment financing to improve roads or sidewalks etc so it's an adjustment in
that legislation that allows pace to be available within that state secondly
it's a city and a county within that state would then have to opt into that program and right now there are 24 states with
active see place programs where deals have been funded utilizing the assessment financing and then of course
commercial pays rolling out nationwide and 2019 were expected to launch additional locations the city of New
York is expected to be active by the end of the summer early fall
Chicago is currently active right now so the deal has not been funded in Chicago
at this point but pace is available there Boston New Jersey and Pennsylvania both
states Pennsylvania has recently passed their legislation and it's looking like the end of the summer for the city of
Philadelphia in the county of Philadelphia to be active as well okay
I'll go back into a little bit of what qualifies for commercial pace financing you know commercial based financing can
be used for again a multitude of improvements but the other side to that equation is is that pace financing can
be performed with no money upfront because we can also roll in the hard and soft cost into the pace financing
component so so what does that mean so the different property types office retail industrial hospitality is a
really key sector right now as well multifamily manufacturing healthcare facilities and of course non-public
schools so if you have private schools you know first the unleveraged
case financing to improve their projects in their property and of course the eligible improvements we can look at
solar systems and energy storage HVAC systems lighting and building controls of course building envelope and windows
as I mentioned previously down to cool roof systems water conservation measures and of course as I mentioned before the
soft cost that are associated with the project and of course one of the key areas that a lot of people will overlook
is the irrigation you know and controls for you know specific properties and I
think that's going to be a key component going forward for pace financing but more importantly the one thing to
remember is this as technology advances and as as buildings become more
energy-efficient and more focused on water conservation there may be additional measures that to play that may be qualified for pace
financing so we would certainly be willing to engage in the discussion about any new technologies where we may
be a ball off by them
I'll go back again to talk about the statement of qualifications you obviously see faces growing very rapidly
we're looking at approximately a hundred percent per year growth and then of course we're coming up on about a
billion dollars of annual origination and and that's really a focus for clean fund right now we are a direct lender of
see place financing and we do originate our own deals so we're not a broker and
of course some of the advantages we have a team of professionals founded in 2009 I think Ron was one of the very first
CPAs focused companies and consists of a vertically integrated and experienced team of securitization experience and I
think that's going to be very important you know you want you want a company that has history of successful closings
and that was something that creme Fund definitely has a history of and of course execution
you know we funded 80 plus projects in eight states so far and a rapidly growing we fund has closed the most in
the industry in terms of total dollar amount on the commercial side for the securitization we have the the
industry's very first 144a securitization last year and of course that that's a big milestone if you will
for the pace industry we are a capital provider as I mentioned a direct lender not a broker so we don't have to go out
and look for capital and our backing is by one of the top ten construction lender private equity insurance and
asset management companies in the country so we have a lot of backing with regard to and the ability to fund
projects as small or I say as small typically our project range is somewhere
around a million dollars on the low side but we're not really tapped on the upper end of that spectrum so the the idea of
being we have the support and the capital available and of course preppers program expertise and that's going to be
key we have great governmental relationships and have worked in supporting the local administrators
around the country in developing their programs and and that's going to be key but as the development of those programs
allows us that unique knowledge of what we can and cannot accomplish with in the program and within the statute rules and
that's going to be key to funding of those programs and then of course lastly in front excels at
creative capital solutions and you know for complex financing transactions we want to be nimble and we want to be able
to support our clientele and the way that they need to be supported so flexibility is going to be a key in and
being you know that group that can support and provide financing for complex transactions
well what we go ahead and that move Megan into an example and I'll start out and I'll just talk a little bit about
project and this is a project that clean fun funded in the state of Texas it was the historic Butler brothers
building in Dallas Texas it was a historic building vacant downtown existing revelation whether it was a
twenty four million dollar commercial pace loan that was provided on that project and and of course the historic
excused aspect of it now well it's this old historic building today that is a dual branded Marriott brand hotel with
existing multifamily and some retail the overall size was over half a million
square feet as I mentioned it is in Dallas Texas and of course the scope of work on that project brings anywhere
from the energy-efficient aspects for HVAC writing installation roofing
glazing of course exterior waterproofing plaster and of course plenty and irrigation measures that were associated
with the improvement of that building
here are some pictures of the project of course the exterior of the building it's
important to also recognize that this project was the winner of the sustainability Leadership Award for the
black white and silver and it's an it was a great honor and and more importantly this project really really
turned out to be a great project to really kind of revitalize and provide some opportunities in downtown Dallas
for some growth
what you see here is that an example of a capital stat comparison and this is a good representation of not only this
project of other projects where pace financing has been able to come in and
become a part of that that capital stack and and what you're going to see is that the fort pace on the left where the
senior debt which was ev5 was at six and a quarter percent and of course on the right after pace that remain the same as
did the amount of senior debt you've also got roughly 3% at 3% the historic
tax credits of roughly twenty two million dollars and of course that remained the same now where it gets
interesting see he is look at amount of capital that was able to be provided and
he's got the mezzanine loan at twenty three point nine million and you've got the pace financing at twenty three point
nine with a significant difference in the interest rate the overall 15 percent Maslin rate versus the six point one
three percent pace interest rate made a significant impact you see the equity
remain the same as well and what's really key here is the weighted average cost of capital came down almost two
full percentage points in this process and that's very key for some developers
you know as we've seen in that in the past you know six to twelve months you know senior lenders are lending less and
less and so the viability of these projects can sometimes be predicated on
the additional or alternative financing measures between mezzanine or pref equity and those can be a very large
competitor in that arena to make these projects even more viable okay great
thanks Frank so for this for this project using incentive finds database
our team identified almost $500,000 and incentive incentives that they could take advantage of there were a variety
of incentives including utility city state and federal and actually what you
can see on your screen here is what our verify report actually looks like this
is actually a screen capture from our website and you can notice this is
actually a summary table from that reap and the information that you would be
provided on on your project as well but it gives you everything from the type of incentive so it gives you the incentive
name and then the type so you can see is it a rebate or a tax incentive or grant is it related to different aspects of
your scope like energy efficiency water conservation or renewables and then it gives you a sense of the range of dollar
valid value available for that incentive
this is just a second page list of the incentives so we identified a total of
18 incentives for this project and reviewed the report to determine which
made sense to apply for and I'll go into that in just a second this report is actually delivered
similar to the search results on your profile it exists in an HTML format that
can be shared with project teams for up to two years we understand that sometimes projects go on hold or take
longer they get off the ground than expected so we make sure that you have access to the most up-to-date incentive
information that applies to your project so if an incentive goes away or funding
is depleted you get up-to-date information information about those specific incentives to your project so I
mentioned it's more detailed information on the incentives so within your verify
report you'll get this level of information on each and every incentive that's listed in that report so you can
see this is just an example of one of the retail energy providers incentive program the first column contains a link
to the actual program the second includes the eligible scope so what what
type of energy efficiency measure would apply for this we give you a sense of
the minimum and maximum funding provided by this specific incentive and then the
estimated time to apply if there's anything you need to know like is there a preferred contractor is an audit
required this is particularly important for renovation projects where oftentimes
you'll need the organization come out and actually inspect what was included in the
building before it gets renovated and then next steps on how to actually capture the incentive you know it gives
you information on what kind of website you have to go to how do you schedule an assessment if that's required and then
finally for our PI services if you don't want to go through those next steps and you'd like us to do it for you
we include a cost to apply and what I wanted to make sure to mention here that
we do not take any of the money upfront
for that essentially we would help you apply for the incentive and at the end when you actually receive the incentive
then we take a percentage of that incentive or rebate so nothing is due to
us upfront and so for the apply services
looking at the incentives that this project was available for just to give you a sense of what they actually could
go after and pursue in their timeline you can see that many of the incentives
that were identified were received in here one of the project essentially after the install took place and then
information about how much funding was expected to be provided so just as an example the first one the utility rebate
was for an energy efficiency measure that could be captured and year one after the install and the estimated
funding was one hundred and twenty four thousand dollars after the installation
as a total for for this project the rebates came to three hundred forty
seven thousand dollars and the tax incentives came to one hundred two thousand dollars for a total of four
hundred forty nine thousand dollars in incentives for this project and again for our PI services we provide a white
glove service through our apply dashboard on our website it tracks everything from the estimate all the way
to the actual incentive that will be received for their project and we provide clear communication along the
way with updates on where we are in the process to make sure that you can then contract your incentive Frank I just
wanted to see if there's anything you wanted to add here about how these numbers play into your
cash flow yeah absolutely and I
appreciate that Megan you know one of the key components to pace financing oftentimes as identifying savings to
investment ratios where the number of states you know as we talked about 35 states 25 active programs but a number
of the states have a savings to investment ratio that's required to be proved that whether your savings to cost
is greater than 1 mean essentially your pace financing would be more than covered annually that pace assessment
will be covered by the actual savings associated with the project and this type of savings these rebates and of
course these tax incentives can typically be rolled into the the overall
savings number to ensure that that savings to investment ratio is achieved and that 101 as a key qualifier within
those states that's the probably one of the most important factors that we face is being able to prove up that savings
to investment ratio so the incentive finds program and provide services and
of course the the rebates and tax savings they can identify go a long way to supporting clean fund and the effort
to utilize pace financing
great thanks you want to take it away for the second case study as well
absolutely you know example two is a current project for me and it's a
project that is considering pace financing right now and I think it's a very great opportunity to look at from
the beginning when you're looking at developing a project for going in and doing the renovation of an existing
building how important is it to find and the services that you provide can be to
qualifying pace financing on the project so the the loosely Mayer building in Los
Angeles it's an existing building that is looking at doing a renovation of about four million dollars I'm in this
commercial mixed use about thirty five thousand square feet and you know the scope of work will be energy efficiency
renewables as well as potentially some seismic upgrade it as you can see this
is Ana stork building and so when focused on the improvements to that real
estate identifying those measures internally to which there will probably be a significant number that our pace
eligible is going to be the most key aspect of this well again i'm the the incentive i'm process on this is going
to identify those those tax rebates and tax incentives that that would be
available that may help qualify this project for pace financing and make it a more friendly environment for the
developer maybe yeah so we actually ran our report on this project just to see
what kind of incentives we might be able to get for the owner and so we
identified 19 incentives for this project since it is in California there happen to be a lot more utility programs
available as you'll see on the screen one thing I wanted to note here is that you can see in the columns on for the
cost applicable or the savings applicable to these incentives a lot of
them say other and I just wanted to clarify that the reason for that is many of these programs are based on the kWh
savings for specific measures to a project and so they can be automatically calculated without getting further
details project and so once we have that information about a project and what
actually you're installing is that LEDs are you doing a whole building retrofit
of energy efficiency measures you can get a better sense of what that actual dollar amount would be for your project
so again these are just more incentives we identified I wanted to point out that several of these especially some of the
federal ones the tax related incentives we do provide information on our verify
report on experts across the country who can help you obtain these incentives so we have an opportunity zone expert and
people who work solely on the federal government tax deductions and credits who we can refer you to to help you
capture these incentives so again you know just looking at what we thought
this project might be able to actually apply for we came up with about a hundred and forty eight thousand dollars
in rebates this is this is a smaller project than the one we looked at before so again it's a variety of utility
rebates and bill credits and as well as gas and water conservation measures this
project we assumed on the Renewable side that the renewables contractor was going
after some of those rebates that were specific to solar but they certainly do
exist for this project hey Meghan just as assigned here you know on this type
of project I mean it's a smaller you know project for pace financing call it a four million dollar renovation you
know what so what you're saying is is if this were call it a 40 million dollar got rehab of the building you know
similar to kind of a gut rehab in Dallas that the amount of rebates and tax dollars that are potential for savings
would likely increase yes that's right we assumed that because this is a
smaller building and the smaller loan amount essentially you know a smaller
scope that the incentives we're not to the same scale as for instance the
Dallas project that we looked at terrific thank you sure and I think
that's on our side Frank feel free to add anything and if not we'll get into
the QA I'm gonna check to see what kind of questions we have so just give me a
second okay I think I'll start here so
one of the questions we had was let's see who actually pays for the verify
report if you go through with that process that's a consent to find and
actually I guess I can answer that one because that one does come from me so the verifier report is typically paid by
usually from our side if it's not coming through clean fund it's paid by you know typically the owner whoever comes to our
database but I would say when we're working with clean fund it comes from whoever is taking out the pace loan
which I guess is typically the owner and Frank feel free to correct me but the
cost of the report can actually be rolled into the C pace loan because it's considered an eligible cost for pace so
you can actually purchase a verify report and then include it as part of your C baseline yeah I'm Megan this is
Frank and just to confirm that you know we have looked at a couple of projects with incentive find in Texas and and of
course the administrators of the program in Texas had indicated that this would be a soft cost that is eligible to be
rolled into the pace financing so I just wanted to make sure to point that out that in the state of Texas specifically
it can definitely be rolled in and I would certainly identify this as one of those soft costs that we spoke about
earlier whether you know it could potentially be rolled into the pace financing through that process okay
great do you want to take one of the next questions yeah absolutely and I think
one of the questions that I see here is is how if my project is right for incentives and I think that's probably a great
question for you you know how would someone you know know whether or not that you know their project would
qualify for these incentives or maybe more importantly should they is that something that incentive fine should be
looked at as being the expertise in that field yeah it's interesting we get that question a lot but we find that most
projects are eligible for incentives I think we've literally had one case
where we found that the project just you know couldn't qualify and it was based
on the size of their scope and their location so most projects we say come to
us if you're looking for an incentive at any time one thing I would say to caveat
there is certainly for renovations you'll capture more if you if you have early on in the process
like I said oftentimes the utility rebates they make sure that you actually they can actually see what was in the
building prior to give you an assessment of what their incentive might be so earlier is better but there's usually
still an opportunity and as I mentioned before we feel pretty confident that we
can find incentives in the amount of ten ten times the cost of our report that thousand dollar report or we won't move
forward with the project with you hey Megan in that instance you know if you know once somebody identifies and comes
to you and you say yes this project has some incentives you know what happens after the verify report is purchased and
and who should they be touching base with I mean clean fund and simplifying you know there's a partnership we my
perspective would be incentive fine can you maybe talk to that a little bit yeah exactly so once you once you go ahead
and indicate online that you want to purchase the verify report you'll get an email from us right away saying let's
schedule call to talk about your project we will actually have a one-on-one call just to get a little bit more details
make sure that there's nothing else specific about your project that we need to know and then the actual getting the
the verify report in your hands usually takes up to two weeks it depends on the location
but up to two weeks later you'll get a link to that report via email and then at that point we'll schedule another
call to go through all of the incentives to make sure that you and your team if you decide to include them on that
understand each of the incentives how to apply for them and any other specific information you need to know
hey and Megan misses strike again in in that process what if the scope changes
you know what if they're you know when they apply for the incentives and they say okay well there really are a lot of incentives here you know with the scope
changes what is the typical process there yeah you can certainly come back to us the nice thing about our
partnership with the fund is the way that the reports are completed it
essentially covers the entire scope of the project so if you originally think okay we're just going to do energy
efficiency and you know we complete your verify report based on that and then you
have you come back you know you're you're further along in your project you realize oh we're gonna do some water
conservation measures because they just make sense you know we can get some great payback on them we can certainly
update your report and add those incentives for you we definitely have that flexibility that's terrific and I
and I think the last piece here I think it's the last one I see and and I think you've already answered this question in
the presentation it says doesn't simplifying actually help me apply for the incentives and and I think that you
mentioned yes and I think that's a probably a great way for at least in terms of answers you know to reiterate
that you know you guys are really you know soup to nuts if you will it's from the beginning to the end of the process
with incentives you can really help these developers and in every way possible exactly yeah I mentioned we have sort of
a white glove service for the apply for the incentives you know sometimes people
like doing it themselves but there's a lot of people out there that just say take this off my plate you know we want the money
we certainly want to move forward with the incentives but we just don't have the time to go through the process to
you know give all the information with to the utility and so we can definitely do that for any of the incentives
providing their verify report that's terrific that's terrific well wonderful things
for that yeah and I don't see anything else um I'll pause for just a minute just in
case someone pops back up but I just wanted to say thank you so much everyone for joining
I appreciate that everyone could be here today especially with our slight hiccup with the technology problem I will take
the blame for that I'm definitely not a tech guru over here so thanks for
bearing with me and thanks again Frank for being here today it's good to be able to share our
partnership with clean fund with all the participants well maybe meet the the feeling is
mutual and clean fund is very happy to be partnering with incent to find on this and look forward to many
opportunity that he's super buy those rebates and the tax incentives to the
folks that we're working with on pace financing and of course supporting your clients in their research and
identifying as to whether pace is an option for them on their projects as well so thank you great thanks so much
and thanks everyone