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Board advances Green Finance SF PACE resolutions after staff shifts approach following court ruling
Summary
Supervisors advanced a package to restart Green Finance SF (residential PACE) by opting into existing JPA PACE programs after a San Diego court ruling altered direct‑contracting options; staff said the approach will enable quick rollout, consumer choice and workforce components.
The Budget & Finance Committee on Dec. 3 advanced a set of items to restart Green Finance SF, a residential Property‑Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program intended to finance energy efficiency, renewable energy and water‑efficiency upgrades for one‑ to four‑unit homes.
Chair Mark Farrell said he and Mayor Ed Lee cosponsored two resolutions to restart the program and described its goals: enabling homeowners to fund upgrades with competitive interest rates, creating local clean‑energy jobs and leveraging workforce development. Farrell thanked staff and partners for year‑long work to design a program.
Rich Chen, program manager at the Department of the Environment, told the committee staff issued an RFP in early 2014 and received three proposals. He said a September San Diego Court of Appeal decision compelled staff to change course from direct contracting to joining existing joint powers authorities (JPA) that operate regional PACE programs or using AB 811 approaches; the JPA route, Chen said, was the quickest way to bring residential PACE to San Francisco with lower city administrative costs and open program data for monitoring.
Chen described staff plans to work with program administrators on marketing, communications, contractor coordination and an integrated workforce development component, and said regional aggregation through JPAs could lower borrowing costs for property owners. Supervisors asked whether PACE would conflict with the city’s CleanPowerSF community choice aggregation study; staff and the mayor’s office said PACE does not preclude a CCA and could operate in parallel.
The committee opened public comment (one off‑topic commenter) and then approved items 9–11 and technical amendments without objection, allowing the city to consent to inclusion in statewide/other JPA PACE programs and to authorize related agreements. Supervisors said the program could be up and running in early spring.
Key details: Staff reported three proposers to the RFP; the shift in delivery was driven by a San Diego appellate decision; program aims to target 1–4 unit residential properties and include workforce development and public reporting of program data.
Quote: "I don't foresee any reason to believe that a Clean Power SF program would conflict in any direct way with what we're trying to do with the PACE program," Rich Chen said.
Next steps: Staff will finalize JPA participation paperwork and coordinate program marketing and implementation so that Green Finance SF can launch in early spring.
