Author Archives: Jonathan Cloud

America’s Mayors Strongly Support Clean Energy

Posted on Wednesday, 29 January, 2014 | Leave a comment

USMayorsReportCoversmA new report, based on a survey of 288 cities of 30,000+ across the country, shows that America’s Mayors strongly support expanding energy efficiency and renewables in their communities.

Some key findings:

  • Many mayors anticipate further growth in the deployment of new energy technologies in cities. Two-thirds (67%) of the 288 cities participating in this survey expect the use of new energy technologies to increase over the next five years, with more than one in five cities (21%) in this survey expecting the increase to be “significant.”
  • Nearly a quarter of Mayors assigned a priority to retrofitting commercial/industrial buildings (after improving municipal buildings, providing energy audits, and improving energy-related building codes)

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Posted in Energy, NJPACE

PACE Amending Legislation Passes in New Jersey

Posted on Friday, 17 January, 2014 | Leave a comment

Trenton, N.J., Monday, January 13, 2014: At the very last moment, the NJ State Senate took up and passed Assembly Bill 3898 (an identical version of S2632, introduced by Senator Bob Smith at the beginning of 2013). In an associated statement, the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee notes that “this bill provides a mechanism for the financing, by municipalities, of water conservation, storm shelter construction, and flood and hurricane resistance projects, and expands the “clean energy special assessment,” established in current law pursuant to P.L.2011, c.187 (N.J.S.A.40:56-1.4 et al.), into the “clean energy and storm resistance special assessment.”

The bill now heads to the Governor’s office for approval.

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Posted in Energy, Hurricane Sandy, New Jersey, News, NJ Shore, NJPACE

Gov. Florio Cites NJPACE in Year-End NJSpotlight Article

Posted on Friday, 27 December, 2013 | Leave a comment

In an article highlighted on NJSpotlight as part of an end-of-the-year series of reflections by former NJ governors, Governor Jim Florio writes:

A relatively new program — PACE, which stands for “Property Assessed Clean Energy” — has taken hold in places like Connecticut, California, and Florida and is literally funding thousands of necessary energy efficiency and green energy projects with private capital. And a project in Livingston, New Jersey, is now in its early stages.

The essence of a PACE program is its use of a municipal special property tax assessment to attach the financing to the property, not the owner. This assessment mechanism uses a municipal-government power, but does not cost the municipality a dime. Typically, these projects more than pay for themselves through energy savings, and they provide greater self-sufficiency and reliability, as well as more comfortable and more resilient buildings.

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Posted in Energy, New Jersey, News, NJPACE

1st Annual Year-End Appeal

Posted on Thursday, 26 December, 2013 | Leave a comment

Now that we have our 501c3 designation, we’re asking for your financial support. We have just a couple of days for you to make a tax-free contribution this year, so we’d like to suggest that you do so as a way of expressing your faith, your commitment, and your support of our mission.

We’re not just about a good idea whose time has come. We’re about making it a reality here in New Jersey, and in doing so transform our built environment. And this is the ideal place to do it — an older northeastern state, with many declining cities and older suburbs, and enormous opportunities for revitalization. So we’ve put more an enormous effort over the past year into developing a state-wide NJPACE program, and bringing PACE to a number of specific New Jersey communities in 2014.

But we can’t do this alone. We created the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions to be the nonprofit umbrella for the education, the development of tools and alliances, and the administration of this program, so that the industry, the property owners, the lenders, and the municipalities could take advantage of the benefits that NJPACE offers them. Our goal is to raise $350,000 in order to create this opportunity for our state, as other groups are doing elsewhere in the country.
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Posted in Contribute, CRCS, Nonprofit Activities

CRCS / New Jersey PACE Receives 501c3 Designation

Posted on Thursday, 5 December, 2013 | 1 comment

The IRS has just issued its letter approving our request for 501c3 tax exemption, which now makes it possible for us to accept (and issue receipts for) tax-deductible donations, apply for foundation grants, and conduct other fundraising activities. CRCS, the parent organization for the nonprofit New Jersey PACE program, is now ready to undertake its first administrative and educational initiatives on behalf of municipalities in New Jersey. (For more details on NJPACE, please visit www.NewJerseyPACE.org.)

Many organizations may take this approval for granted, but since we worked pretty hard to get it we do not. The process of obtaining the IRS approval included an intensive discussion of our goals and methods of operation. Here’s part of what we told them, by way of a description of our mission and purposes.

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Posted in CRCS, New Jersey, Nonprofit Activities

CRCS Develops New Jersey PACE Program

Posted on Monday, 3 June, 2013 | 1 comment

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing is a mechanism that allows energy efficiency and renewable energy projects to be financed at reasonable rates. PACE works by attaching a special assessment to the property, not a liability to the owner. The funding is then repaid over the life of the installed equipment, anywhere from 5 – 20 years. Using a property tax assessment has many benefits:

  • The senior position allows lenders to offer low interest rates because the property is collateral, not the installed equipment.
  • Energy efficiency upgrades and renewable energy installations have been hindered by high up-front costs. PACE financing spreads the cost over the useful life of the equipment, which provides savings that exceed cost on an annual basis.
  • The obligation is attached to the property, not the owner, making it easy to invest in energy projects even if the owner plans on selling the property.

PACE is clearly a practical example of a “regenerative community solution”: it creates jobs, energy efficiency, and sustainable improvements to property, especially the enormous amount of commercial and industrial property now vacant or underutilized in New Jersey. We’ve chosen to focus our efforts on C&I properties, but we anticipate that residential PACE will be reinstated federally as well. (For an explanation of the issues with Residential PACE, see “National groups submit more than 38000 comments on residential-pace,” at our NJ PACE  web site, www.NJPACE.net.)

CRCS has devised and developed the NJ PACE program as a statewide public-private-nonprofit initiative. The program requires municipal approval, along with the participation of private lenders, energy contractors, and property owners. The Center views it as an integral part of its mission to educate, advocate, and implement this kind of program, which once launched will be managed by a separate company, NJ PACE, LLC (with 20% of profits returned to the nonprofit entity).

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Posted in CRCS, New Jersey, NJPACE

Alternative Currency Papers Published

Posted on Sunday, 2 June, 2013 | Leave a comment

There is increasing awareness of and interest in the role of complementary currencies in local communities and around the world. In Deep Economy (2007), Bill McKibben notes, “If you really want to make a local economy soar, the most important step might be to create a local currency.”[1] More than 4000 complementary currencies are in use around the world; as the name implies, their role is to supplement traditional currencies, not replace them. In a series of books, the Belgian economist and civil engineer Bernard Lietaer has studied and reported on many of these currencies and demonstrated their usefulness in a variety of contexts.[2] While nowhere near as involved in this area of research, the authors are responsible for the original concept and successful demonstration of a commercial credit exchange, in Ottawa, Canada, in the late 1980s and early 1990s.[3] The present proposal grows out of this experience as well as drawing on the work of Lietaer and others, and is further explained in a companion piece called “A New Currency?” available here.

CRCS has published two papers relating to alternative or complementary currencies, which can be downloaded below.

ANewCurrency2Jun2013

GlobalCreditExchange2Jun2013

[1] Bill McKibben: Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (2007), p. 162

[2] Lietaer, who many consider the “father” of the single European currency, has been involved in the development of alternative currencies for more than forty years. He is the author or co-author of  The Future of Money: Beyond Greed and Scarcity (2001), New Money for a New World (2011), and Money & Sustainability: the missing link (2012), a publication of the Club of Rome.

[3] Called Credex, the exchange involved more than 100 companies and operated successful as a pilot project during 1990-91.

 

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Posted in Money, Sustainability

Greystone Proposal

Posted on Thursday, 30 May, 2013 | 1 comment

Along with a number of other colleagues we submitted a proposal to the State to redevelop the historic Greystone Psychiatric Hospital site in Parsippany. Here is our proposal as submitted:
Greystonevillage5-30-13final.pdf

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Posted in CRCS

Developing Regenerative Community Solutions

Posted on Saturday, 18 May, 2013 | Leave a comment

When we talk about regenerative community solutions, what we’re talking about are the outcomes of a significant transformation in the way we relate to the world — such that rather than degrading the regenerative capacity of nature, our enterprises naturally seek to enhance it. We can call such companies “social enterprises,” though in reality all companies should recognize that they are social enterprises, and start living up to their regenerative potential. As Harvard economist Michael Porter has argued, every company can and should create social value, because it’s good for business. And when enterprises are creating social value, it’s also good for communities.

Every community has a unique character, but it also shares some basic needs with every other human community: including the need to have a vision, mission, and purpose that matches the unique character of the place. Communities are living ecosystems. They may be thriving or they may be struggling, and this seriously impacts the health of their constituents. Repairing the damage that we have caused to certain communities — including many older urban communities — has proven a great deal more difficult to remedy than merely providing them with a more sustainable and resilient infrastructure, but the latter would clearly help, and be worthy of investment.

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Posted in CRCS, Permaculture, Sustainability

We Invite Your Contributions and Offers in Support of Our Work at the NJ Shore

Posted on Tuesday, 12 February, 2013 | Leave a comment

We created the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions (CRCS) in order to support our nonprofit mission of community education and engagement that is essential for co-creating a more sustainable future. We are applying for 501c3 status, which if granted will be retroactive to our founding on January 9, 2013.

We welcome both monetary and in-kind contributions to this effort.

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Posted in CRCS, NJ Shore, Sustainability