Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance
At a Glance
Industry
Government/Public Administration
Project Type
Financial Evaluation and Planning
Year
2013
Location
Boston, MA
Summary
Anne-Flore Elard worked with DCAMM to create an innovative fund to encourage energy efficiency projects across the state.
Goals
Anne-Flore Elard spent her summer as an EDF Climate Corps fellow for the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), a division that leads the Accelerated Energy Program (AEP) launched in 2011 with a goal of at least a 25% reduction in energy use across over 700 state sites. With the short-term goal of addressing currently under-served projects among the selected energy efficiency projects for AEP and the long-term goal of driving and sustaining demand for energy efficiency projects at state facilities over time, DCAMM asked Anne to develop a financing solution, inspired from green revolving loan funds, to provide a sustainable and affordable capital for small and medium energy efficiency projects at state facilities.
Solutions
Named the Commonwealth Facility Fund for Energy Efficiency (CoFFEE), this project is an innovative revolving loan fund that consists in providing loans to state agencies for small to medium scale energy efficiency projects, to be repaid through the resulting savings. The projects selected through the CoFFEE could help cut over 27 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year and avoid approximately 4,700 metric tons of carbon emissions, if implemented. The savings generated through the efficiency projects financed through CoFFEE would be repaid into the fund on a rolling basis and then reinvested in new energy efficiency projects, creating a sustainable, long-term and high-impact financing mechanism. Not only would the CoFFEE help maximize economic and environmental benefits at the state facilities but it would also propose, thanks to its innovative approach in which debt servicing is repaid through savings, an affordable and sustainable source of energy efficiency funding as it replenishes itself over time.
Potential Impact
All the projects she identified, in aggregate, could save DCAMM and the State facilities approximately $700,000 over three years in debt servicing and realize more than $1 million of discounted energy savings over the same period of time.