When President Obama announced his $4 billion initiative to finance energy efficiency programs at the White House on Friday, a number of Bay Area allies were, literally, right behind him.
There were senior executives from San Francisco's Metrus Energy, which committed $75 million of private capital to the initiative, and from Sunnyvale's Serious Energy and Santa Rosa's Ygrene Energy Fund, both contributing $100 million.
They're among the 60 private companies and other entities "stepping up," in Obama's words, in an effort to retrofit public and commercial buildings nationwide, pitching in approximately half of the $4 billion needed. The rest of the funding for the "Better Buildings Challenge" will come from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Other Bay Area partners include San Francisco's Shorenstein Properties, which has been instituting a number of energy-saving programs across its real estate portfolio, and Oakland's Renewable Funding, which manages San Francisco's $100 million program to retrofit older commercial buildings.
"It's an effort to bring together the private sector to jump-start the whole energy efficiency sector," said the firm's president, Francisco DeVries, who was also present at the White House launch.
Obama said the aim of the initiative is to increase energy efficiency in commercial and public buildings by 20 percent by 2020 - the retrofits are projected to save U.S. businesses $40 billion in energy costs while creating 50,000 jobs.
With no new legislation needed, and no new taxpayer money, "it's the nearest thing we've got to a free lunch in a tough economy," remarked former President Bill Clinton, who helped round up corporate participants.
Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who has had his differences with the White House, agreed. "This is a surefire way to create jobs and make our nation's buildings more energy efficient," he said in a statement.
In September, Ygrene Energy Fund said it was investing $650 million to finance commercial building retrofits nationwide, beginning with Sacramento and Miami-Dade County.
Metrus Energy, which provides 100 percent financing for private companies' energy efficiency projects, and gets paid back from the savings realized, counts the German company Siemens and the British company BAE Systems among its clients.
Metrus CEO Bob Hinkle, who was at the White House on Friday, says he is greatly encouraged by the initiative.
"Energy efficiency is finally getting the prominence and attention that it deserves," he said. "In terms of importance, it's now on a par with energy supply."
At least, hopefully, getting there.
Sign of the times: From headquarters of major metropolitan newspaper to an international call center.
Such is the destiny of the Oakland Tribune Tower, the 21-story, 85,000-square-foot historic building, which fell into receivership and has just been sold for the low-low price of $8 million to a company called CallSocket.
The sale will result in the creation of 2,300 jobs in Oakland over the next three years, with CallSocket taking up half of the building and hiring 300 people for its operations there, and other tenants moving in, according to Bluett & Associates, the Sacramento real estate firm that handled the transaction.
No comments:
Post a Comment