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hi everyone welcome to our webinar today this webinar is a presentation of the Clean Energy States alliance also known as sisa and today we are presenting two winning programs from Connecticut and Oregon these programs for winners of our state leadership and clean energy awards and our host for this webinar will be Val story val is a project director here at sisa and we have guest speakers with us from Connecticut and Oregon to present on their programs before I pass it over to them I'd like to go over a few quick housekeeping notes all of our participants for this webinar are in listen-only mode you have a couple of options to join the audio portion of this webinar you can either call in using your telephone or you can connect you to using your computer mic and speakers a very important note we ask that you please submit your questions as you think of them throughout the webinar by typing them into the question box on your webinar console and hitting send we will be doing both presentations and immediately following that presentation we'll do a Q&A with the audience so the best way to make sure that we get your question is to type it in when you think of it final note this webinar is being recorded you will find a recording of this webinar as well as all of our previous webinars on our website at CC org backslash webinars and with that I would like to pass it over to our host for this webinar eval story great thank you Sam and Sam mentioned welcome we're pleased to present to you the second in our webinar series on winners of the state leadership in clean energy it's a sisa project known around here as the slice program the slice awards are given out by annually by the clean energy States Alliance a nonprofit organization that works with its members to address renewable energy policy finance and innovation as you can see on the screen our membership consists of state clean energy funds and state agencies from around the country who through sisa share information and collaborate to accelerate renewable energy deployment today's webinar is brought to you by sisa and consists of a Connecticut Green Bank program and an Energy Trust of Oregon program next slide the slice awards recognize and celebrate state and municipal programs or projects that demonstrate leadership innovation and effectiveness in advancing renewable energy winners are chosen by an independent panel of judges who also select the programs based on their replicability and impact on transforming clean energy markets in the US you can read more about the slice awards that we gave out this year in a new report which is available at the URL on the screen next slide so today's presentations include energy trust of Oregon's innovative irrigation modernization program this program which was developed in partnership with the farmers Conservation Alliance replaces open canals with modern irrigation systems saving water and reducing energy needs and creating opportunities for new hydro projects we'll have two speakers for this presentation and then it will be followed by a presentation by the Connecticut Green Bank on its solar lease program which offers innovative finance solutions to expand solar for commercial customers municipalities and nonprofits the program has been further expanded by pairing the Connecticut C pace financing with Power Purchase Agreements so for guest speakers today I'll introduce them before their presentations and the Sam mentioned we will do QA after each presentation so first up is the energy trust of Oregon and the farmers conservation alliance let me introduce Jed and Stacy Jurgensen has been at the Energy Trust of Oregon for eight years where he serves as each iou's non solar renewable energy on ETO is non solar renewable energy program team he has helped to foster the creation of the irrigation modern station program enabling infrastructure upgrades that achieve significant renewable energy energy efficiency agricultural agricultural water and environmental and economic benefits before coming to his senses jed spent five years managing the campaign's of local state and federal political candidates Stacy Lowry is the program manager for the irrigation modernization program for the farmers conservation alliance she has extensive experience in management developing business systems communication and finance her ability to build and foster positive relationships through collaboration has proven to drive successful results and long-term partnerships Jed and Stacy you are on Thank You Val thank you Sam hi everyone I am Jed organ s'en with energy trust energy Trust is a 501c3 nonprofit we're under contract with the Oregon Public Utility Commission and we get our funding from two of Oregon investor owned electric utilities and three natural gas companies we give out incentives that looked a lot like grants to support energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that benefit the ratepayers of those utilities and as Val mentioned I'm here with Stacy Lowry from farmers Conservation Alliance hi I'm Stacy with FCA FCA is also a non-profit we work in pursuit of water management solutions that benefit both agriculture and the environment FCA began in 2005 when the farmers Irrigation District of Hood River organ license a farmer screen it's a device that keeps fish and debris out of irrigation water it was licensed to us under the condition that we take the farmers spring to market address institutional barriers to fish screens and invest profits into other technologies and solutions that benefit both the environment and agriculture along the way we realized the truest and highest measure of mutual benefit would be to achieve agriculture resiliency so what we're going to talk about today program that we call irrigation modernization and it's not about outfitting your lawn with bluetooth-enabled sprinkler head though that would be very fun and interesting probably it's about how our food gets produced and the intersections between water energy and the environment around irrigated agriculture in Oregon in Oregon and across the western United States this is also a story about coordination and working with many stakeholders on big projects that have big challenges and equally large opportunities we're going to tell the story of irrigation modernization through the viewpoint of this guy this is Mark thalurker he's the manager of the three sisters irrigation district irrigation districts are municipal type entities that deliver water to farms and ranches how they deliver that water is at the center of irrigation modernization so let's take a look at three sisters irrigation district three sisters is located in Central Oregon outside the town of sisters not far from the city of Bend much of the area looks something like this pretty beautiful so those of you not for those of you that are unfamiliar with Oregon which has a reputation for being a really wet green place most of organ is actually high desert and all of our agriculture even the stuff that's in the green part of the state is irrigated because our summers are very dry like most of irrigation districts and organ Three Sisters gets their water from a stream why choose Creek a tributary of the Deschutes River the Deschutes is one of Oregon's major rivers and a mecca for fly fisherman from across the world thanks to its population of native red bound to out and steelhead three sisters has been taking water from wide-toothed Creek during the irrigation season which is April through September since they were incorporated in 1891 Mark's district is on the small side it delivers water to 200 farms covering about 7,500 acres of land in the area that averages out to farms around 40 acres inside the water three sisters was moved through open earthen canals the district's canals and their other water delivery infrastructure were built by hand and with simple machines back in the 1890s it took about 16 years to dig the main canal and even a small district has a lot of canals three sisters had about 63 miles of them water from white cheese Creek was diverted into the main canal by a small dam the dam had gates on it doors that open up and down essentially that allowed more or less water to pass into the canal depending on the irrigation need the water also passed through fish and debris screens to keep the water supply clean for the farmers the water went down the main canal which split off into smaller lateral canals each of those splits had another hand-operated gate to regulate flow you can think about it like the blood in our arteries and capillaries the main canal is like an artery the lateral canals are more like capillaries the water and the laterals is what goes past farms for delivery just like the capillaries deliver blood to ourselves so what you're seeing in these photos up at the top right is the creation of a large main canal in Central Oregon the other photos are of lateral canal you can also see a gate at the bottom right and a device called a list at the top left that delivers water to a farm in the early days farms were typically flood irrigated over time many farms moved to pressurized water delivery systems pumping out of the canal and sending water to different kinds of sprinklers like this big gun as it's called at the top left or a wheel line at the bottom the way three sisters was built and how it looked and operated is representative of many many irrigation water delivery systems most were dug by hand and engineered so that gravity did the work of moving the water they got the job done of delivering water to farms but like many things in life they aren't perfect water and open canals is subject to seepage and evaporation and is amazing because up to 20 to 50 percent of the water in a canal never makes it to the farm in a first-in first place all those manual gates like the photo at the bottom rate require operation and maintenance as do the canals themselves fish and debris screens require cleaning and maintenance to sometimes multiple times per day you can see an old fish screen at the top right it was removed from service at many irrigation districts much of that old infrastructure is still in use but it's starting to show its age in addition plants and aquatic weeds can be an issue in Canal the top left photo shows what three sisters main canal typically looked like at the beginning of the irrigation season full of weeds and debris people dumped things in canals - I've heard stories of shopping carts and other stuff in the winter trees falling on canals due to heavy snows can weaken their walls this sometimes leads to what's called a blowout like the photo at the bottom left the canal rupture that can cause flooding and erosion things aren't perfect for the environment either that three sisters their diversion dam pictured here prevented fish from going up and down stream the stream channel itself near the dam had been straightened to make the dam function as well as possible but that changed how sediment moved in the creek and for about a hundred years the district dried up why she's Creek in the late summer that's how things went most of the time in the summer of 1977 the population of sisters organ was less than seven hundred people many of whom were farmers a drought devastated the snowpack in the West leaving almost no water and why choose Creek what little water was flowing in the creek was diverted to the irrigation district but it was enough to fulfill only about 10% of the expected water for farmers a real economic disaster for a farming community the creek ran dry through the city of sisters for even longer than usual that drought as it turned out with a harbinger of things to come after multiple drought years in the early 1990s and increasing tensions around the environmental challenges related to drying up the creek three sisters farmers realized that conservation might the key to avoiding future conflict as well as delivering more water with farmers taking the water out of the canal and put it in a pipe eliminates the losses from seepage and evaporation 50 percent of the water that three sisters had in its canals was seeping into the ground or evaporating put in the water and a pipe changed everything because the conserved water enabled three sisters to leave water in stream for fish and make more reliable deliveries to farmers even under tougher climate conditions the district started a smaller project to prove a viability of their piping model or push to become more aggressive and proactive due to pressure from federal agencies and a ruling protecting habitat for salmon and steelhead three sisters could no longer allow why choose Creek to dry up so Mark Seliger and his board made up of farmers from the district decided to modernize their system it's taken eighteen years of blood sweat and tears not to mention a lot of money both theirs and other people's but they've accomplished a lot they've pipe 50 of 63 miles of open canals eliminating seepage and evaporation and increasing water delivery to farms by 25 percent they've saved over 24 cubic feet per second of water that's a common irrigation district way of quantifying water flow that water stays in the creek it equates to more than ten thousand gallons per minute enough to fill Olympic sized swimming pool each hour during the irrigation season more flow in the stream reduces water temperature improving conditions for steelhead trout and other native species by putting the water in a pipe it also pressurizes that water supply and where there's excess pressure you can use a hydropower turbine to convert that pressure into energy so three sisters installed 700 kilowatt hydropower turbine that now generates about 3.1 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually Energy Trust was a major funder of the hydro system providing more than a million dollars in cash incentives for its development and action which was made possible by the modernization work here's a photo of the new turbine it's a Chinese turbine with an American generator and here we are giving away the money with one of Oregon senators Jeff Merkley looking on with all the pipes they now deliver pressurized water to about half of their farms eliminating irrigation pumps and saving around five million kilowatt hours of electricity annually here you can see an old pump lying abandoned and lying abandoned in the background and turning on the other direction this is a new pressurized turnout at the farm there's actually too much pressure at this location so a pressure reduction valve was installed room was left to put in a small hydro system at some point in the future and that could actually provide power for the farm the pressurized water also opens up the potential for additional water conservation on farm by switching to different delivery methods a center pivot system like this one and these are what make those pretty crop rings you see out the airplane window these are about 90 percent efficient in their water delivery compared to that big gun that you saw earlier which might be 50 to 60 percent efficient here's also a picture of three sisters also change their diversion dams so that upstream and downstream fish passage is possible here at the old dam now the old dam is gone they install the farmer screen to keep fish and debris like wood and leaves out of the irrigation water the farmer screen is self-cleaning it requires no electricity and has no moving parts here's another view of the farmer screen they also restored about a quarter mile of stream channel to improve habitat because there's so much less canal and so much more automated equipment operations maintenance and safety have all been improved and costs have been reduced irrigation district crews that used to spend their time fixing and operating things are now spending increasing amounts of time putting pipe in the ground this is a win for agriculture the low economy and wildlife so let's fast forward to 2015 another severe drought hit Central Oregon and much of the west for three sisters this was very comparable to 1977 snowpack in the Cascades was only a fraction of normal mountains were bare and glaciers were melting but what happened in why shus Creek in marks words we were able to maintain a daily average flow of 20 CFS
hile delivering 20 to 40 percent of expected water to farmers this was in addition to generating clean green renewable power and conserving energy last year's drought in 2015 was a very different experience and a tremendous example of three sisters hard work paying off their Creek stayed wet this photo was actually from the middle of that drought and the farmers had energy water we saved as well excuse me the farmers had water energy was saved and generated Three Sisters efforts have been a huge success but it took them a lot of time 18 years of Stacey Stacey mentioned and they're still at it that came with a lot of learning about the stakeholders that care about why shus Creek the permitting agencies grant writing and funding cycles in order to secure financing it's a lot of money and a lot of elbow grease to put in 50 miles of pipe and that's on top of all the other work that just that the district had to do to deliver water for prospective it's also important to remember that three sisters is a relatively small irrigation district nearby irrigation districts operate canal systems many times the size of three sisters across the Deschutes Basin that's the area that all drains into the Deschutes River and it's tributaries there are about sixteen hundred miles of earth and irrigation canal and they're moving huge volumes of water a little bit of pipe has been put in in a few areas and it's really big that's ten foot pipes that you see in this photo that was installed in the process of building out another hydro facility the potential benefit the modernization in the area are enormous but the scale of the challenge is huge and most Irrigation have their hands full maintaining their current systems by watching the efforts of three sisters and a few other irrigation districts exploring piping in hydro we recognized an opportunity at energy trust we've been targeting irrigation hydropower projects to meet our renewable energy goals we realize that hydropower is best seen as the end result of modernization if more districts were able to move forward successfully with modernization we would be able to support more hydropower projects in addition the entities interested in the other interrelated benefits of modernization like water conservation fish and fish habitat restoration would also see more successes those additional benefits just like the revenues from hydropower can be very significant in financing modernization projects what was missing was a coordinated comprehensive approach one that helps multiple irrigation districts move forward together learning from and supporting each other getting help and advice from other district managers that had moved through modernization processes to learn from past mistakes and successes we felt sure that by doing this we could help irrigation districts to modernize much faster than they could on their own and what you're seeing before was a picture of another main canal in Central Oregon so what we did is we contracted with FDA and together we've been creating the irrigation modernization program our goal is for FDA to be a resource a guide and a catalyst for irrigation district managers who want to move their districts through modernization processes over the last year with funding and staff support from us FDA has created a methodology for developing individual irrigation district modernization strategies and through hundreds of conversations with stakeholders built a large coalition of irrigation nonprofit financial federal and state agency political and private-sector partners by the end of 2015 less than a year after starting this effort twelve irrigation districts had signed up to be the first participants in the program including all eight districts in the Deschutes River Basin which is one of Oregon's largest irrigated areas assessments of the potential benefits associated modernization paid for by energy trust are now underway at each of the 12 districts enrolled in the program when completed by the end of this year each assessment will identify the renewable energy the energy efficiency agriculture water environment and economic benefits associated with modernization these benefits quantified and aggregated across a large number of districts are not just the sales pitch for why modernisations important they really do provide a new way to approach financing such large infrastructure projects will also be laying out various potential implementation approaches be they phased over time or faster full build outs and quantifying the differences and benefits for different approaches each irrigation district will have to choose the implementation approach that's right for their situation after a districts board selects the preferred approach then permitting and financing will begin followed by contracting and construction these photos show piping and construction of another irrigation hydropower project in Central Oregon as well and while the total potential benefits associated with the 12 irrigation districts enrolled in the programs are not fully quantified it's not unreasonable to expect that they'll be 10 to 20 times greater than the benefits seen at three sisters including the installation of up to ten megawatts of hydropower or more in addition the potential benefits available at the first twelve districts may only represent really 10 to 15 percent of the total benefits available in Oregon and a small fraction of the potential across the well and so this is where we circle back to the beginning the need for irrigation modernization and the benefit that can bring it's not exclusive to organ and conversations with stakeholders have identified a very strong interest in expanding the delivery of the program to other states this program has wide reach and implicit implications across the drought plagued western US where much of the water for farms is delivered through aging leek irrigation district canal infrastructure from the start we designed this program with replicability in mind the program is producing open source tools methodologies and process guides for irrigation districts and the entities that are helping irrigation districts move forward with modernization planning and implementation we're really excited about the potential for irrigation modernization to make rural agricultural communities more resilient against drought while improving operations and reducing costs and making water supplies more reliable we're excited about helping farmers save energy by getting rid of old irrigation pumps and we're excited about supporting projects hydropower projects that are part of a system working to improve environmental conditions allowing fish to move up and downstream and putting more water back into our rivers we're also very honored that sisa recognized us for their 2016 state leadership in clean energy award and we'll be working hard to make the benefits that three sisters achieved a reality for many more irrigation districts thank you and we're happy to answer any questions you may have great thank you Jed Thank You Stacy that was very informative that was a great historical overview of irrigation districts putting it all in context for us just a reminder to the audience if you have any questions to please type them into the question dialog box let me start with asking you to repeat a few things and maybe expand on a few items you already talked about one curious about your partnership had FCA and eto worked together before and how has the partnership benefited one another and if this were to be replicated in other states as FCA worked throughout the west coast I'll start the the beginning of that and and maybe Stacy can fill in sort of the end of that so Energy Trust and FCA had maybe been orbiting each other for a number of year we were working with irrigation districts that Energy Trust trying to make hydropower projects happen we knew that FCA was working with some of those same folks on fish screening projects as we got to know each other a little bit we saw some opportunities and FCA helped us with some studies early on that identified some of the irrigation modernization benefits that came along with doing hydropower projects so some of those early studies helped inform the way that we were thinking about hydropower and it's in its role with irrigation and that then led to a number of years of conversations about how we might best help all these different benefits get advanced so it was sort of any evolving process or an evolution I guess in terms of our relationship that eventually led to the formation of this program and I'll let Stacy speak for FCA but yes the goal is to go more broadly than what energy trusts can do just in or again right and we have ongoing and extensive relationships working throughout the West as well with our fish green work and to build on what Jed said we've been in the same position where we've been placing modern infrastructure a fish screen and an aging system and so looking at this holistically we realized that we could see more benefits by looking at the entire system and creating a modernization approach versus individually going in and trying to place modern infrastructure in within a working system and so our goal is right now this year working with our current 12 districts and that continued continuing to expand throughout the western United States and beyond yeah and what we anticipate really is that we'll work these this first set of districts through this initial assessment process and we'll we'll get the results of that have a better understanding of the total potential benefit that that first set can bring we expect that will lead to some work around how we're going to finance the potential projects that will result from that and we'll start developing the plans around that at the same time as those districts are moving forward with their more specific planning processes we expect another set of districts to begin the next phase of assessment work so we'll be bringing on another cohort of irrigation districts to move forward together in assessing their potential around modernization anything else perfect we look forward to that assessment report couple more questions for you could you repeat how much hydro you've installed due to this program well we can't make any claims yet from this specific program we're starting to get some results back about some potential that we're seeing in Central Oregon and it really is pretty phenomenal contextually though I can tell you we've done projects in the past with about a dozen well we've done about what we would call a dozen irrigation hydro projects some of those are repeat customers for example we've worked with farmers irrigation district up in Hood River four times on helping them to install additional pipe in their system that additional pipe led to more water flowing through their existing hydro power system so it increased the generation there obviously we helped out with the project at Three Sisters irrigation district some of those other photos are of a 5 megawatt hydropower installation at Central Oregon irrigation district so there's there's been about a half dozen new irrigation hydro projects that have happened what they haven't been doing with the exception of three sisters is happening really in that comprehensive way that looks at the kind of into end modernization approach and so that's what we're trying to do differently the other projects were more standalone facilities miss program will also help accelerate that work I think as we're looking at three sisters we see it as an individual project for a very aggressive approach but that took 18 years and so by bringing multiple districts together we're hoping to accelerate and move move forward more quickly right and can you talk a little bit more about the interest from other irrigation districts and potentially other states too has it involved a lot of outreach on your behalf you also mentioned the involvement of FDA what has their involvement been like and who's Janey outreach and how are other district managers coming to the table yeah it that's that's an interesting thing you know that this whole program has been a little bit of a Field of Dreams model where we built it and they have arrived we have done almost no outreach to actual irrigation districts the districts themselves have self selected to come and talk with us for the most part about how they can participate which is really fantastic you know we really need irrigation district partners that want to move forward you know we can't drag people down a process that they don't want to participate in so by self selecting that that kind of guarantee is that that is going to happen that way FCA has done a tremendous amount of outreach to other stakeholders that are involved there's a lot of NGO organizations that care about fish they care about watering and rivers that work in some of the same areas with both with irrigation districts and with state and federal agencies so kind of the way that a lot of that outreach has happened or is happening is to try to be a bridge between the irrigation districts that want to move forward and getting everybody else on the same page about what those potential opportunities are how they may develop over time and what the right process is for each specific area there's no irrigation district that is like another irrigation district even the ones that are in the same basin the same general area they're all different they have different landowners involved they have different stakeholders involved and they have different challenges there are a lot of environmental challenges right now that are driving irrigation districts to seek solutions and timing is everything in life and we're fairly well set up to provide a wide and robust set of solutions for irrigation districts and the other stakeholders that are seeking different ways of doing things on the current status quo thank you a couple more questions I'm jumping back to the hydropower in the irrigation districts is that is the power the electricity you just used on farm is that so two utilities how is that being managed yeah great question it depends some of the larger installations are essentially merchant plants they're standalone they're selling directly to the utility that picture that showed the the farm turn out where there was excess pressure that's a place where a smaller system could be installed that might net meter or be used to deliver energy directly to a farm we're seeing those kinds of projects starting to happen in some other parts of the state and so they haven't the the smaller on-farm project's haven't yet happened as a result of this irrigation modernization work yet but we expect they will and we're seeing them already through some other and a similar modernization work that we're helping out with and in farther east in Oregon and the Wow a county area where some other piping is happening that that has yielded some smaller projects great thank you looks like we one more question one question just came in let's see is the [Music] is there any movement destroy the electricity from the irrigation districts another excellent question so that is something that we have discussed and there's some opportunities around that you might think of it as being like a modular pumped storage solution where if the site conditions were appropriate you could put like a water tank on a hillside near a canal and then have a hydro turbine that could operate both as a pump and a turbine located off of the the new piped canal that could pump water up into that storage tank essentially storing the energy up there and then release it later into back into the the pipe we haven't done any of those yet in Oregon and I'm I there's some folks in California that have been thinking about that nline energy I believe was that the first folks that shares that concept with me so I don't know if it's happening yet it hasn't happened in Oregon but it's something that we're kind of keeping our eyes on Oregon doesn't yet have very robust markets for energy storage so a project like that at this point would really only look like a power plant and there's not a lot of ancillary services that would be able to be monetized to to real
y capture all of the potential benefits that those kinds of projects would bring they would also probably relatively small you know most of the pump storage that people normally think about is gigantic you know a gigawatt of energy whereas these would be in the single-digit megawatt class probably so it's it might make sense regionally for some of the more remote grid areas that might have issues that need to be addressed so but we haven't seen it yet all right thank you for all the information if folks have further questions you can reach Jed and Stacy at their emails which is shown on the screen or of course you can email us and we can find an answer for you Jed and Stacy thank you so much for your presentation and for joining us today thank you Val thanks Val we appreciate it our pleasure congratulations on your award thank you okay we are going to move on to our second presentation by the Connecticut get green Bank we have two presenters Fiona's Stewart is a senior associate of clean energy finance at the Green Bank which she joined in 2012 with an initial focus on the creation of a cloud-based platform for private capital providers under the Green Bank smart e residential lending program she currently manages the operations of the Connecticut solar lease commercial program joining her on today's webinar is Ben Healy director of clean energy finance at the Connecticut Green Bank where he helped create the nation's leading commercial property assessed clean energy program C pace structured innovative deals to enable solar investment for non-investment grade properties and build clean energy investment partnerships with non-traditional financing partners such as foundations and crowd sourcing platforms Fiona and Ben will turn it over to you and a reminder for the audience to feel free to use the question dialog box to type in your questions throughout the program Thanks thanks Val this is Fiona from the Connecticut Green Bank hi everyone sorry we don't have a great number of pictures like they're a wonderful presentation of the Oregon Energy Trust of Oregon but we're hoping you guys are excited about what we're going to present to you today just a little dive into what we'll be covering just an intro to us than the CT solar leap to program and then diving in through some structures and a case study of our nonprofit program and then back ends a little lessons learned and then questions so diving in some of you may or may not be familiar with the Green Bank model it is a kind of a new model of banking it's a public financing authority that leverages private capital with limited public dollars to accelerate the growth and deployment of clean energy and clean energy markets about us specifically the Connecticut Green Bank is the first Green Bank in the nation we were created by our legislatures Public Act 1180 as a successor to the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund which was granted a subsidy based our focus is to support the Legislature's comprehensive energy plan and to finance clean energy for us clean energy includes renewable energy energy efficiency alternative fuel vehicles and then other infrastructure programs currently we have a balance sheet of approximately 110 million in assets and how we are supported is through a surcharge on electric rate payer bills on that provides approximately 27 to 30 million a year in investments this is the regi fund about 5 million a year we also have federal competitive solicitations and non competitive resources and private capital so diving into why we're here today and what our program won the slice award for is the CT sword we've to program it is the second edition of our CT solar lease one program which is the nation's first residential PV financing program that combines repair funds with private capital to leverage federal incentives that was a pure residential lease program and in restructuring and figuring out what we are going to cover next we identified a couple of market sectors that were being underserved so CT solar lease - we did still have a residential component to it and then we expanded it to commercial properties particularly a commercial in infrastructure so municipalities and then nonprofit organizations and mid-market commercial entities and these last two are what we will be focusing on because it's the kind of unique and innovative aspect of the program because they're combined with commercial property assessed clean energy which we call CPS it's a separate program here in Connecticut and diving into the deaf program really quick which OH so in identifying a new market we we recognize the fact that nonprofits have kind of - afraid upfront barriers which include a lack of upfront capital and then the lack of tax equity appetite to take on the federal ITC by using the CTA's benefit assessment lean and the credit enhancement tool we are able to offer these long-term ppas to nonprofits and non-investment grade commercial entities which really opened up the market allowed private investors to get comfortable with the comes role with the PPA is on the properties so Fiona's given a great intro and I'll defer to her to walk us through a few more slides but before I do that this is Ben Healy speaking from the Green Bank as well wanted to simply take a moment to say we're about to go into sort of deep into finance territory and I know everyday that's not what folks necessarily are working on in our partner organizations throughout the country so just a couple sort of quick notes on sort of level settings and folks might know all this already so apologies but essentially what we are trying to do is be the third-party owner of solar systems for entities that to these two front top bullet points don't have the capital or desire to you know pay out of pocket to go solar and when we say lack of tax equity appetite that could be either a nonprofit that doesn't pay taxes and therefore doesn't benefit from the federal investment tax credit or it could be any kind of commercial entity or municipality let's say with the commercial indeed that might not actually have the tax appetite might not be your traditional Walmart or Target Whole Foods Home Depot what have you that has traditionally been targeted and offered long term Power Purchase Agreements meaning the 15 to 20 year financing that really allows these projects to both go solar and do it in a way that's not only zero cash down but also saving money from day one and that's really what we were trying to do provide for a whole swath of the market the opportunity to go solar to essentially engage in a long term relationship with the Green Bank where we would provide financing own operate maintain solar systems on their properties and do it in a way that could leverage in private capital using just a little bit of our money in a investment mechanism where those that might have tax equity appetite and we'll get to that in a little can really take advantage so I just want to be thoughtful we might speak in a little bit of finance jargon throughout this conversation we fall into that if that happens now feel free to check us or others fast questions but what we're going to do over the next few slides is really try and help folks get a sense of the structure that we built how it works and overcoming these particular barriers so that the solar market can be much more widely accessible and how others could replicate it using some of the tools we put together so pardon me for interrupting I'll turn it back over to you dammit to take us through the next couple slides so our next slide is offering just a little information on our pace the property assessed clean energy for commercial product projects in Connecticut there's high-level security interest it's attached to the property it's it's about the primary mortgage which we go out and get lender consent from and then it stays with the property for following transfer of ownership there's also a non accelerating obligation foreclosure is limited Judith to past-due portion of the contracted power purchase agreement or at least payments it's long term so that is the pace assessment up to 25 years and the Connecticut green bank's role we're the statewide administrator for the program and we also do data and pipeline aggregation and then have lent money is folks we also have others bring their own capital to to the market and sort of focusing just for a moment on the top bullet point here the high level security interest well we want to spend just a moment focusing on because this is really where the replicability question comes in not just in what we've been the scale so far in Connecticut but what we hope to be able to bring nationally is the fact that because pace this property assessed clean energy mechanism allows for a benefit assessment a municipal tax lien essentially that is attached to the property and sits above any other mortgage interests what you've effectively done is credit enchanced all of your local nonprofits your retail your warehouses your office buildings anybody that's not investment grade and again that's really the goal here from a financial markets perspective is without using any public capital this is simply just using the legal tool of pace and by applying it here we're opening up the market in a way that many more participants with much worse credit as it were from a capital markets perspective can access keep in mind the residential market has done very well and solar because any company can go out and ask for a FICO score and that's a very easy analysis and you're in or you're out on the utility side of the market the same is true of a long term power purchase agreement with a investment-grade entity or the big commercial the same is true what we're solving for here is the whole part of the market that has been excluded and it's hard to underwrite it's hard to look at from a credit perspective and what we're trying to do is really make that a simple replicable scalable in any state that is looking at or has proposed or an enacted pay structure can follow this model so let's let's go from there so now when we dive into this a little and we promise we'll get to some pictures soon but stick with us for just a second essentially again you know spoke to the beginning the role of the Green Bank is a little bit of public money a lot of private capital that's that's how we try and structure our projects and we do it in a way where that private capital gets paid back so the dimension of the Green Bank can work ourselves out of a job in that particular sector what we did here was we essentially put together a fund the Green Bank is in fact acting like a solar city or a SunEdison you know maybe they recover from bankruptcy a similar type of entity where we own and operate and essentially put together the full capital stack meaning tax equity from a bank debt from a different bank Green Bank using our dollars in a variety of subordinated debt and equity roles we don't need to get into the weeds here but essentially serving to originate sponsor own and operate a set of projects across the state out of that 70 million dollar fund about 25 million so call it 10 megawatts has been deployed across 50 projects and some of those have been rated municipalities and schools and corporations but the real innovation here and we're we're proud and we're we're building in the next one that we're out raising right now has been the Unrated commercial industrial and non profit credits again secured by tapes so that's been about half of the commercial portfolio and these are small projects and some of them are some of them wrong we'll get up to a megawatt but we're really trying to make this accessible to those not who are doing huge ground mount solar farms but 100 kW on a Boys and Girls Club the JCC project that we'll talk about shortly others of that ilk this is about accessibility and availability of finance and what's been also powerful from a local economic development perspective is we've got a ton of local developers contractors installers who aren't the big boys who don't have access to the national capital markets and what the Green Bank has done is essentially built a series of partnerships across the state the local players who are trusted who often have these relationships with communities community-based organizations of various kinds are then able to actually offer our financing products and develop deliver on it on their own ok so this is just a terrible picture not nearly as pretty as the Oregon countryside what I want to focus focus on is and of course this will be available offline is really the bottom right corner of this what we're showing is a complicated financial structure that we put together with the Green Bank basically setting up a special-purpose entity that CT sells or at least it will be the owner and operator of these assets over time we went out and sourced tax equity as you can see US bank debt from private capital as well but the key is from the upfront perspective we were able to include traditionally excluded credits he's not for profit and other commercial credits and it was because of the power of the pace tool linked to a PPA and so I'm going to flip to the next slide which dives a little bit deeper into that bottom right corner and basically just speak to what's going on here and oh it looks like we've got some of the slides things are going off the slide but it's a no big deal what's happening in that bottom right corner is essentially showing the way in which the pace Tool Works the not-for-profits would essentially pay back their PPA through a municipal tax lien it then gets passed through to a paid service community overseen by the Green Bank and that goes into the fund and what the pace tween is doing sort of off the office chart as it works is providing the security that the debt providers as well as the tax equity need to see to get comfortable just going forward with the project as it stands so now let's get to the fund this was all been a theoretical what this was meant is that projects like the JCC of Greater New Haven a you know 100 year old organization that's been in its current facility for twenty years got a significant facility with you know a pool and you know squash courts and all the fun that you could imagine having South Central Connecticut any given Sunday morning you know was not able to get financing for a solar project who wanted you would actually already had CHP on site it was wanting to go green there was a whole leadership team excited about it but the solar just couldn't come together because without the investment grade credit they weren't able to make them and so what we were able to do by using the paste structure was essentially say okay we can do this this this credit becomes good enough and so in effect what happened was went out with a local contractor took a look at the structure in this case ended up being carports visually arresting beautiful I encourage anyone who's driving up 95 or 91 Connecticut any time soon on your way on your way to the finest points that the state has to offer so to pull Anja and the car parts constitute about 750 kW of installation about half of the JCC's electrical limit demand so when we look at this all together and you can see it's sort of picture of the car parts down in the lower right corner this was a sizable project it was significantly reducing their electric bills and all done with no money up front for the JCC and in a way it's been really delivered on the promise of what the Green Bank is trying to do using private capital leveraging a little bit of our dollars upfront so we'll end with the lessons learned because I think this is where we want to be able to say this is something we hope can really take flight throughout the country you know the partnership flip tax equity structure we've done has been widely used you don't need a public entity necessarily to be the sponsor the way we did the case structure is you know in dozens of states around the country now available in some way shape or form and putting those two together can really be quite powerful and so what we've done here which we would love to share talk about more be partners with others in advancing because certainly the industry's advanceme
ts will only be good for for a little market like Connecticut that doesn't necessarily drive things on our own is we've already gotten a set of investors comfortable with the pace mechanism as a means to credit enhancing these investments and allowing a whole new group of entities of nonprofits and others to get solar we've done that in a way that US Bank which is one of the leading national tax equity players has been comfortable with as well as that providers we have documentation that reflects this it has been approved by Capital Markets and be happy to share it and then from uh sort of program administration and management perspective would be thrilled to talk about that ad nauseam but basically figuring out how do you help your local players in this market understand it sell it deliberate replicate it has been a primary focus of the whole team and chiona really has managed it just incredibly well and so that's all part and parcel of putting together a financing story doesn't mean much unless you've actually got a delivery mechanism to grow replicated scale and that's what the markets need if you're going to bring in a cheap capital that makes this attractive in the first place so it's an iterative process but it's been done once here we're in the process of raising fun member three I guess it would be and excited continue to do more so with that why don't I wrap things up that's email addresses for both of us happy to take any questions now that might have come in or otherwise what folks return to their regularly scheduled programming great thanks Ben and Fiona was very comprehensive and I certainly appreciated the the finance 101 review that was very helpful and hopefully it helped others as well so we have a few questions for you and audience feel free to type in your questions and we will try to get to them first how do these projects come to the green-backed you issue rfp's do you rely on solar contractors to bring them to you what's the outreach mechanism sure I mean part of what we love about this program and part of the challenge as well as managing the local excited contractor developer installer partners who are looking to the Green Bank to help bridge these financing gaps and so we take that seriously and so know it's very much not an RFP approach although we we might do that on the capital raising side and we're a little unusual in that way we'll go to banks and actually issue them competitive solicitations to give us their money so trying to flip the script on that but we're able to do that because we have worked quite hard to develop the and cultivate the local what we call the kitchen table salespeople as it were whether or not that kitchen table is actually to a homeowner or in this case you know across the desk at a local businessmen office or nonprofit leaders and so really they're out knocking on doors and doing it with our our financing standing behind them and that helps make them a credible partner for the local institutions that are interested in taking advantage of it we provide some objective reality and sort of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval but it also provides us resiliency from a financiers perspective because we have dozens of local contractors and additional to some of the larger regional and national players who are saying yeah this financing actually helps make these projects work and they're independently going out they're putting it to work and then we stand behind them so it's very much a partnership model and that comes with its challenges but but certainly how we plan to continue to develop great thanks here's a two-part question for you did you as you're putting together this program and thinking about solar leases did you consider any loan to own programs if so or not why or why not and is any suggestions for states that do not have a commercial space program sure well so we think about the market very much not as monolithic either in terms of customer preferences for ownership or third-party lease or PPA as well as differentiated between residential commercial and different customer classes so on the resi side we absolutely started with both a loan and a leased program and essentially trained up the same contractor based so they could be responsive to each set of customer demands and we've decided on the resident side that it's very much clear the market has sort of taken over doesn't need our support with respect to prime customers those with you know credit scores above a certain level and so we've stepped out of that and focused on the LMI and when it comes to our low and moderate income or credit hours customer base when it comes to the commercial sector we actually launched first with just the case program has our lending platform not for third party ownership but straight out direct ownership that continues to be our flagship on the commercial side if you're looking to do something outside of pace I'd be happy to talk and I think any of us would be happy to talk about how you serve non-investment grade credits with an ownership program outside of pace but there's a set of challenges that pace overcomes which is why we like it so much and would certainly encourage that approach so to your question though about the the way it ends up working with our local guys is they know that they can go into the pace bucket and just offer a loan if that's what a customer prefers but more and more it's clear that there's a customer preference especially among the nonprofit's for whom the tax appetite just isn't there and the federal benefits don't mean anything to to go to the third party route having both is clearly important we like that flexibility and I think though regardless we look at the pace structure or the more challenged credits as critical to being able to obtain sustainable and cheap capital that will make these deals pencil out okay thanks so Ben you mentioned that the pace program was the preferred option so were there other credit enhancement opportunities that you considered or if folks are interested in this should they contact you if they're interested in learning about their credit enhancement tools yeah I mean we could certainly talk about different approaches I mean there's strategies associated with on-bill financing that the folks like to look at and that has shown some success even in a small business world here in Connecticut of course there are you know there's the ability to use the Capitals their loan loss reserves or other such you know sort of more traditional structures the challenge is really thinking about it at scale and how do you get beyond the obstacles beyond doing the first few projects and so we we've settled on paste among these different options because there is a capital markets appetite I mean when we run when I say we run capital RFPs I'm not joking and we get folks in here's 100 million can connect with it to work with you and we then get to make choices based on who can do it most attractively it's because the Connecticut program relies on a structure that the markets like and see that there's going to be plenty of volume coming behind it and I think really that's that's a critical insight of how we run our programs looking towards where a market-based solution wants to be and can we help facilitate that in the short term paid certainly does that most cleanly for us based on our experience but certainly happy to brainstorm offline with anyone on some of the choices we've made in other options we've considered thank you and for those of you interested for more information Ben and Fiona's email addresses are up on the screen just following up on that you mentioned replicability will you be publishing a how-to guide or do you have how-to advice on your website we don't have a how-to advice on the website although I like that idea we do make available all of our standard documentation and structures upon request we tend to try and keep track of that things a lot of it is somewhat market sensitive just so we can let our partners know where it's going but yes absolutely happy to provide both the documentation as well as the broad structural you know approach what I say is we've made some connecticut specific choices so not everything that we've done in terms of structure would be the exact same way done elsewhere but a lot of the basic sort of building blocks can certainly translate across state lines without too much pain and it would be easy enough to take our documentation and together with a brief primer make that pretty clear so certainly happy to take a under advisement the idea of a real how-to guide which I like that and more importantly in the short term certainly make available to folks any of the resources to get their hands around how we've gone about it great thanks for that and lastly down to project nitty-gritty how many megawatts have been deployed as a result of this solar lease program I think on the commercial side we've got about 10 in the ground right now over the last 18 months or so since we've since we really kicked off and what we're doing now is his next one we're raising we've got about seven or eight megawatts that we're planning to get in the ground so between now and college Q 1 2017 which we expect to be part of the fun to do about another 20 megawatts probably total beyond that so you know we as with all things Connecticut we still with the mantra of small but mighty you know he is a tip of the iceberg type of stuff and a single fund operating in a small environment but the first 10 megawatts were pretty proud to have gotten done in this relatively short time especially across this this asset class as it were that's never really had access to solar in this way and I think equally excited about turning on the or opening up to the spigot even further for the next the next pool of assets that we're looking at and how long does it take to complete the process I want to take to fund a project I mentioned 10 megawatts that's been in over the last 10 years that's about right yeah I think what the first project went live in late 2014 and a 2014 yes you know so you know it usually starts to finish we're happy if it's less than six months probably six months to a year from the point of the time at which a customer says yes I think I'm interested too all of the challenges that we all know throughout the country of everything from working through documentation locking down the various you know Connecticut has a RPS schema for these midsize projects that provides a certain contracting approach to those recs getting that lined up the actual installation navigating interconnection all that jazz so you have to have a hardy customer partner but part of the value of our local guises they know how to stick it out along for the ride and I think the Green Bank support at least helps helps get folks comfortable that in the end they're going to get something that they want great well that wraps it up for the Q&A session Benin Fiona thank you very much and congratulations on your slice award and great job putting up this difficult market sector thank you thanks for a participant we do have more webinars coming up on to other slice award programs it's on Tuesday July 26 state leadership and clean energy awards for California and New York if you have any questions you can contact us at si Sadat or you'll find our email address is there it's also up on your screen now and again this presentation both presentations have been recorded and they'll be posted on our website in the next several days you'll get an email letting you know that the presentations have been uploaded thanks again to everyone thank you Sam for putting this all together have a great day
