Climate group expanding to Richmond with focus on businesses’ energy efficiency • Virginia Mercury

In Richmond, the city has a near-identical plan to Charlottesville’s, with a goal of reducing emissions by 45% by 2030 and net-zero by 2050. Some 40% of the city’s 2.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide comes from the commercial/industrial sector.

Recognizing the need to address climate change, the city adopted the plan in 2022 with an objective to “maximize energy efficiency, performance and resilience in all existing buildings.”

The impacts of climate change in the city are “already here,” said another panelist, Michael Smart, sustainability engagement coordinator in Richmond’s office of sustainability, while referencing heat island studies. 

C3 board chair Grey McLean and member Emily Francis said in an interview with the Mercury after the panel there are opportunities for businesses to improve their energy efficiency, such as audits Jennings provides that determine where leaks or energy efficient gains can be made within a building.

“A lot of times the businesses just need a plan,” said McLean, “They don’t know what they don’t know. What you can measure, you can manage.”

Kelli Lemon, co-founder of the Richmond Black Restaurant Experience, owner of Urban Hang Suite and a member of the panel, recognized how energy-conscious building upgrades, such as improved lighting, can have an impact on whether customers return to a restaurant or leave a bad review on the internet.

“The younger generation is asking about climate, they are talking about climate, where my generation [couldn’t] care less,” Lemon said. “It’s the small things but they do add up to maybe you are actually losing customers.” 

Included in the Charlottesville climate plan is a goal of tapping into Virginia’s C-PACE program, as Petersburg has done, making it one of the first areas of the state to take advantage of the funding opportunity for retrofitting buildings or developing new ones.

The program is a way to provide a long-term loan through a fixed rate that gives some assurances for lenders to get their money back through a special assessment placed on a property. The assessment provides localities with a legal force to keep a property’s unpaid balances and consider them delinquent, compared to a mortgage that doesn’t have that strength.

Because a local ordinance has been needed for that mechanism to be adopted, recent changes to make the program available statewide through the Virginia Energy department will likely make the program more accessible.

“The developer puts in 20%, the loan comes in at 60% [because] you’re not getting as much as used to, so there’s a gap,” Johnson said. “That gap can be filled multiple ways, but pace is a less expensive way to do that for 7 to 8% [financing costs], versus 15 to 20% on mortgage [financing].”

Jessa Coleman, director of sustainability and programs at Nuveen Green Capital, the lender for the Prince William project, said “the market is massive,” pointing to its $7 billion size around the country.

“Our assessments do sit on a property until they’re fully repaid unlike a mortgage, [which] some people may like that more than others depending on their financial position and what they need,” Coleman said. 

But otherwise, C-PACE is a very “flexible tool,” she added, by funding anything that’s not a single-family, private home; a multi-family building with four units or less; or any publicly- owned property. 

“If you take those things out, we’re still funding multi-family, we’re funding offices, we’re funding hotels, we’re funding mixed use facilities, we’re funding retail, we can fund industrial facilities, we can fund manufacturing.”