Senior Markets for Residential EE Lending are HERE!

For years I have been hearing about the need for secondary markets to engage on energy efficiency lending.  In very simple terms, this is the same basic structure that enables you to buy a house, a car... heck, a cell phone.  Someone makes you and perhaps 50,000 of your best friends a loan.  The lender than bundles up all those loans, and "sells" them to a the senior capital markets, who essentially buy the portfolio, giving the lender their money back so they can make more loans.

It is like a perpetual motion machine... or at least a wheel.  A perpetual source of capital.

Considering that achieving a 25% saving on say 100 million homes across the country, we are talking about needing something on the order of $1 Trillion dollars.  By any measure, that is a lot of money!  

The WHEEL program is the first time that secondary markets are playing in residential energy efficiency as a distinct asset class with its own investment grade rating.  While the initial program is focused on leveraging revolving loan funds coming out of the Recovery Act, there is nothing that prevents this structure from being rolled out more broadly to private markets.  

This is a huge step forward for energy efficiency, and I believe, in the long run, will be viewed as one of the key success stories of the Recovery Act.

Warehouse for Energy Efficiency Loans (WHEEL) Program
NASEO and the Energy Programs Consortium are pleased to announce that the Warehouse for Energy Efficiency Loans (WHEEL) program has been approved by the U.S. Department of Energy. NASEO and EPC recently hosted a webinar for interested state and local officials and program managers with Citibank and Renewable Funding on Wednesday, June 13, at 3:00 p.m. ET. For further details, please see the following presentation and full audio recording.