Improving Real Estate Value with Clean Energy

Real estate value can be enhanced with clean energy, while improving building resiliency at the same time.  Prioritizing energy savings tends to reduce resiliency: you are investing more money in being increasingly dependent on the given energy source. The economic magic lies in the fact that energy generated on-site with clean energy technology moves energy from liabilities to assets permanently, and creates a degree of independence from the grid. After that installation is paid for... no more bills for at least that amount of energy. Even partial energy independence can save you a lot of hassles in the next storm or the next blackout.

Recently, I had a chance to listen to some presentations about infrastructure projects, in the context of the Rebuild by Design competition, focused on resilient rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which reinforced how value creation is central to problem solving in this area. This observation has a parallel in energy policy. We are entering a paradigm shift from cost containment in the form of energy savings, to productive investment in the form of renewable energy.

Value, not cost

One of the speakers at the event mentioned above, Marcel Ham, of IMG/Rebel, speaking about the financing of such projects, emphasized that nothing gets resolved as long as people are focused on cost. What makes financing solutions possible is focusing on value. This is a core concept, and not only for infrastructure projects and large public/private partnerships, for it explains the failings of a few decades of energy policy, when everyone is talking about energy savings, and nobody seems to realize that you can't save yourself rich.

When you focus on cost reduction, you negotiate yourself into a corner every time, because energy savings, cost containment, is a game of diminishing returns. In other words, focusing on cost reinforces the problem, while focusing on value allows solutions to emerge. The best I can figure it, the problem started with oil crises of the last century, when the discussion centered very much on the notion that a dollar spent on reducing demand gave us more bang for the buck than a dollar spent on increasing supply (building another power plant). Then brilliant rationalizations emerged, like Amory Lovins with his "fifth fuel," and later the introduction of the concept of "negawatt." All of these were attempted rationalizations to make "investment" in energy efficiency palatable, and no-one appreciated that it simply extended the time horizon, and made the problem more intractable. Certainly, now that the environmental (climate change) aspect is ever more important, it is increasingly clear that the only thing that will do is reducing our carbon footprint, and that involves switching to renewable energy. The money spent making it more economical to continue CO2 emissions, is a write-off if it has not paid for itself already.

The bottomless pit of energy savings

From my experience as a home owner (19 years), I learned in retrospect how costly it is to serially make decisions about "energy efficiency," and "energy savings." Despite popular mythology to the contrary, "energy efficiency" is not an asset class, and not an investment proposition in itself. It is an operational savings. Energy savings is also a secondary objective, not a primary one, as is readily evident from the fact that if you compare a fossil fuel system with a clean energy system, energy efficiency is present in both solutions. However, while some of the "energy savings" measures may be the same in both solutions, some of them will be significantly different, therefore, if you start on the fossil fuel track, it is not easy to switch over to clean energy. Conversely, you need to think ahead about where you want to end up, and that includes deciding the timing for replacing major infrastructure, typically boilers, A/C, water heaters, and the like, along with elements of the building envelope etc. The value-destruction trap of energy savings is to the benefit of energy providers (customer retention) and the sellers of various gadgets and products that can "save" energy, not the buyers of them. Simply put, "savings" is a limit function, which is technology dependent, but at any given state of technology, there is a limit, and, in the case of burning fossil fuels, you can never do better than extract 100% of the energy value of your fuel. Very likely it is uneconomical to achieve that much, and you will be faced with rapidly climbing cost, and rapidly diminishing returns for subsequent investments. One of my favorite examples in NY is always the NYSERDA MPP program, which sets a band of incentives that can be achieved above a certain level of "savings." This method forces building owners to bundle multiple energy savings strategies, whereas some would seem uneconomical if undertaken serially,  and in practice it results in massive capital destruction, and ensures suboptimal and even regressive outcomes. Owners are simply gaming the system, and try to score the maximum incentives for the least amount of investment, and in the process commit their property to the path of diminishing returns that is "energy efficiency." There are armies of would be "energy efficiency" consultants to help them do this.

Successful transitions to Clean Energy are holistic

Simply put, the owner of a property has a financial interest in maximizing the value of that property over time. As a society, we have an interest in minimizing green house gas emissions. Unfortunately, various government programs and incentives have a tendency of being counterproductive and regressive, but the market is inexorably moving towards a time when net-zero construction becomes the norm. Therefore, the job of the property owner is to maximize building value by minimizing fossil fuel use, and to pay for the conversion largely from energy savings, so as to end up as close to net-zero as they can. Ideally the first step in a conversion should make the property 50% or better energy independent. The closer you can come to net-zero (i.e "near" zero), the better the assurance of retaining the value of the property. The more energy bills buildings have, the more their values will be depressed as net-zero becomes increasingly normative. I would venture to guess that buildings that do not generate at least 50% of their own energy will see their values deeply depressed 10 or 20 years from now. And, if your building cannot make that conversion, you might as well start of selling it now. The principal mechanism of why the transition to clean energy is constructive towards building values, is because on site clean energy generation moves energy from liabilities to assets.

Resiliency, clean energy and real estate values

As an important side issue, building resiliency goes up with every implementation of on-site clean energy generation. This is the principal reason New York City's "NYC Clean Heat" program has been so extremely regressive, and has produced massive capital destruction. By diverting the attention to fuel switching, just at a time when the transition to clean energy was indicated, capital was diverted to unproductive purposes, and the resilience of the city as a whole was disastrously imperiled as a result of becoming over dependent on a single fuel, when the opportunity existed to diversify energy sources with renewable energy.

Debunking "the fifth fuel," "negawatts"

These popular terms, starting from Amory Lovins' coining of the phrase "the fifth fuel," meaning energy savings, and energy efficiency, and later enriched by the hilarious concept of "negawatts," have created an analytical distortion that has permeated policy making at all levels, not to mention world-wide, but which lacks any solid theoretical foundation. In fact it is a pre-determined financial and environmental disaster, and it entrenches the problem more, and certainly does nothing to solve it. Delaying the sinking of the Titanic by five minutes is hardly a worthwhile investment.

"Energy Efficiency" loans, along with solar PV PPAs/leases are likely the subprime scandals of green finance. They extract value, but they don't add value, because they are typically justified on a least cost for marginal energy savings selection by payback period, and produce suboptimal decisions for the property and society at large. This is especially painful in the case of PACE finance, which was designed for marshalling the capital investments needed to switch to clean energy (hence the name: Property Assessed Clean Energy), but instead it is squandered on same-old, same-old "energy savings" projects that add no real value.

Clean Energy, paid for by energy savings, enhances real estate value

If we know the problem is GHG-emissions, and clean energy reduces or eliminates GHG-emissions, while energy savings reduces emissions nominally but lowers the cost of continuing emissions, so that it aggravates the problem in the long run... clearly the only rational priority is figuring out how we can upgrade our buildings to the maximum extent to clean energy. Interestingly, clean energy investments because they are an enhancement to the fixed building stock, move energy from liabilities to assets, and should be evaluated properly based on a thirty year capital budgeting analysis of the property as an energy asset. Once we use this methodology all investment priorities change, because three decades of no energy bills provide powerful financing ability for the required capital investment up front. The appropriate finance tools are increasingly available, such as PACE financing, even if PACE is often times misused to finance energy efficiency projects. Minimizing GHG-emissions, by maximizing on site clean energy generation, while paying for it from energy savings, should be the new policy goal. Property owners ignore this at their own risk, because on the margin, in new construction, net-zero is becoming the norm.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are two problems that are holding up the show for the transition to a clean energy economy:

• Prioritizing energy savings when only on-site clean energy generation will make a difference in GHG reductions (as well as create greater resiliency in buildings).
• Making decisions based on marginal energy savings and payback of the equipment, instead of based on a 30 capital budget for energy for the property, which would immediately reveal the asset-enhancing value of clean energy by moving energy from liabilities to assets.

The clean energy future will forever be put off, if we continue to prioritize energy savings, but on site clean energy generation will reduce GHG-emissions and enhance real estate values.