
In 2008, the city of Berkely had a problem. They wanted to hasten the adoption of solar technology, but the $20,000 to $30,000 bill was too steep for a lot of homeowners. Cisco DeVries, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, came up with what Scientific American would later call one of the top 20 “world-changing” ideas of the year. The capital would come from private investors, but homeowners could finance energy upgrades through their property taxes. Since then, Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs have provided more than $13 billion for solar installations and energy saving improvements for homes and businesses in the United States. Cortes Island resident Brian Scott would like to see PACE made available to British Columbians.
“I represent two things, an idea and an organization. The idea is the PACE financing tool, which will not be ‘the magic bullet’ but is very close when it comes to our need to address climate change quickly. PACE specifically addresses the fact that roughly a third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from residential and commercial buildings. I’m representing the concept and promoting it. I also represent PACE Alberta and PACE Canada,” he explained.
“The key that makes PACE work is that the homeowner isn’t borrowing the funds. Their house is borrowing the funds effectively. It doesn’t impact their credit rating. It shouldn’t even impact their mortgage because essentially it’s just like a local improvement charge. The bottom line is when you borrow PACE money to upgrade your house, that borrowing effectively flows through the taxation authority and you repay the borrowing through your taxes.”
“PACE unlocks our motivation right across the board, whether it’s personal, whether it’s private, whether it’s government, et cetera. It removes the barriers and it makes it easy to become a sustainable champion and to take action. The proof is that in the US: where those measures have been properly implemented, PACE is growing exponentially. In Canada, it’s a turtle. That’s really the bottom line.”

It has been five years since the Union of BC Municialities (UBCM) first passed a resolution endorsing the suggestion “that the Province of British Columbia work with expert stakeholders with knowledge of Property Assessed Clean Energy PACE best practices, including UBCM and Federation of Canadian Municipalities to study the application of PACE in BC and develop PACE enabling legislation for BC Municipalities.”
The provincial government of that time replied, “The experience of other jurisdictions with PACE has been mixed, including some concerning and unintended consequences, like predatory loan practices. The Province is open to further discussions with UBCM about whether PACE, or a different approach, can best deliver on goals. Currently, provincial legislation provides many options for local governments to support and promote a green economy.”

Fanny Mae Headquarters building in Washington DC
– photo by ajay_suresh via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Most of the concerns were in the United States and originated with the government sponsored mortgage associations Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, who were put into government conservatorship because of the real estate crisis of 2008-2010. As PACE is financed through property taxes, it considered a government program and would be paid out prior to mortgages if there were financial problems.
Brian Scott: “Those two organizations decided that they didn’t like the fact that they were being put behind the PACE loan. So they unilaterally said, ‘we won’t buy mortgages on homes that have PACE financing.’ That was the end of what was a huge tear in terms of growth for residential PACE in the US. Commercial PACE stepped in and is growing exponentially.”

When Cortes Currents (then called the ECOreport) interviewed Cisco DeVries about this issue in 2015, he stated, “The reality is that there has never been a foreclosure on a house with a PACE loan. The risk has been mitigated by the excellent way the programs are run, by the success, and by the fact homeowners are getting real improvements to their property that save them money.”
Cortes Currents: What about the ‘predatory loan practices’ the BC government was referring to?
Brian Scott: “The problem was the small contractor.
There were some people who stepped into the game who would say ‘this is a government program.’ It’s not a government program. It’s government legislation, but the program itself is privately operated.
They would say, ‘there’s no issues with regard to getting a PACE loan’ when in fact Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won’t buy their mortgage. So the homeowner would go to sell the house and then the buyer says, ‘I can’t get a mortgage because you have PACE financing.’
The seniors would go, ‘you’ve ruined my life,’ but the problem isn’t PACE. The problem is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having refused to buy PACE mortgages for their own reasons (there are other organizations in the US that will buy them) and unscrupulous misrepresentations by people who are trying to sell the homeowner. There’s ways of addressing these issues without shutting the whole program down.”

Cortes Currents: Has this been a problem in Canada?”
Brian Scott: “No, the way it’s been structured in Canada, banks don’t feel threatened. Over the years PACE Alberta talked to a number of financial institutions, RBC, Bank of Montreal, a few others. We explained that the PACE financing loan would come ahead of the mortgage, but that measures could be implemented to ensure that the amount of equity in the home wasn’t going to be less than the tax obligation plus the PACE obligation plus the mortgage. Once they’re assured that their mortgage isn’t at risk, they’re like, ‘okay, as long as we know that our interests are protected, it’s not an issue.”
“In fact, if there was a foreclosure here, it’s not the entire PACE loan that becomes due – it’s only that year’s instalment. In the event that there’s a foreclosure, the government gets paid their cut, the pace investor gets paid their current year’s payment. and the mortgage lender gets paid out. The new purchaser assumes the PACE obligation.”
Unlike the United States, where PACE is funded by private investors, the Canadian programs Scott described were funded bytaxpayers.
They were also poorly administered.

Brian Scott: “In the U S for example, the reason residential PACE was as successful as it was, because service providers to homeowners, for example let’s say window installer, could register as a PACE certified installer. Let’s just imagine for a moment that you’re a homeowner and your windows are starting to fog up and you go, ‘well, I guess it’s finally time for me to replace these windows.’ You call me up and I say, ‘Roy, replacing all the windows in your house with pretty good quality windows, better than what you got now, about $16,000.’”
“You go, ‘okay’ and then I say, ‘are you aware of PACE? Let me tell you about it. I’m a PACE certified installer. This is how it works. If you are approved for PACE financing, we could upgrade your windows to the best quality windows that are suitable for your home, that would lower your heating bill, lower your cooling bill, reduce the amount of UV degradation of your furniture, make your home more comfortable and won’t cost you a penny upfront. Are you interested.’”
Most homeowners go, ‘Tell me more.’

“So I explain that it’s a loan that’s provided through a PACE administrator and a PACE originator. The loan pays for all of the upfront costs, the removal of the old windows, putting all the new windows in. A tax lien will be registered on the property and you will repay the loan over the next 20 to 25 years. Up even up to 30, depending on how it’s structured through your property taxes, but:
- you have to own your home.
- You have to be good with your mortgage in terms of history.
- You have to have no tax defaults.
Do you sound like you might meet the bill?”
“If the person says yes, I would hand over a card and say here, call this number right now. You would phone that number and within 15 minutes the person at the other end has been able to verify that you’re a homeowner, that you have good credit history, you have good mortgage payment history, you have good tax history, and they would give you a qualified pre approval. Then I, as the contractor, would say, Roy, let’s just sign a contract right now. You’ll have 10 days or 5 days to change your mind, no questions asked. I walk out the door as a contractor and I’ve got a job. How long did that transaction take? It took about a half an hour.”

“Contrast that to Toronto. Toronto has a PACE program. They call it HELP, Home Energy Loan Program. There are no certified contractors. If a contractor said, ‘Hey, I think you should consider applying for this,’ you would go, ‘okay, what do I have to do?’ They would say, ‘well, you have to contact this organization here. They will send a home inspector out to your house, and you’ll have to make an appointment for that. You’re probably a month to two months out from getting a home inspection. Maybe it’s a little faster, but probably a month to two months. You’re going to pay probably $800 to $1,000. Then they’re going to generate a report and then they’re going to come back and they’re going to meet with you after they’ve generated the report and they’re going to review with you what they’ve decided are the best priorities for you to upgrade your home and make your home more comfortable. At that point in time, if you decide you want to proceed, you can take it the next step and make an application.’ Step by step, by step, by step, we’re talking (best case scenario) between the time the contractor, me wanting to put windows in for you and you finally getting approved, is probably two to three months.”
“So the question then is why would I, as a contractor, want to risk losing a job to suggest to you that you should consider putting in upgraded windows when you’re prepared to go, ‘Oh yeah, 16, 000, where do I sign?’ I’m done; You don’t want to wait. This is a good example of how the government’s protection measures work. It’s not promoted at all.”
“There’s a HELP program in Toronto and Ontario. The program has been in place for about five years, and in the course of five years, they did 300 homes. In that same timeframe when you compare per capita, the U. S. was doing hundreds of thousands of homes.”

“In British Columbia we were making some pretty good headway until the government decided that they would take control. They stepped in and put out a call for proposals. The group that I’ve been working with actually put a team together, which included one of the lead PACE groups in the U S as part of this team. it was a pretty good team, engineers and architects and whatnot and the BC government awarded it to another firm who have a history of promoting government centric sustainability programs. They did a report and then it just got shelved.”
“There was an initial PACE program in Vancouver quite a number of years ago. They made such a mess that they canceled it after 10 households opted in.”

He was critical of the $51.6 million raised through PACE financing in Alberta since the (CIEP) program was set up during 2019.
“First, they turn around and do exactly what we said not to do. They assign it to a quasi-government organization to administer.”
The New Democrats lost the 2022 election and Energy Efficiency Alberta, which had been overseeing the PACE program, disappeared. Scott said Danielle Smith’s government spent about a year setting up a new program.
“Finally the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association stepped into that gap. It’s a private organization in a sense. It’s not the provincial government, it’s a representation of all the different municipalities.”
“They put a $50,000 per home cap on PACE financing for homes, and initially $500,000 for commercial. (The majority of commercial PACE loans in the US are over a million dollars.) I met with the drafters of the policy at a social event after the conference, and we argued about why $500,000 was a ridiculous amount and within a week they had upped it to a million. So they had already arbitrarily capped it at a level that was already too low.”
“Anyways, so their current legislation is still $50,000 and a million. They said, ‘okay, there’s the legislation, but the funds had to come from the municipality.’ No private money was allowed. So then we had to wait for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to obtain government money from the feds, who then doled money out to provinces, who then made it available to municipalities, the city of Edmonton, for example.”
“Their residential program was oversubscribed within 48 hours and they said, ‘Oh, look how successful it is.’”
“I was like, ‘No, that’s an abject failure because if you run out of funds within 48 hours and you have to wait an entire year – how are you tackling climate change? That’s not scalable.”
“They ran the residential program and the commercial program, but they put so many encumbrances on how it could be done and the details and so on and so forth.”
He gave the example of a $1.1 million application in Alberta that was held up because, in addition to all the energy retrofits, the applicants wanted a new electric hot water tank.
“They’ve run it now for about five years. Every time they announce ‘we have a new tranche of money’ within a few days it’s fully subscribed and that’s it. Their whole administration just grinds to a halt in terms of new issuances.”

Cortes Currents: So what are the next steps towards having a strong PACE program implemented in BC?
Brian Scott: “For Cortes, I think it’s really just about putting the word out there that this is something that homeowners and businesses could take advantage of.”
“Become supporters on the website, which means simply going in and writing, ‘I support this.’ Fill out this form, we’re done.”
“Start demanding from our MLA that the new Democrats do something about implementing a PACE program in BC which takes it to the next level. Do it in a way which is actually going to align itself with best practices from the US and not implement a program which is going to be so top heavy and, and cumbersome as to become liability bulletproof and nonproductive.”
“You want to make it easy for people. You want to make it so that it doesn’t require any government dollars, it doesn’t require any effort on the part of homeowners, and it’s profitable for businesses.”
You have been listening to an interview with Brian Scott, one of the founding directors of PACE Alberta as well as an advocate for the PACE program in Canada. He now lives on Cortes Island.
Links of Interest:
- PACENation
- PACEAlberta
- Toronto Home Energy Loan Program (Help)
- Clean Energy Improvement Program (CEIP) – PACE program in Alberta
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