SAN DIEGO, May 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Renovate America, a leading provider of home improvement financing, today announced that its HERO Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing option has helped make over 100,000 ENERGY STAR®-qualified improvements, which together are estimated to be saving homeowners nearly $1 billion on their utility bills.
HERO is the nation's leading form of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, which empowers property owners to make energy, efficiency and resiliency improvements and then pay for them over time at a competitive, fixed rate through an additional line item on their property taxes. Since HERO launched in late 2011, over 115,000 homeowners have used it to finance nearly $3 billion in renewable-energy, energy-efficient and water-efficient upgrades to their homes.
The familiar blue label of the federal government's ENERGY STAR® program denotes products that have been independently certified as energy-efficient. Among the 100,828 ENERGY STAR®-certified improvements made to date with HERO financing, nearly half – approximately 46,700 – are windows, doors and skylights. The next-largest category is HVAC, including over 32,500 ENERGY STAR®-certified air-conditioning units. ENERGY STAR®-certified reflective roofs, water heaters, lighting fixtures and pool pumps make up the rest.
The ENERGY STAR®-certified improvements made with HERO are projected to save over 8 billion kilowatt-hours of energy over the expected useful life of the products installed – enough to power over 750,000 American homes in a year. By using energy more efficiently, these products are also expected to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by nearly 1.9 million tons over their lifetime, which is equivalent to taking around 370,000 cars off the road for a year.
"For tens of thousands of homeowners from California to Florida, HERO financing has enabled greater access to superior energy efficiency products," said Renovate America CEO Roy Guthrie. "PACE financing programs like HERO are one of the most effective tools for upgrading our existing housing stock with ENERGY STAR®-certified products, helping homeowners save money and reduce emissions while increasing the overall efficiency of our communities and improving the reliability of our electric system."
About Renovate America
Renovate America offers a tech-enabled financing platform for home improvement and commercial retrofits that empowers communities to modernize and make their housing stock more efficient, while giving small businesses the tools they need to grow. In addition to financing home improvements through an unsecured lending product, Benji, Renovate America offers communities HERO financing. HERO is the leading residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program in the U.S. and has been used by the owners of over 115,000 homes to make energy and efficiency improvements. It is estimated that HERO is on track to save billions of dollars in energy and water bills, and has created over 23,000 local trade jobs that cannot be offshored or automated. Renovate America has built the world's largest green bond platform, with a volume of originations that enables securitization of HERO PACE bonds multiple times a year, attracting international investment to meet U.S. clean-energy objectives.
About ENERGY STAR®
ENERGY STAR® is the simple choice for energy efficiency. For over 25 years, EPA's ENERGY STAR® program has been America's resource for saving energy and protecting the environment. Join the millions already making a difference at energystar.gov. More background information about ENERGY STAR® can be found at energystar.gov/about and energystar.gov/numbers.
Thousands of industrial, commercial, utility, state, and local organizations—including more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500®—rely on their partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deliver cost-saving energy efficiency solutions. Together, since 1992, ENERGY STAR® and its partners have helped save American families and businesses over $450 billion and over 3.5 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity while also achieving broad emissions reductions—all through voluntary action.
Contact: Greg Frost
(619) 568-6747
gfrost@renovateamerica.com
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SOURCE Renovate America
