May 18, 2007

City Hall Is Going Green

Sixteen cities around the world will receive financing from major banks to make their government buildings more energy efficient. Citi, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, UBS and ABN Amro have each committed $1 billion to finance upgrades in lighting, cooling, heating, rooting and other environmental improvements. This initiative was announced Wednesday at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit in New York. Houston, New York, Chicago and London are among the cities participating.

What's interesting is how these cities will pay for the improvements. The banks are providing loans to finance the improvements. The city governments believe that the energy savings will exceed the financing costs. In other words, the energy improvements will pay for themselves, which is pretty cool. (Pun sort-of intended)

Check out all the details in the article in Wired magazine.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How's this ANY different from the "Performance Contracting" business model long familiar to the BAS community?

Same, Same, only energy, right?

Tio Prósperito said...

Although I'm not familiar with the acronym BAS (I'm guessing "building and services"?), I can read into your comments.

I believe you're right on. Applying a (proven) business model from another industry to energy savings makes a lot of sense. Instead of focusing on the societal/qualitative benefits of "going green," let's move the discussion to a financial/quantitative level. I think everyone likes to save money. So if you can do a good thing (like being environmentally friendly) and save money at the same time, everybody wins.

Just for grins, try a Google search on BAS. :-)

Happy said...

That's really nice idea for the largest cities!