PlacerSustain: Voices of Placer County's Sustainability Community

This is a clip from the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program about their pilot effort to fund water and energy conservation through additional charges on the customers water bill.

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Introducing the Windsor Efficiency PAYS Program

Residential water customers – both homeowners and renters – in the Town of Windsor are eligible to participate in a pilot program which will enables them to finance an array of energy and water efficiency measures for their homes and pay for them over time through tariffed charges on their water bills. The payments are structured to be less than the estimated savings, a type of financing known as PAYS®: Pay As You Save.

The goal of the pilot program is to establish a self-sustaining tariffed on-water-bill (OWB) financing program that will (1) result in high participation among a wide range of property owners and renters in water conservation and water-related energy reduction improvements; (2) target a 20 percent participation rate in the pilot communities; (3) establish a “cash-positive conservation offer that delivers high participation rates among the wide range of users such as owner-occupied residents, landlords, renters, and persons with concerns such as debt and length of occupancy; (4) implement a sustainably funded community scale on-water-bill financing program that can grow with increasing participation rates; (5) provide a complementary financing option for Energy Independence Program and other financing resources; and (6) establish an OWB program design that ultimately provides for regional implementation by all nine cities and unincorporated areas of Sonoma County to ensure regional consistency and achieve economies of scale. 

SCEIP is the Certification Agent for the Town of Windsor's Efficiency PAYS program.  In that capacity, SCEIP will be the primary contact for the program, processing applications, overseeing the onsite inspections, and more.

For more information, please call (707) 565-6472 or visit http://www.townofwindsor.com/efficiencypays.