On November 8, California regulators approved (PDF) plans by the state’s largest utilities to make an innovative financing proposal called on-bill repayment (OBR) available to their commercial customers. The programs, which will enable property owners to avoid the upfront cost of energy improvements, are scheduled to launch in March 2013.

Regular readers of this blog will recall that I have reported several times before, most recently on August 31, on OBR. With on-bill repayment, commercial property owners in California can tap third-party financing to pay for energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades and repay the loans via monthly electricity bills. If the property is sold, the loan stays with the meter and would be taken over by the new tenant. (In March, I described in more detail how OBR works.)

On-bill repayment was presented (PDF) to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) by Brad Copithorne, Energy and Financial Policy Specialist with the San Francisco office of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). OBR has been tried elsewhere, including Oregon and New York state, but Copithorne customized the concept for the California market.

via California Approves Program Eliminating Upfront Cost Of Energy Upgrades – Forbes.