Rocky Mountain Bank and New Mexico Bank & Trust have both partnered with BluePath Finance to provide upfront financing for the installation of energy-efficient technologies used by commercial, industrial and agricultural companies, and nonprofit and public sectors.
BluePath provides funding for energy-related projects with up-front costs of $100,000 to $5 million including lighting and lighting controls, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and building controls, industrial motors, boilers, furnaces and refrigeration systems, and fluid transport systems.
Most of these systems save end users 60 percent of their energy consumption, according to BluePath. It has capacity to fund up to $150 million in retrofit projects, the company says.
BluePath’s services include streamlined credit analysis, rapid processing of documentation, energy efficiency credits and rebates, and customer billing services, and it designs financing so end users can pay for new installations from reduced energy bills.
Montana-based Rocky Mountain Bank has offices in Bigfork, Billings, Bozeman, Kalispell, Plains, Plentywood, Stevensville and Whitehall.
New Mexico Bank & Trust operates 16 offices in the cities of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Lunas, Rio Rancho, Clovis, Portales and Melrose. Heartland Financial USA, the parent company of New Mexico Bank & Trust, is a minority investor in BluePath Finance.
Both banks say the partnership will help the bank’s business customers cut costs and increase profits.
In September, 14 California counties and 126 cities launched the nation’s largest PACE program, a financing tool to help commercial property owners reduce their buildings’ energy and water use.
A month later, Johnson Controls announced that the corporate headquarters of Prologis at San Francisco’s Pier 1 will be the first commercial energy efficiency upgrade funded through the city’s GreenFinanceSF program that uses PACE bond financing. Johnson Controls, which will design and implement the project, expects the retrofit project to reduce annual energy costs by more than $98,000 and reduce purchased energy by 32 percent.