CEIP Financing for the Commercial Customer
A general assumption in the green energy industry is that it is not an intelligent investment for the commercial customer. With an ROI (return-on-investment) being much too low, and the cost of installation, manpower, and other hard costs being much too high, the typical commercial building and owner will look but oftentimes not touch.
With CEIP, that thought process can not only be challenged, but also proven wrong. This Alberta-grown program incentivizes for both the homeowner and the commercial property owner; there is no discrimination and there is no catch.
CEIP financing is available for almost every form of business or operation; so long as the applicant owns the property and pays property taxes; financing can be afforded for energy and renewable retrofits.
Unlike the residential CEIP financing, which caps at $50 000 in upgrades, commercial properties can look at financing a project or projects to a total of $1 000 000, with no need to worry about paying for any upfront cost, down payment, or high interest rate. Like the homeowner, CEIP sees commercial property owners as investment towards a greener future, a more robust economy, and a better world.
What can CEIP do for my business?
1) Offering a zero up-front investment, CEIP provides 100% financing for building efficiency projects which provides external capital and frees up internal budget resources
2) Projects are designed by CEIP to ensure that energy savings minus payment results in an immediate and positive cash flow each month based on the forecasted savings; the basic result is that implementing CEIP projects actually lowers monthly operating expenses
3) Commercial property financing almost never exceeds 10 years; general real estate lending currently has terms of 5 to 7 years, while construction lending is 1 to 3 years. With CEIP, commercial upgrade lending can be up to 20 years, which will overcome the barrier of insufficient payback or ROI
4) Once a CEIP assessment is done on a property, it will remain with that property upon sale and transfer to new ownership
5) As many commercial properties lease out to tenants, and with payback of CEIP being included in property tax, the payments themselves can be easily transferred to residing tenants in the building
6) With the added upgrades to the buildings due to CEIP financing, the owners can apply higher rents and ensure longer-term property value increase
The general purpose of CEIP financing for commercial building owners is to ensure that they have access to affordable upgrade costs to retrofit properties with renewable, reusable technologies and materials that can decrease carbon footprints, resource use, and increase savings on monthly bills and overall costs of running the properties.
