资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Congress has provided federal agencies mechanisms whereby they can finance energy efficiency and renewable energy projects using private money. However, because the federal government's borrowing rate is lower than that of private entities, the energy projects could be performed at a lower cost than at present. Despite potential savings to the government of well over (sic)100 million dollars per year, this does not occur. This note provides some reasons. One involves interpretation of existing legislation. Given the present legal interpretation, Congress would need to change the law to enable government agencies to finance energy projects through a federal entity, such as the Federal Finance Bank. However, the note points out that Agencies have little incentive to push for such a change, and that Congress itself seems inclined to enable more, not less, private financing of agency projects. Thus, it seems unlikely that the potential savings from government financing of federal energy projects will occur.