Reviving a financing authority that had been on the shelf for more than six years, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer last week announced the appointment of Jan McFarland to be executive director of the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority.
“I want the authority to play a key role in California’s efforts to fight climate change, increase use of clean, renewable energy, and create jobs in our growing green economy,” Lockyer said.
The authority was created in 1980 as the California Alternative Energy Source Financing Authority, adopting its current name in 1994, when its statute was amended to include development and commercialization of advanced transportation technologies, according to a state budget document.
McFarland was formally appointed last week, when the authority held its first meeting in more than six years.
“It had been kind of idle since 2001,” said Joe DeAnda, a spokesman for Lockyer.
Like other authorities operating out of the treasurer’s office, the energy and transportation agency can approve conduit bonds for issuers it its subject area, DeAnda said. It has also been designed to issue clean renewable energy bonds, or CREBs.
According to state budget documents, the authority is authorized to issue up to $1 billion of revenue bonds, of which it had issued $181.6 million as of June 30, 2007.
McFarland’s experience includes work as special adviser to a California Energy Commission member, serving as executive director of Americans for Solar Power and the California Solar Energy Industries Association, and working as senior policy adviser at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
As treasurer, Lockyer has been lobbying for a plan that would authorize up to $5 billion of bonds to “green” state-owned buildings, focusing on using state-owned real estate to generate solar power.
