Salt Lake County wants to make a friend out of a foe in creating a home-energy program that would extend low-interest loans to residents looking to seal up drafty windows, swap out power-sucking furnaces or put solar panels on the roof.

With the help of Utah Clean Energy, the county struck up a conversation with banks and credit unions Thursday to figure out lower-cost financing options for people wanting to make their homes more energy efficient or more reliant on renewable energy.

In an upper room of Zions Bank in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah Clean Energy staged a workshop for 50-plus financial experts, contractors and government officials that touched on everything from one-year, same-as-cash loans to "green" mortgages that set money aside for energy upgrades.

The goal: Get more people to make their homes environmentally friendly.

"We all know that this will not happen unless we get the economic and financing pieces figured out," said Sara Baldwin, senior policy and regulatory associate for Utah Clean Energy. "Today is the beginning of a conversation that we hope will continue."

That conversation is the "Plan B" officials contemplated in March when the lights went out on SB194, a bill that would have enabled the county to lend homeowners tens of thousands of dollars in low-interest loans for energy upgrades.

Because of opposition from the Utah Banking Association — which argued that the loan program not only would compete with banks and credit unions, but also could lead to property liens if borrowers failed to make payments — the measure fizzled.

County officials pledged to try again — by working with lenders. "Let's not make this the end of the conversation," county environmental-policy coordinator Kimberly Barnett said. "Let's continue the conversation with our banking and credit-union friends."

But overcoming the financial hurdles is no easy task. Although banks and credit unions offer mortgages that allow for environmental retrofits, they remain wary of unsecured loans that could prove risky.

Big lenders also shy away from energy-efficiency loans because of their novelty. They are a new enough commodity that, according to bankers, they don't have as much appeal on the secondary loan market.

However, Carl Churchill, a mortgage adviser for Home Savings of America, suspects lenders will soften to energy-efficiency loans over time— both to restore their image after the recession and to compete with other lenders.

"As the economy comes back," he said, "there is going to be a lot of competition. People are going to start looking for little niches they can make money at." —

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