C-PACE for industrial, warehouse and cold storage buildings

Industrial owners are often told C-PACE pays for “energy efficiency” and come away thinking it means a lighting retrofit. The closed industrial deals tell a bigger story. They paid for roofs and walls, mechanical systems, insulation in freezer buildings and, in one Philadelphia case, cranes. They funded new warehouses from the ground up and the gut renovation of a hundred-year-old naval building.

What follows is built from the deal records themselves: what each one financed, how it was structured, and what it does and does not prove for your building. If C-PACE is new to you, start with our C-PACE overview.

What industrial owners actually finance

There is no national list of eligible industrial measures. Each state program sets its own test, and the deal sheets are the most honest evidence of what passes it. Read across the deals below and the same categories recur.

Building envelope. Roof and wall systems were financed in both phases of the Rhoads Industries project in Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia Energy Authority’s deal sheets. Insulation appears in the measure lists for Freezpak and for a new self-storage building at 4002-22 Ridge Avenue in the authority’s 2022 Year in Review.

HVAC. High-efficiency HVAC appears in both Rhoads phases, and HVAC appears in the Freezpak and Ridge Storage measure lists.

Lighting and controls. Interior LED lighting and controllers are listed for Rhoads; lighting is listed for Freezpak and Ridge Storage.

Water systems. Listed for Freezpak and Ridge Storage in the 2022 Year in Review.

The same Year in Review notes that 2022 saw the expansion of C-PACE in Pennsylvania to include measures to improve resiliency and indoor air quality, so the eligible list is not frozen. It moves when legislatures move it.

Neither cold storage source below describes the refrigeration plant itself as financed. If your project depends on financing the refrigeration system or production equipment, get that confirmed in writing by your program administrator before you size anything around it.

Cold storage: two new builds, two different stacks

Freezpak, Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Energy Authority’s 2022 Year in Review records that on 30 November 2022 the authority, Nuveen Green Capital and BGFP Philadelphia LLC closed C-PACE financing of $30,083,709 for a new cold storage facility at 2201 E. Allegheny Avenue. The authority describes it as a 168K square foot facility that, as designed, was expected to be 30% more energy efficient than Philadelphia’s building energy code requires. The financed measures were HVAC, water systems, lighting and insulation.

The developer’s own explanation is the useful part. Joseph Byrne of BG Capital, quoted in the same report, said that “alternative debt solutions like C-PACE have now become critical in rounding out the capital stack within larger scale projects.” That is the job C-PACE did here: not the whole financing, but a long-term layer that let the rest of the stack close.

Origo Cold Storage, Madera, California. X-Caliber Capital announced on 15 November 2022 that its affiliates had closed a $52 million combined financing for the new construction of Origo Cold Storage, a 254,000-square-foot almond cold storage facility serving the Madera community. X-Caliber Rural Capital provided $35 million through the USDA’s Food Supply Chain program, and CastleGreen Finance provided $17 million of C-PACE through the California Statewide Communities Development Authority PACE program. The release says the C-PACE funds would be used for “various energy efficiency and resiliency improvements to be installed on site,” and that the facility was projected to be completed by April 2023.

Notice how differently the two deals were built. In Philadelphia, C-PACE was a single $30 million layer. In California, C-PACE was the smaller piece, alongside a larger federally guaranteed loan.

Pairing C-PACE with USDA money

The Origo deal is a public example of a C-PACE assessment and a USDA-guaranteed loan on the same building. Be precise about what it was. The USDA portion came through the Food Supply Chain Guaranteed Loan Program. The X-Caliber release described that programme as partnering with lenders to guarantee loans of up to $40 million for meat and poultry processing capacity and other food supply chain infrastructure. That is the release’s description as of November 2022; check the current USDA rules before relying on it.

What the deal does prove is structural: a USDA-guaranteed lender and a C-PACE assessment can coexist in one capital stack. If your industrial property sits in a rural area, our USDA B&I page covers the programme most rural industrial owners will look at first, and our guide to the B&I rural test explains how eligibility is drawn.

Heavy industrial: the Navy Yard deals and the cranes

The most instructive industrial deal on public record is Rhoads Industries’ Building 57 at 1900 Kitty Hawk Avenue in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The Philadelphia Energy Authority’s deal sheet describes a building originally built by the U.S. Navy in 1919 and in significant disrepair when Rhoads purchased it in 2014. The sheet says Rhoads would use the space for heavy industrial manufacturing and testing.

Phase 1. Dated 2 August 2021, Industrial Metals Manufacturing, LLC borrowed $15,000,000 in C-PACE financing from CCG PACE Funding for the substantial renovation of Bays A and B of the building. The sheet describes the project as a substantial renovation of roughly two-thirds of the building’s footprint. The financed measures were high-efficiency HVAC, interior LED lighting and controllers, and building envelope (roof and wall) systems. The deal notice records a financing rate of 5.10% and a total qualified project of $16,508,100.

Phase 2. On 4 October 2024, the same parties closed a second phase of $32,000,000. According to the Phase 2 deal sheet, it was combined with the original $15 million into an amended and restated total of $47 million. The measures listed are the same categories as before plus one addition: cranes. The Phase 2 notice gives a blended financing rate of 6.89% and a financing term of 27 years.

Three lessons come out of this pair of documents.

First, C-PACE can be phased. An owner who financed part of a renovation in 2021 went back three years later and enlarged the assessment rather than starting over.

Second, the second rate was higher. The blended figure on the combined $47 million was 6.89%, against 5.10% on the original tranche alone. Rates move with the market, and a later phase is priced when it closes.

Third, the cranes. Their appearance on the Phase 2 list shows that one program, on one project, accepted a piece of industrial equipment that most owners would never think to ask about. It does not show that cranes are eligible in your state. Treat it as a reason to ask, not as an answer.

New-construction warehouses

C-PACE is not only a retrofit tool. The Utah Office of Energy Development’s case study flyer, which carries no publication date and which we checked on 22 October 2026, lists a warehouse distribution project in West Valley City: a two-building, high-bay industrial and warehouse facility totalling 404,800 square feet. It was new construction, financed with $4,720,000 of C-PACE over a 25-year term, with energy efficiency measures expected to exceed code by 20%.

Wisconsin has a similar example. PACE Wisconsin announced on 27 October 2020 that the F-Street Group used almost $2 million of C-PACE to finance energy efficiency measures for the construction of a 218,240-square-foot industrial building in the Southpoint Commerce Park in Appleton, built to house warehouse and distribution tenants. The release says F Street used C-PACE in its capital stack as a low-cost financing solution compared to traditional equity.

Our guide to C-PACE on new construction explains how the scope is measured against code on a ground-up build.

When industrial C-PACE does not fit

Say this plainly, because it is the part most often skipped.

When the money you need is for machinery, not the building. If your capex is mostly production lines, racking or refrigeration plant that your program has not confirmed as eligible, the assessment may not cover the bulk of it, and a smaller assessment may not justify the process.

When your mortgage lender will not consent. If the building carries a mortgage, get your lender’s position on an assessment before you spend on engineering; a refusal can end the deal. Our lender consent guide covers how that conversation goes.

When your jurisdiction has no active program. Availability is decided state by state and often county by county. Check your parcel on our state coverage map before planning anything.

When the hold is short and the assessment will not travel. C-PACE is long-term money. If you intend to sell soon and expect a buyer or their lender to resist an assessment, the cheaper answer may be conventional debt.

When the energy case is thin. Programs measure eligible scope against an energy or water benefit. A building that is already efficient, or a scope that is mostly cosmetic, gives the assessment little to stand on.

For data-heavy industrial conversions, our data center guide covers the cooling and power side in more detail.

If you want to know whether your warehouse, plant or cold store sits on the right side of these lines, tell us about the project and we will give you a straight answer, including when the answer is no.

C-PACE Desk is an advisory and placement service. We are not a lender, a fund or a state program administrator. Nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice; program rules differ by state and by jurisdiction within a state, and your own counsel should confirm anything you rely on.