Resiliency C-PACE: financing wind, flood, seismic and wildfire hardening

Most owners meet C-PACE as energy-efficiency financing. In a number of states it can also pay to harden a commercial building against earthquakes, floods, wind and wildfire. Washington goes as far as putting the word in the programme’s name: C-PACER, Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy and Resiliency.

That matters to owners because resiliency work is often expensive, structural and hard to justify on utility savings alone. If your state allows it, C-PACE can put that work into the same long-term, tax-bill-repaid structure as an HVAC upgrade. If your state does not, no amount of clever packaging changes that.

This guide reads the statutes and programme documents directly. Every rule below comes from the source linked to it, checked on 27 October 2026. Where we could not confirm a state’s position, we say so rather than guess.

For the general list of what C-PACE pays for, see what C-PACE can pay for.

What “resiliency” adds

Classic C-PACE improvements are judged by what they save: kilowatt-hours, therms, gallons. Resiliency improvements are judged by what they protect against. A seismic retrofit does not lower a utility bill. A raised floor slab does not reduce water use. Adding resiliency to a statute is therefore a real expansion of the programme, not a relabelling.

Washington’s definition is the clearest example of what that expansion looks like in law. Under RCW 36.165.010, a “qualified improvement” is a permanent improvement affixed to real property and intended to do one of three things. The first two are the familiar energy and water purposes. The third is to “increase resilience, including but not limited to seismic retrofits, flood mitigation, stormwater management, wildfire and wind resistance, energy storage, and microgrids.”

State by state, from the statute or programme

Washington

Washington’s C-PACER statute is chapter 36.165 RCW. The definitions section carries the session-law citation 2020 c 27 s 2. Eligible property under RCW 36.165.010 is privately owned commercial, industrial or agricultural real property, or multifamily residential real property with five or more dwelling units. The resiliency limb of the qualified-improvement definition is quoted above: seismic retrofits, flood mitigation, stormwater management, wildfire and wind resistance, energy storage and microgrids.

Our Washington page covers the state programme.

Florida, including 2024’s SB 770

Florida rewrote its PACE law in 2024. The Florida Senate’s bill summary for CS/CS/SB 770, “Improvements to Real Property,” says the bill divides commercial and residential PACE programmes into separate statutes to provide separate procedures and protections, and adds resiliency improvements to qualifying improvements. The summary says those provisions take effect 1 July 2024 if the bill is approved by the Governor or becomes law without the Governor’s signature.

The current text is in section 163.08 of the Florida Statutes (2025 edition), whose history line ends with s. 1, ch. 2024-273. For commercial property, the qualifying improvements include “making resiliency improvements,” which the statute says includes but is not limited to:

• repairing, replacing, improving or constructing a roof, including improvements that strengthen the roof deck attachment;
• creating a secondary water barrier to prevent water intrusion;
• installing wind-resistant shingles or gable-end bracing;
• reinforcing roof-to-wall connections; and
• flood and water damage mitigation and resiliency improvements, prioritising those that qualify for reductions in flood insurance premiums, including raising a structure above the base flood elevation, stormwater and flood resiliency such as flood diversion apparatus, drainage gates or shoreline improvements, and flood-damage-resistant building materials.

The flood item in that list also covers improvements to a structure to achieve wind or flood insurance rate reductions, including building elevation. For a Florida owner, that last phrase is the practical point: the statute ties eligible hardening directly to the insurance premium.

Virginia

Virginia’s C-PACE statute is Code of Virginia § 15.2-958.3. It defines a “resiliency improvement” as an improvement that increases the capacity of a structure or infrastructure to withstand or recover from natural disasters, the effects of climate change, and attacks and accidents. The listed examples, which are “including, but not limited to,” are flood mitigation or the mitigation of the impacts of flooding, inundation adaptation, natural or nature-based features and living shorelines, enhancement of fire or wind resistance, microgrids, energy storage, and enhancement of the resilience capacity of a natural system, structure or infrastructure.

Stormwater management appears in the Virginia statute as its own eligible category rather than inside the resiliency definition. The section’s history shows amendments as recent as 2025, so check the current text before relying on any single clause.

Oregon: seismic, under its own statute

Oregon handles seismic work through a separate statute, ORS 223.685, titled “Local government programs to finance seismic rehabilitation of real property.” Qualifying real property includes multifamily residential dwellings or commercial or industrial buildings that the local government determines can be benefited by seismic rehabilitation. Seismic rehabilitation means improvements intended to reduce or prevent harm to persons and property due to the effects of seismic activity, authorised by a local government running a programme under the section. The history line reads 2015 c.48 §1; 2017 c.283 §2.

The word to notice is “local.” ORS 223.685 authorises local governments to run these programmes; it does not by itself mean every Oregon jurisdiction offers one.

Utah

A Utah C-PACE brochure for property owners, hosted on energy.utah.gov (the file is dated 12.13.24), says C-PACE provides long-term financing for energy efficiency, water efficiency and renewable energy projects “as well as seismic retrofits, and much more” for commercial and industrial buildings. The same brochure lists terms of up to 30 years and up to 100% financing of soft and hard costs.

Colorado

Holland & Hart partner Kathryn Carlisle-Kesling wrote on 29 July 2026 that, under the updated Colorado C-PACE Program Guide (v6.0, effective April 2026) and SB25-182, projects meeting enhanced energy performance standards can reach up to 75% total assessment-to-value with written programme approval. In the same article she writes that eligible measures have also expanded to explicitly include resiliency improvements, with examples including indoor air quality systems, battery energy storage systems, backup power systems, storm hardening, flood mitigation, seismic upgrades and wildfire resistance.

California: wildfire, under SB 465

California’s SB 465, “Property Assessed Clean Energy Program: wildfire safety improvements,” was chaptered on 27 September 2018. According to the CalMatters Digital Democracy summary, it would, until 2029, enact the Wildfire Safety Finance Act, letting a city, county, or city and county with a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone designation create areas for contractual assessments to finance the installation of wildfire safety improvements permanently fixed to real property.

The summary also says the bill would become operative only if two specified provisions of AB 2063 became operative on or before 1 January 2019; we did not confirm that they did. The summary does not say whether commercial property is covered. Treat SB 465 as a wildfire PACE authority whose commercial reach you need to confirm with the local programme.

Two deals that used C-PACE for seismic work

Seton Medical Center, Daly City, California. California Healthline reported on 26 May 2017 that the hospital had secured a $40 million investment from financiers. Its parent, Verity Health System, borrowed from CleanFund and Petros PACE through C-PACE, structured as a special assessment on a property tax bill. The hospital had two patient care buildings in the highest danger category. CleanFund’s Joe Euphrat called it the first financing of that type to be used for seismic safety upgrades for hospitals in California.

Snowpine Lodge, Alta, Utah. The Utah C-PACE brochure hosted on energy.utah.gov (file dated 12.13.24) lists the lodge as having used over $19 million of C-PACE financing to upgrade its HVAC and plumbing systems, its building envelope, and its seismic and avalanche resiliency.

Both deals mixed resiliency with conventional work, or sat inside a wider capital plan. That is the realistic picture: resiliency is usually one line in a C-PACE package, not the whole package.

States we could not confirm

We did not confirm resiliency coverage in any state not listed above. That includes Texas, where we could not verify resiliency coverage under its PACE statute, and California’s seismic authority, whose statute page we could not reach. Absence from this list means we have not checked it, not that the state excludes resiliency.

When this is the wrong answer

If your state’s statute does not name resiliency, a lender or provider cannot add it. If it does, the work still has to fit the programme’s underwriting, valuation limits and lender-consent rules like any other C-PACE project. And if the resiliency spend is small next to the cost of closing a C-PACE assessment, ordinary capital may simply be cheaper. We will tell you that if it is the case.

How to check your own state

1. Start with the statute. Look for the word “resiliency” or “resilience” in the definition of qualifying improvement, and read the list that follows it.
2. Read the programme guide. In Oregon, ORS 223.685 leaves it to local governments to establish programmes; in Colorado, the programme guide carries the detail.
3. Ask whether the work must be paired with energy measures. Washington, Virginia and (for commercial property) Florida list resiliency as its own category in statute, but programmes still set their own underwriting.

Our state-by-state index links each state’s programme page. If you want a second read on whether your hardening project fits, get in touch. C-PACE Desk is an advisory and placement service, not a lender.