Metro News Release

For immediate release: December 20, 2006

Metro awarded $15 million for clean renewable energy bonds

The U.S. Treasury Department has awarded approximately $15 million to Metro for clean renewable energy bonds (CREBS) as part of a national program to fund alternative, renewable energy projects.

Under this program, Metro will use the $14.67 million award to install solar energy equipment atop six buildings in Maryland and Virginia, including the Shady Grove, Greenbelt and New Carrollton rail yards. The project is in development with the bonds to issue in 2007 and the construction to begin thereafter.

In the Energy Tax Incentives Act of 2005, Congress enabled governmental entities and electric cooperatives to apply for the availability to issue clean renewable energy bonds to finance qualified clean renewable energy projects. They are zero interest bonds where the Federal government will underwrite the interest to the purchasers of the CREBS in the form of tax credits.

Metro applied for the bonds in April. The transit authority will negotiate a 20-year deal with New York-based finance company, Allco Renewable Energy Group Limited, and Baltimore-based solar energy company, Sun Edison, to design, build, operate and maintain the solar energy equipment with no anticipated upfront costs to Metro.

Under the terms of the transaction, the financing consortium will make payments to Metro that will be used to retire the bonds and Metro will own the solar energy generating facilities. Under the agreement, Metro will buy energy from the financing consortium at a fixed, below market rate. Solar panels can last 40 years and are anticipated to save Metro at least $75,000 a year in energy costs.

“The clean renewable energy bonds that will bring solar energy to our facilities represent another building block in Metro’s environmental stewardship,” said Jack Requa, Metro’s Acting General Manager. Additional environmentally friendly efforts include the purchase of hybrid electric and compressed natural gas buses, using ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and obtaining a federal grant to develop hydrogen fuel cell buses.

News release issued on December 20, 2006.