Search Results
Resource
Louisville, Kentucky Cool Roof Rebates
March 2017
In 2016, the Louisville Office of Sustainability commissioned a study from Georgia Tech’s Urban Climate Lab to map the hottest areas of the city. The study revealed that not only was Louisville’s urban heat island one of the most severe in the nation, but the hottest areas of the city were, also where the most vulnerable frontline communities were located. The study recommended a variety of interventions, including policies promoting cool surfaces, increased vegetation, and energy efficiency strategies, with each of the interventions combining to be greater than the sum of each when deployed in the same area. One of the interventions that Louisville implemented was a rebate for cool roofs that property owners installed on their buildings. In order to ensure that some of the voluntary funding was allocated for low-income, more vulnerable areas, the office designated 70% of the funding to go to neighborhoods identified in the study as having the most severe heat islands. While rebates can be difficult for low-income property owners, the techniques used to target the program to areas of the highest need can be replicated in other places for grants or no-interest loans. The program was funded through a partnership with Louisville’s energy utility.
Related Organizations: City of Louisville, Kentucky
Resource Category: Solutions
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
New Orleans, Louisiana Zika virus response
April 2016
In 2016, when the risk of Zika virus in the United States became higher, the mayor of New Orleans brought together public and private partners to proactively manage those risks and protect the city’s most vulnerable residents. By activating the local public health department, the Board of mosquito control, local physicians, environmental experts, and community members, the government was able to create a comprehensive Zika response plan to protect the public, especially pregnant women. In the first phase, partners educated the public on risks and mitigation strategies, especially healthcare providers and facilities. The city also stepped up vector control to reduce risk and surveillance of mosquito populations to ensure effectiveness. This combination of efforts was intended to ensure that Phases 2 and 3 of the Plan (activated in the case of reported cases of Zika) would be delayed or unnecessary due to preventive measures. By focusing education efforts for the public and healthcare entities on the risk to the most vulnerable subgroup of residents, the partners could ensure that pregnant women would be well-protected. The efforts were funded by general public health funding streams.
Resource Category: Planning
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
Maycroft Apartments “Resiliency Room” in Affordable Housing Complex in Washington, DC
May 2019
A non-profit affordable housing developer, Jubilee Housing, is working to incorporate a “resiliency room” and increase affordable housing by renovating the historic Maycroft Apartments in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D. C. – an area of the District that has been experiencing rapid gentrification. The project will provide affordable housing and will renovate the complex's basement into a resiliency room to provide both emergency and everyday services for residents.
Related Organizations: Jubilee Housing, New Partners Community Solar, DC Department of Housing and Community Development
Resource Category: Solutions
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
Bronzeville Microgrid - Chicago, Illinois
2019
The Bronzeville Microgrid project deployed in a neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois demonstrates how utilities can invest in pilot microgrid projects to benefit underserved communities. Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) implemented a 7.7 MW community microgrid that will provide service to approximately 770 customers in the historically black neighborhood of Bronzeville Chicago. The project, which is a key component of the utility’s “Community of the Future Initiative,” will serve an area that includes facilities that provide critical services, including hospitals, police headquarters, fire departments, a library, public works buildings, restaurants, health clinics, public transportation, educational facilities, and churches. Bronzeville, considered to be a climate vulnerable urban area, was selected using a data-driven process and based on many socioeconomic factors including income, public health, and lack of investment in the community’s existing infrastructure.
Related Organizations: Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd)
Resource Category: Solutions
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
The Energy Democracy Scorecard and Flipbook
January 2020
According to the Energy Democracy Scorecard and Flipbook from the Emerald Cities Collaborative, “Energy Democracy” is defined as an ideal scenario where a frontline community “shifts completely away from an extractive economy, energy, and governance system to one that is regenerative, provides reparations, transforms the power structures, and creates new governance and ownership practices. ” The Energy Democracy Flipbook is designed to help frontline communities, such as low-income people of color, who are vulnerable to climate change to self-evaluate their communities’ energy economy condition.
Related Organizations: Emerald Cities Collaborative
Authors or Affiliated Users: Anthony Giancatarino, Donna House
Resource Category: Education and Outreach
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
Port of Long Beach, California Microgrid
2018
In early 2018 the Port of Long Beach, in conjunction with Schneider Electric, began planning a microgrid solar Photovoltaic (PV) and Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) project. The project will enhance reliability and resiliency of the port’s electricity supply, and reduce the port’s carbon footprint, while simultaneously strengthening local workforce development initiatives, and providing paid, on-the-job training to port workers. By powering the port’s electric terminal equipment and reducing its reliance on diesel generators and the grid, the project reduces the port’s GHG emissions footprint and criteria air pollutant emissions. The microgrid implementation will use union labor from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, with paid training hours to fill workers’ knowledge gaps in installing comparable microgrids. Moreover, the project enlists and provides educational experience to students from the University of California - Irvine, Advanced Power and Energy program in analyzing its performance data. Funding for the plan comes from a $5 million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC), combined with $2.12 million in matched funds from the Port of Long Beach. The grant requires that the project demonstrate benefits to electricity customers in the local grid in the form of enhanced reliability, lower costs, or improved safety. An overriding objective of all CEC grant projects, is to “lead to technological advancement and breakthroughs to overcome barriers to achieving the state’s statutory energy goals.” As such, the project must document lessons learned in implementation and maintenance in promotion of replicability of similar projects, and the commercialization of microgrids more broadly.
Related Organizations: Port of Long Beach, California
Resource Category: Solutions
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
New Jersey Energy Resilience Bank Grant and Loan Financing Program Guide
October 14, 2014
Created using $200 million of Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the New Jersey Energy Resilience Bank (ERB) provides funding for new or retrofitted distributed energy resources (DER) technologies that allow facilities to continue to operate at critical load in the event of losing power because of extreme weather. This holistic approach to enhancing energy infrastructure resiliency in New Jersey was established following Superstorm Sandy.
Related Organizations: State of New Jersey
Resource Category: Funding
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
Chicago, Illinois Central Loop Tax Increment Financing
2020
Chicago, Illinois has established more than 120 Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts, and has leveraged its public investment to attract $6 billion in private capital investments in these districts. Revenue from Chicago’s Central Loop TIF has been used to fund the city’s Green Roof Improvement Fund, which incentivizes and provides partial reimbursement to commercial buildings that install green roofs to manage stormwater. Chicago’s TIFs currently fund a small array of adaptive and climate-related projects, such as green alleys and wastewater infrastructure, but all TIF-funded projects must meet sustainability standards. In February 2020, Chicago’s Mayor announced a series of reforms to promote transparency in the TIF system, including the creation of a supervisory TIF Investment Committee whose explicit goal is to center equity in its decision making.
Related Organizations: City of Chicago, Illinois
Resource Category: Funding
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
The Kresge Foundation Equitable Guidelines for Opportunity Zone Investment
March 2019
The Opportunity Zones (OZ) program, created by the federal Opportunity Act as a part of the 2017 Tax Act, delegates to the U.S. Treasury the authority to set requirements for investment under the act’s tax credit system. The Kresge Foundation, seeing that Treasury requirements were first delayed and ultimately bare, set out to create its own set of guidelines. Kresge provides capitalization to projects in OZs to attract investment, and through covenants with its partners attempts to ensure that such investments are based in a framework of equity. Within a specific OZ, these covenants include stringent reporting requirements, the creation of a community advisory board explicitly containing members of the OZ’s community, and active promotion of OZ programs to OZ residents. Additionally, Kresge set out minimum standards for both real estate and business investments. Covenants for real estate investments include specifics such as: adopting an “anti-displacement” strategy for all housing investments, shifting focus to projects that create jobs for low-income communities, and mandating that at least 50% of all multifamily housing investments serve residents with incomes under 120% of the OZ’s average median income. For business investments, covenants include requirements that at least 50% of investments create living-wage jobs, and prohibitions on investments in industries that could be harmful to disadvantaged communities and typically create environmental justice issues. (e.g. oil, mining, firearms).
Related Organizations: The Kresge Foundation
Resource Category: Solutions
See Resource Login to Add to My Resource List
Resource
Financing resilient communities and coastlines: How environmental impact bonds can accelerate wetland restoration in Louisiana and beyond
August 20, 2018
The Environmental Defense Fund and Quantified Ventures have assessed how an environmental impact bond (EIB) could effectively be used for coastal resilience financing for wetland restoration in Louisiana and other coastal areas. The report outlines the steps Louisiana would take to pilot and implement the EIB to restore the coast and wetlands, while greatly reducing land loss to sea level rise, and incentivizing investment. The framework could also support financing other natural infrastructure projects that build coastal resiliency, and serves as a template for coastal investments anywhere.
Related Organizations: Environmental Defense Fund
Resource Category: Solutions
