Month: October 2023

On October 12, 2023, the Department of Energy announced that the City of Decorah, in partnership with the Clean Energy Districts of Iowa, has been awarded $1.1 million in funding from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Competitive Program. 

The EECBG Program is designed to assist states, local governments, and Tribes in implementing strategies to reduce energy use, to reduce fossil fuel emissions, and to improve energy efficiency.  

There are three facets to the EECBG program.  Cities and counties with populations over 50,000 receive automatic allocations via a Formula Grant program.  Cities and counties with populations under 50,000 can apply for EECBG funding through their State Energy Office.  In addition, there is a national Competitive Program for EECBG funding.

The City of Decorah was one of only twelve communities around the nation that were chosen to receive funding from this national funding opportunity.

As the Prime Applicant, the City of Decorah will work in close partnership with the Clean Energy Districts of Iowa (CEDI), which will manage the project and provide technical assistance to help local governments and school districts benefit from the clean energy transition and to reduce energy burdens in low-income households in several counties in Northeast Iowa and Southwest Wisconsin. 

The project area features eight rural counties with clean energy districts where neither the county nor the incorporated cities are eligible for EECBG formula grants. The list includes Vernon County in Wisconsin, which includes Ho-Chunk Nation land, and seven counties in Iowa: Allamakee, Winneshiek, Howard, Clayton, Delaware, Jackson, and Tama County, which includes land owned by the Meskwaki Tribe.  The relevant counties are highlighted in green on the map below:

EECBG funding will be used to hire two energy planners and an engineer to provide vital technical assistance to municipalities, school districts, and low-income households throughout the project area so that they can make cost-effective investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy. 

In August 2023, CEDI surveyed 228 mayors, city clerks, city managers, school district superintendents, and other key leaders in the eight-county project area.  The responses revealed that 95% are interested in receiving assistance via the EECBG funding.

Due to the recent passage of the Building and Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), there is currently an unprecedented amount of funding available at the federal and state levels for investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Unfortunately, few people know how to access these funds and how best to utilize them.  

EECBG funding will be used to identify cost-effective investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy and to help project participants identify and utilize various financial resources to make these investments. These resources include:

• Federal tax credits, including the use of the elective payment option for non-profits, as well as relevant bonus “adders” for solar projects in low-income, tribal, and/or energy communities.
• Third-party power purchase agreements, which tap the federal tax credits but also utilize other tax benefits available to for-profit entities such as accelerated depreciation.  Municipal governments and other non-taxable entities that sign these agreements no longer have to address the financing obstacle and typically enjoy substantial energy cost savings. These agreements are legal in Iowa but not yet in Wisconsin. Several municipal governments, school districts, and other non-taxable entities have already utilized this option–mostly in and near Winneshiek County (IA). 
• Rebates provided by the Home Energy Performance-Based, Whole-House Rebates (HOMES) program and the High-Efficiency Electric Home Rebate (HEEHR) program administered by the State Energy Offices in Iowa and Wisconsin.
• USDA programs such as the Rural Energy for America Program Energy Audit & Renewable Energy Development Assistance Grants as well as the Rural Energy for America Program Renewable Energy Systems & Energy Efficiency Improvement Guaranteed Loans & Grants.
• Services and equipment incentives provided by the energy efficiency programs offered by area utilities.
• Additional financial resources that may be available through regional housing trust funds and community foundations.

The City of Decorah and CEDI are currently in a 60-day grant award negotiation period with the EECBG Program since the original grant proposed using $1.56 million in EECBG funding over three years but the program could only provide $1.1 million.  As a result, it is likely that the funding will be spread over 28 months rather than 36 months.  We expect the program to commence in January 2024.

CEDI will soon provide more information about how communities in Iowa can apply for EECBG funding from Iowa’s State Energy Office.

This is the second major award to the City of Decorah by the EECBG program.  In 2010, the program provided the city with $880,000–over half of which was used by the Winneshiek Energy District to provide energy planning services to the residents of Winneshiek County and to develop the replicability of the energy district model.  

Today there are twelve legally incorporated energy districts located in Allamakee, Cerro Gordo, Clayton, Delaware, Dubuque, Howard, Jackson, Johnson, Linn, Muscatine, Polk, and Winneshiek County.  Additional counties are in the planning stages.  

Contact CEDI’s Policy Analyst, Jim Martin-Schramm, for more information.

Guest Story by Laura Peterson

Earlier this month our energy utility came to shut off our natural gas connection. Usually, having your gas service cut off means either you’re moving to a new house or you’re way behind on your bills. But in our case, it’s because we’ve eliminated all gas appliances in our home. Over the last few years, we’ve undergone a transition to an all-electric household. Here is how it worked in our home, in the hopes that you might find something useful here if you’re considering electrification in your own.

We live in a 1950’s ranch home of about 1350 square feet, with additional area in our partially finished basement. The first steps we took after moving in were to add attic insulation and to do basic air sealing around doors, windows, and the basement rim joist. In conjunction with air sealing, we also installed an air exchanger to manage moisture in the house. 

A few years later, we were able to install solar panels on our roof. We followed the advice of our electrician to upgrade our electrical service to a 200 amp panel at the same time, in anticipation of increasing our electric load for heating and eventually electric vehicles. 

Next we looked at household heating. Our house was previously heated by a gas furnace with forced hot air. We also had a central air conditioning unit. Both our furnace and air conditioner dated to the early 1990’s, and since heat pumps can both heat and cool, one advantage of a heat pump was that we could replace our furnace and air conditioner with a single appliance. We also knew we wanted to stop burning fossil fuels in our home. This also led us to favor an all-electric heat pump over another gas furnace or a dual natural gas-heat pump system.

We consulted with the Energy District to get estimates of our household heating demand that would help us know how to select and size our system. In late 2021 we had our gas furnace and air conditioner removed, and installed a ducted, 3 ton heat pump system in their place. The outdoor unit looks similar to an air conditioner, and the indoor air handler, installed in our basement, fit directly into existing duct work.

After this, the only remaining gas appliance in our house was our water heater. This meant that the vast majority of our monthly gas bill was the connection fee, so it made a lot of sense for us to take the final step to fully electrify our household. The ability to take advantage of a federal tax credit (30% of the project) through the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as a $300 utility rebate, made the cost of a new heat pump water heater comparable to a gas-fired water heater. So, this fall we removed our gas-fired water heater and replaced it with a heat pump water heater, eliminating our natural gas usage entirely. 

FAQs:

Does the heat pump provide enough heat on its own in cold weather?

Yes. Our heat pump is rated to -13°F. Though it runs less efficiently at such cold temperatures, it can still meet our heating demand. It also has a built-in back-up system (electric resistance heating coils) for even colder temperatures. We do burn wood in a small woodstove for supplemental heat, but we know from the experience of being out of town during a run of very cold days last winter that the heat pump can do the job on its own even if we’re not at home to feed the woodstove.

What is the living experience like?

For the most part, our electric appliances are as invisible to us on a daily basis as their gas counterparts were before. Hearing the heat pump outside our kitchen window in the winter is similar to hearing an outdoor A/C unit in the summer, and neither the air source heat pump or the heat pump hot water heater are noticeably louder than our other appliances. The heat pump is actually considerably quieter than our old A/C unit except in very cold temperatures.

One change we’ve made during the winter is to use a smaller thermostat setback at night. We do this keep the heating demand steady rather than demanding the most heat during the coldest part of the day, since unlike a gas furnace, the efficiency of the heat pump changes as the outdoor temperature changes.

We do notice a drop in temperature in our basement laundry room, where our heat pump water heater is installed, since the heat pump is essentially transferring heat from the surrounding air to create the hot water. The temperature drop is not extreme, however, and in the summer months, the same effect will provide additional cooling.

How did our utility bills change?

Determining how electrification has changed our utility bills is complicated by the fact that we also installed solar panels shortly before we had the heat pump installed. But we have gotten some sense of the difference by looking at our electric usage directly. 

With the installation of the heat pump, our annual electric usage went up by around 20%, or the equivalent of around $200/year. A good portion of our increased electricity use during the winter was offset by much lower electricity use during the summer, since the new heat pump is much more efficient than the old air-conditioning unit it replaced (with the new system, our summertime electric usage was reduced by close to 50%). 

The Energy Guide estimate for our heat pump hot water heater is that our hot water will cost roughly $120/year. This is far lower than what we had been paying (around $400/year) for hot water and our gas connection. 

All told, if we didn’t have solar panels, it looks like our electric bills after full electrification would be similar to and perhaps slightly lower than before. Even though electricity tends to be more expensive than gas, the savings we get from disconnecting our gas line entirely, and from the high efficiency of heat pump appliances, seem to compensate for our greater electricity use.

Are the carbon dioxide emissions from our increased electricity use lower than our previous CO₂ emissions from natural gas burning?

Yes. Even though there are carbon dioxide emissions associated with the coal and natural gas that are burned to produce a portion of the electricity we use, the switch from gas to heat pumps in isolation would bring our CO₂ emissions down by about 30% if we were purchasing all of our electricity. With the combination of electrification and rooftop solar, we’ve reduced our household carbon footprint by a total of about 80%. 

The exciting part is that now that we have all-electric infrastructure in our household, our carbon footprint will continue to decrease as the electric grid itself greens. According to the website of Alliant Energy, our electric provider, the company currently ‘aspires’ to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. But with an increasing number of utilities across the country setting 2030 as a target date for net-zero systems, perhaps the day is not too far off when our all-electric house will also be carbon neutral.