Category: Energy (Page 2 of 14)

Islanding Puerto Rico

83 percent of Puerto Ricans remain without power three weeks after Hurricane Maria hit the island. The goal is for 25 percent of customers to regain power by the end of October, but it could be months before the territory’s grid is fully operational again. Meanwhile, 36 percent of the island still does not have water service. Since energy is required to treat and deliver water, presumably the lack of power is standing in the way of getting some of those water systems back online. (Water, of course, is also needed to generate energy, but that’s a topic for another time.) Continue reading

Three Applied Lessons from the 2017 Appalachian Energy Summit

The Appalachian Energy Summit, held in mid-July in Boone, North Carolina, had the 2017 theme, “Perspectives: Policy & Practice.” This theme highlighted the interdisciplinary approach necessary for the successful deployment of efficient and sustainable energy.

Three topics from the summit—education, community, and leadership—were discussed in detail, all of which relate to energy in unique ways. The summit’s main ideas of the topics were presented in relation to the deployment of energy-based technology, though they can be applied to almost any industry. Continue reading

Community Development through EPA’s Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities Program

Many of the local governments we assist at the Environmental Finance Center struggle to raise enough money to support their environmental services. Often, we work with these communities to improve the finance and management of their systems through better rate setting, cost controls, and long-term planning. But another solution for struggling communities is to increase and strengthen their customer base through community and economic development.

EPA has a number of programs and resources aimed to revitalize communities through “Smart Growth” economic development, which builds upon existing assets, takes incremental actions to strengthen communities, and builds long-term value to attract a range of investments. In previous posts on the School of Government’s Community and Economic Development blog, we looked at aspects of EPA’s Smart Growth initiative including their new Framework tool for Small Cities and Towns as well as Smart Growth efforts here in North Carolina. This post examines another aspect of the Smart Growth initiative: the Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities program.

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Expanding our Impact: Literacy in Environment and Finance

Here at the Environmental Finance Center, our key role is to increase the capacity of other organizations to address the financial aspects of environmental protection and service delivery. The majority of our Center’s work focuses on providing technical training and resources and direct assistance to communities to address financial and managerial challenges of providing environmental services. We take pride in building relationships with diverse stakeholders and establishing rapport with organizations that have environmental, but not necessarily financial, interests and expertise.

Schools are one group with which the EFC is striving to work more closely, specifically to engage teachers and students in the exploration of environmental issues, water and energy conservation strategies and environmental finance. Over the past year, I worked with the EFC as an AmeriCorps service member through the Conservation Trust for North Carolina, to develop, coordinate, and launch the ‘Literacy in Environment and Finance’ (LEAF) project. Through my year-long service term, I partnered with teachers to build resources that incorporate environmental finance topics into curricula, taught in the classroom in Triangle-area schools, and helped to implement the ‘Sustainability, Energy, and Education Development’ (SEED) grant competition in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School district.

Through this program, the EFC has developed great relationships with folks in the education community, helped high school students win more than $31,250 in grants, and engaged more than 400 students and community members in environmental finance lessons. But in my view, perhaps the biggest success of the LEAF pilot project has been developing environmental projects with student teams. Through regular lunch-time meetings, I was able to help kids think through project feasibility, how to identify and pursue outside funding resources, connect with varied stakeholders, pinpoint difficulties and risks, and eventually implement projects. Below are three student projects we’d like to highlight and give a shout out to the teachers and young leaders working hard to make them happen:

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