Alleviating Energy Burdens: Ideas to Democratize Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency

Top 3 vote-getters:

Energy Efficiency Small Business Training Support Initiative

Contributors: Bracken Hendricks, Kara Saul Rinaldi

Summary: Proposes a three pronged legislative approach to support rapid re-skilling for unemployed and transitioning workers in new fields offering immediate demand for skilled labor. Legislative ideas, summarized in general terms, are: 1) providing grants to businesses, with a priority to small businesses, to pay the wages of new and existing employees while they are receiving training to work in the energy efficiency/grid modernization sectors; 2) offering grants to residential energy efficiency contractors to rehire or retain workers; 3) creating a point-of-sale rebate program to incentivize home energy and water efficiency retrofits; and 4) increasing direct public funding to support apprenticeship training.

Create an interagency task force charged with creating one-step enrollment of all income-qualified housing, food, and energy assistance

Contributor: Anna Lising

Summary: Proposes establishing a Task Force consisting of leaders from DOE, HHS, HUD, and USDA and managers of the public housing, Section 8 affordable housing, WAP, LIHEAP, SNAP, and TANF programs, as well as external subject matter experts, to create a one-stop enrollment process for all assistance programs. Since many federal housing, food, and energy assistance programs have similar income eligibility requirements, this would ease participation and reduce administrative redundancies.

DOE Small Business Energy Efficiency Grant Program

Contributors: Lowell Ungar, Ph.D., Jason Reott

Summary: Proposes passing legislation to create a Small Business Energy Efficiency Grant (SBEEG) Program, which would provide small businesses with federal funding that would supplement utility incentives to make energy efficiency improvements to their properties.

Nominees:

Low Income Solar, Storage, and Job Training Incentives

Contributors: Andie Wyatt, Erika Symmonds, Stan Greschner, Tom Figel

Establish HUD-Led Interagency Commission to Create Rules That Require All Federally Funded Multi-Family Facilities to Meet Audited Decarbonization Targets to Retain Federal Funding

Contributors: Sadie McKeown, Atalia Howe, Danielle Donnelly, Ali Gandarias-Solis

Ease Income Verification and Create National Subscriber Standards to Facilitate Low-Income Community Solar Participation

Contributors: Anna Lising, Kacie Peters

We welcome your examination of the full database here, which contains many more highly actionable ideas to help spark the clean economy.

Thumbnail Photo Credit: Institute for Local Self-Reliance