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Assessment & Planning
With the help of an energy assessment and utility records that determines the amount of energy used in buildings, fleet, and operations, your community and its members can better understand where your energy is being used, which specific buildings and infrastructure are outliers and the costs of efficiency and renewable energy upgrades. With that information and community engagement and input into goals (where diversity, equity, and inclusion comes in to represent the needs and of marginalized communities), your local government can develop a strategic clean energy plan to improve the community’s energy and carbon profile overall to achieve your mutually derived goals. A comprehensive clean energy and climate plan would strategically address how to achieve the biggest energy savings and deploy the most renewable energy for the greatest carbon emissions reductions and energy security at the best cost equitably to all members of the community as soon as possible. Further, to improve the community’s resilience to power outages in severe climate events, planning that utilizes private, public-private, and nonprofit partnerships can accelerate the pace, scale, and scope of innovation in building resilience into the energy system.
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Equity & Environmental Justice
Equity & Environmental Justice – Equity and justice should be included with each part of the menu. As you explore each menu, consider the most vulnerable populations within your community. Be sure to include and prioritize these groups as you develop and plan your efforts.
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- Local governments can incorporate procedures and language into codes and permitting to remove unintentional barriers and ensure that all populations have the opportunity to go solar.
- To get a better understanding of environmental justice issues and a source for teaching about environmental justice, InTeGrate uses a systems approach to address the issues of environmental justice.
- Community solar is one way for low-income communities to access clean and lower cost energy. As an example, Illinois has an Action Plan for energy generation and community solar for low-income communities.
- Improve Energy Efficiency of Affordable Housing. EPA developed a guide for how local governments can incorporate energy efficiency in affordable housing. This not only helps to reduce emissions but also helps low-income residents cut their energy costs.
- Lastly, US DOE’s Better Buildings has a large array of resources for low-income communities. Topics include helping single-family homeowners, stakeholder engagement, and action planning.
- A diverse group of collaborators representing tribal, academic, intertribal and government entities in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, developed a framework to integrate indigenous and traditional knowledge, culture, language and history into the climate adaptation planning process.
Education & Information
Education & Information – provides education and information ideas and resources. These are intended to be some of the first steps a community can take to address certain subsections.
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- Explore information and data on how climate change impacts Wisconsin:
- Short framework that helps users understand how energy is used and works within our world.
- Look at the Climate Ready Communities: A Practical Guide to Building Climate Resilience, which uses a cross-sector, multi-stakeholder approach that is adaptive over time and creates multiple benefits across the community. This guide provides a seven-step process that can help your community create an actionable resilience plan that is well supported by residents.
- Review Dane County’s Climate Council report that establishes a structure where real action can counter and prevent the effects of climate change.
- There are many benefits to a microgrid in addition to resilience to climate change. To get more info about the benefits and features of microgrids and some barriers:
- Generate is an interactive game that allows students to explore energy choices and teaches the considerations and costs in deciding what type of energy generation to build.
Low-Cost Strategies
Low-Cost Strategies – are focused on strategies and accompanying resources that usually will not require intensive staff capacity, fiscal resources, and may be done through staff decisions.
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- Take steps to clean energy planning by looking at Wisconsin communities’ comprehensive Clean Energy and Energy Independent Community plans:
- Creating a clean energy plan is an essential tool to accelerate the strategic use of cost-effective energy efficiency and renewable energy resources to reach community energy and carbon reduction targets. This guide can help communities with a desire to create a comprehensive energy action plan.
- This guide introduces the Community Energy Strategic Plan (CESP) approach, a step-by-step process for creating a robust strategic energy plan for your government and community that can help save money, create local jobs, and improve our national security.
- Example of a Wisconsin renewable energy action plan. A large array of strategies, policies, and general ideas like highlighting businesses within the community that has low emissions.
Significant Resource Deployment
Significant Resource Deployment – are strategies that may require more staff capacity, increased fiscal resources, and larger, possibly cohesive decisions.
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- Kentucky’s energy assurance tool kits include webinars with step-by-step processes and knowledge of how to build a team to make your community’s energy more reliable.
- A UW-Extension publication that covers financing for solar projects ranging from local and tribal governments installing solar systems on their own roofs and land, to assisting local businesses and residents with acquiring solar. It includes case studies of successful solar energy systems across the state and outlines creative local government actions, strategies, and partnerships that can lay the groundwork for financing those systems.
- LEED for Cities and Communities helps local leaders create responsible, sustainable, and specific plans for natural systems, energy, water, waste, transportation, and many other factors that contribute to the quality of life.
- Microgrid knowledge is a website that holds many case studies and articles about energy-related solutions and world events around microgrids, solar plus storage, community solar, and much more. This website is a great tool to help determine the cost benefits of installing renewable and energy microgrids.
- The Roadmap to Resilience is a two-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy in February 2019. The project seeks to assist small- to medium-sized communities with developing their own customized resilience plans by providing a toolkit of six action steps to make the planning process straightforward and impactful.
- Communities typically address energy emergencies from a post-disaster response and recovery point of view. The goal of the Local Government Energy Assurance Guidelines is to enable communities to make the transition to a pre-disaster planning and risk reduction approach. The Guidelines have been developed to assist local governments in planning as well as responding to natural and man-made events and emergencies.
Celebrating Successes
Celebrating Successes – are actions and strategies for communities to celebrate and keep the momentum going. They will help address positive outcomes of previous strategies taken and inspire further action.
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- Energy On Wisconsin provides case studies and resources of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects by Wisconsin local and tribal governments, schools, businesses, nonprofits, and individuals.
- Tracking your emissions through your community can be helpful to see how different energy uses could be improved and can be helpful for showing what you have achieved so far. ClearPath is a secure cloud-based web application for energy and greenhouse gas emissions management.
Grants & Funding
Grants & Funding – help communities support actions through financial means such as grants and other resources.
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- National Energy Education Department (NEED) offers grants for energy-related curriculum for many age groups. NEED also has partners for working with community members and can help start an energy education program for schools and communities.
