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The State of Working WI

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Three Wisconsin cities receive federal award that will provide $120 million for energy efficiency (press release)

By:

From: COWS

Date: 4/21/2010

Madison, WI – Vice President Joe Biden today announced a $20 million grant to create a program that will provide $120 million in energy efficiency upgrades in Milwaukee, Madison, and Racine. The program, Wisconsin Energy Efficiency, or WE2, will target residential, commercial, and industrial buildings in the three cities.

The Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS), one of the partners in the project, pioneered the program model proposed. COWS also worked to ensure that the project will create family-supporting jobs by including labor standards and access to jobs for local residents. The U.S. Department of Energy cited these elements in choosing Wisconsin as one of 25 successful applications for its “Retrofit Ramp-Up” funding.

COWS helped write the grant application with the three applicant cities, lead grantee Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation, businesses, labor unions, and other partners. The project includes provisions for worker qualifications and training, wage standards, and local hire requirements. “We want to make sure that we’re not only creating jobs, we’re creating good jobs for the people who most need them,” said COWS Director Joel Rogers.

“We recognize that there is a shortage of jobs in our community but that there is no shortage of opportunities to do energy efficiency work. This grant will allow us to catalyze the private market for energy efficiency retrofits,” said Erick Shambarger, Milwaukee’s Acting Director of Environmental Sustainability.

The Retrofit Ramp-Up grant has a 5-to-1 match requirement, meaning that WE2 will be funded at $120 million total. The cities have commitments, mostly from private capital, for matching funds. WE2 will allow the three cities to provide building upgrades; owners will pay the fund back out of their energy savings, creating an ongoing source of funding.

“A clean energy economy will create good jobs for workers in our community, save families money on energy bills, and reduce our carbon footprint,” said Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz. “We’ve already started work to fund weatherization projects in Madison, and this grant from DOE and commitments from our local partners will significantly ramp up our efforts. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Earth Day than to start work on expanding these important energy efficiency projects.”

The grant application builds on the work that COWS has done to create the Milwaukee Energy Efficiency (Me2) program and the Racine Energy Efficiency Program (REEP).  In 2008 COWS worked with Mayor Tom Barrett to create Me2, providing a model of sustainable funding for energy efficiency retrofits that allows work to occur without upfront cost to building owners. Participants pay for the upgrades, but because they also save money on utility bills, they see a net savings month to month. After the repayments end, the owner will continue to benefit from the energy efficiency savings.

The program relies on a mechanism called “property-assessed clean energy” financing, or PACE, which allows cities to cover upfront costs with little worry that they won’t be repaid. COWS helped craft legislation enabling PACE in Wisconsin.

COWS also provided support to the grant applications of other cities around the country through the Emerald Cities Collaborative, a coalition of labor, business, and community groups supporting city-scale energy retrofits. Milwaukee is part of the Emerald Cities Collaborative.

The WE2 project builds on pilot efforts already begun with COWS’ assistance:



  • Racine launched the first Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program in the Midwest in March, the Racine Energy Efficiency Project (REEP). The $500,000 program, providing energy- and water-efficiency upgrades for owner-occupied homes, has taken more than 100 applications and is now doing assessments of the first ten qualifying houses. With the additional capital from the Retrofit Ramp-Up grant, Racine plans to expand the program to commercial and industrial buildings. COWS worked with the Racine Department of City Development to design the program. The program manual is available to other local governments interested in PACE. It can be accessed at www.cows.org.

  • Milwaukee will launch Me2 this year, having already committed more than $1 million for a pilot. Now, with the Retrofit Ramp-Up award, the city will launch a much larger, more ambitious program, and is working with contractors, unions, and community groups to structure the work to ensure that it creates good local jobs.

  • Madison has been working on a variety of energy efficiency initiatives, including PACE, and will launch pilot programs to retrofit residential and commercial buildings. Also coming soon is a pilot job training program in energy efficiency work.  

Copyright © 2010 Center on Wisconsin Strategy