Obama Economic Stimulus Package for School Energy Projects
The federal congress is expected to pass the Obama Economic Stimulus Package immediately following the January 20 inauguration. The package will contain $20,000,000,000 for energy conservation improvements including $3,000,000,000 specifically for public school infrastructure improvements; lighting, boilers, insulation, control systems, and other physical plant improvements. This is an opportunity for school districts to receive money directly from the federal economic stimulus package. (Federal support for distributed generation (DG) is included in our separate discussion on Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, CREBs' FAQs).
We expect the energy conservation program to be modeled after the original Institutional Buildings Grants Program (IBGP) that contained four phases. You may follow development of this program in the Code of Federal Register, 10 CFR Part 455.
Phase 1 – Preliminary Energy Audit – Develop the most basic energy information, much of which you may already have generated; BTUs of each fuel source by student and by square footage for each building.
Phase 2 – Energy Audit – Identify no-cost and low-cost changes in Maintenance and Operation procedures and calculate potential savings. These items must be implemented before proceeding to the Phase 3.
Phase 3 – Technical Assistance – Perform a detailed engineering analysis modeling all building energy usage and calculate simple payback for specific cost-intensive energy retrofits.
Phase 4 – Implementation – Prepare Drawings and Specifications for the retrofits selected for implementation by the District.
The federal funds will be available to defray the costs of these phases, funding for each sequential phase increasing, with the vast majority of the money funding Phases 3 and 4. Federal participation percentages will vary from 50% to 90% depending on the school district’s economic situation.
Please contact us if you want to be added to our list of interested school districts. We will provide updated analysis as the package progresses.
