KySEA Blog

KySEA’s Voice Heard in Climate Action Plan Council Controversy

Erik Hungerbuhler — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:25:00 -0400

The Kentucky Climate Action Plan Council is an advisory group representing “academia, agriculture, business, forestry, industry, environmental groups and many levels of government”, convened in December 2009 for the purposes of “collectively developing an action plan to address the causes of climate change, prepare for the likely consequences and impacts of climate change to Kentucky, and establish firm benchmarks and timetables for implementing the KCAPC recommendations.” The Council has met four times over the past several months, with each meeting open to the public. In between full Council meetings, Technical Working Groups – also open to the public – have convened to allow for a detailed consideration and study of various policy options related to the Climate Action Plan.

The workings of both the Council and the Technical Working Groups have been regularly updated on the Council’s website.

However, in the dog days of August – 8 months into the Council’s process – the Government Contract Review Committee voted 6-0 (with one abstention) to disapprove the contract with the Center for Climate Strategies, the DC-based consulting firm hired to facilitate and support the Council’s processes.

KySEA members have participated throughout the Council’s process, some formally as members of the Council itself and others as active public participants. While KySEA members expressed concerns early on regarding the transparency of the appointment process and representation of appointees, the dialogue that occurred during the Council meetings as well as the data being assembled with the support of the Center for Climate Strategies have been steps in the right direction for Kentucky. Recognizing the importance of these nascent efforts, KySEA members came together to encourage Governor Beshear’s administration to override the Contract Review Committee’s recommendation and continue with the contract to the Center for Climate Strategies.

We submitted this letter to Governor Beshear, Secretary Peters and Secretary Miller. We were thrilled to hear that the Administration agreed on the need to maintain the climate conversation and continue assessing Kentucky’s potential impacts and opportunities. Secretary Miller’s letter to the Committee, informing of the decision to retain the Center for Climate Strategies is available here.

KySEA members will continue to engage in the Climate Action Planning Council process and share learnings with all our members and supporters.

Upcoming Workshop and Rally Focused on Appalachian Transition

Nancy Reinhart — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 08:50:55 -0400

Join a conversation about transition in Appalachia through a conference and mass mobilization day in Washington D.C. The events aim to advance the dialogue about current energy extraction practices, with a specific focus on ending mountaintop removal coal mining, and advocate for a renewable energy future for Appalachia on a national stage

"We envision a vibrant weekend during which thousands will learn about the challenges Appalachia faces and ways to build a movement to end the destruction and plant the seeds of a sustainable and prosperous Appalachia," said the organizers of the events.

The conference, entitled Voices from the Mountains, will be held on September 25-26, 2010. Organizers of the Voices from the Mountain conference are planning a space for regional participants to grow and connect through strategy sessions, workshops, learning, and cultural events. Topics will include both exploration of the issues facing the region and ways to move forward.

The day following the conference, September 27th, many people from the Appalachian region will gather with conference attendees for a day of mobilization and rallying on Capitol Hill. 2000 people, including movement leaders from the region, celebrities such as Ashley Judd and Silas House, and many Appalachian residents are expected to gather.

Visit www.appalachiarising.org to register for these events or to learn more.

Broadband Internet Access to Expand in Rural Kentucky

Nancy Reinhart — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 08:49:06 -0400

Rural communities in Kentucky will see an expansion in their access to broadband internet service, thanks to $246 million in grant dollars that the state was just awarded last week. The grants are funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the federal stimulus package. These awards are a part of the federal government's long-term strategy to expand and improve internet throughout the country. (Visit http://www.broadband.gov/ to learn more about this.)

The recently awarded round of grants includes awards of more than $125 million in far west Kentucky, and more than $80 million in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. The eight funded projects outlined plans to build broadband infrastructure in unserved or underserved rural areas. The following is a list of the awards:

Leslie County Telephone Company - $6.1 million
Salem Telephone Company - $1.9 million
West Kentucky Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. - $123.8 million
Highland Telephone Cooperative, Inc. - $66 million
People's Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc. - $25.5 million
Foothills Rural Telephone Cooperative Corporation, Inc. - $20.9 million
Windstream Corporation - $950,000
Mikrotec CATV LLC - $829,000

Kentucky had already received $75 million from this broadband infrastructure fund for projects in Grant, Owen, Morgan, Menifee, Wolfe and Elliott counties.

“Not only will this funding help create jobs, it will also help bring much-needed infrastructure to our rural communities, helping them to expand their services, attracting new businesses that will bring economic growth and jobs by providing affordable access to critical 21st Century technologies,” said Gov. Beshear.

Internet access will be key to factor in economic diversification in rural Kentucky, particularly in the eastern mountain communities. Broadband access facilitates small business-start ups and connects remote areas to larger market bases.

Lewis County Affordable Housing Turns Green!

Nancy Reinhart — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:50:00 -0400

People's Self Help Housing in Vanceburg, KY, is paving a green path for affordable housing in Kentucky. A highly energy efficient home that PSHH recently built and sold has been LEED certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. It is only the third house in all of Kentucky to receive the certification.

Melissa Evans paid $90,000 for the home and, given that low utility and maintenance costs in the future are a guarantee, it will remain affordable for years to come. The LEED-certified home cost about $115,000 to build and the purchase cost was lower due to grant support for the efforts from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.The home will use about 1/3 less energy than a standard house of it size.

A couple of years ago, on People's 25th anniversary, the board of directors decided that new houses had to be more energy efficient to offset rapidly increasing utility rates. Further, the organization believes that providing local jobs, further benefiting the local community, is the best way to do this work. Moving into green housing is a way to accomplish both of these objectives.

As Dave Kreher, PSHH executive director says, “we can provide jobs that will help people have affordable utility bills – the two can come together. Why have someone from Indiana come in and do this for us? We have a 28 year history of doing the work with local crews and these guys are as good as it gets. Let’s maximize the benefit for everyone. We have barely scratched the surface here. There is a lot to do.”

PSHH has built several highly energy efficient homes, including a couple like the one shown to the left that contain a solar hot water heater. Kreher and PSHH will remain committed going forward to this win-win situation, in large part because the community has such great needs for both affordability and jobs. Lewis County — which is in northeastern Kentucky and has a population of about 14,000 — is one of 43 counties in the state where poverty is considered persistent. In 2008, Vanceburg's median income was less than $21,000, or about half the state average. Electricity rates just rose by 26% recently. And county unemployment rate was near 18% at the start of this year.

Learn more about PSHH here.

Learn more about LEED certification here.

KySEA meeting a great success!

Martin Richards — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 18:29:24 -0400

There was great turnout and lots of new faces at the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance June 1 meeting in Lexington. 40 people representing 28 different organizations, groups and businesses came together to learn about the Kentucky energy landscape, KySEA, each other and how to take the next steps of moving Kentucky to a clean energy future.

The goals for the meeting were to:

Continue to build relationships and understanding about our work – independently and collectively.
Report and evaluate work on clean energy issues in the 2010 Gen. Assembly.
Inform/educate ourselves about one or more topics related to clean energy.
Review, improve and affirm a proposed action plan for remainder of 2010.
Identify ways for each group to participate

People left the meeting both exhausted and energized, “It was like drinking from a fire hose”, said Dick Watkins of Frankfort Climate Action Network, ”But the groups and the day was great

First in the morning was a six-month recap of the need for state clean energy policy, Kentucky’s energy challenge, and KySEA’s history, principals and policy priorities.

Following the “look-back” was a brief summary of energy policy and politics in the 2010 Legislative session and what KySEA’s goals and accomplishments were.

The morning ended with a round-robin set of education sessions on:

Using feed-in tariffs as a tool to drive renewable energy
Creating an Energy Efficiency Trust Fund

Renewable Portfolio Standards

The afternoon was spent planning KySEA’s work leading up to the 2011 General Assembly. Through small and large group discussions those attending fleshed out an outline, develop specific steps and create teams for accomplishing our plan.

Bid Opportunities for Energy Efficiency Work

Nancy Reinhart — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:51:10 -0400

Community Action Kentucky has released a Request for Qualification (“RFQ”) to allow businesses and contractors interested in receiving some of this work to see if they are qualified for the contracts. This is an opportunity to help customers save money on their utility bills, reduce our energy consumption, and create energy jobs.

There will be an information session regarding this RFQ on Monday, June 21, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. in Room 171 of the Capitol Annex in Frankfort, KY. All businesses and contractors with the ability to perform the services listed in the RFQ are encouraged to attend and bring their colleagues.

Visit http://www.kaca.org/AboutCAK/BidOpportunities/tabid/611/Default.aspx for more information and to see qualification guidelines.

If you have any questions, please contact:
Roger McCann  at CAK via telephone at 502-875-5863 or by email, RFQContractors@communityactionky.org.

Solar Pioneer in Kentucky

Nancy Reinhart — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:12:16 -0400

Richard Levine: Kentucky’s Own Solar Pioneer
By Laura Alex Frye-Levine (daughter)

As a child, I stumbled upon a copy of a neatly typed letter my father had written to his scoutmaster after being awarded the rank of Eagle Scout. While others in his troupe were celebrating the capstone achievement of their adolescent lives, my father had written earnestly about his concern for the integrity of the honor. He wrote: “I am afraid of what might happen if scouts start pursuing points for the sake of earning points alone.” The scoutmaster likely laughed the letter off as naive, but as a young child it made an impression on me – and I’ve continued to think of it as a metric of whether I am pursuing the right things for the right reasons.

Over the next several decades, through a desert of institutional support, my father would go on to pursue a career as an architect and solar innovator. His tenacious, passionate approach to his life’s work has always been refreshingly unconcerned with most of the official metrics of success. Like any activist, he has pursued his work for reasons ultimately much bigger than himself. Nevertheless, through an inspired career of vision and hard work, Richard Levine has given a great gift to society. Had he been more conventional in his goals for research and design, the field of solar energy would not have advanced as far as it has today.

Last month, at it’s most attended annual meeting in history, the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) honored my father with its most prestigious award in solar innovation: The Passive Solar Pioneer award. ASES cited him “For his lifelong dedication as a passive solar advocate, practitioner, theoretician and mentor and for his pioneering inspiration displayed on projects ranging from a house to a city.” As he took a bow in front of a crowd of 3,000 cheering people, waves of belated recognition sweeping over him, I was overwhelmed with the realization that his life’s work had not gone unnoticed! Like all true pioneers, Richard Levine never pursued his interests with the goal of receiving recognition, though recognition ultimately found him.

The era of renewable energy is upon us. On a planetary scale, we are facing the incredible task of ending the cycles of our addiction to fossil fuels; falling short spells certain ecological demise. Though we all search for ways of leading healthier lives, we suffer from a general lack of coherent vision as to how to proceed forwards. In Kentucky in particular, the need to transition to economic and energy alternatives to Mountaintop Removal Coal mining is more pressing than ever. These days, many of us throw around words like “green” and “sustainable:” words that are repeated so often and in so many different contexts, that they have almost lost all meaning. Getting to the bottom of real solutions that work has been my father’s greatest challenge.

One of Richard’s primary contributions to a sustainable society has been to localize the idea of sustainability as a concrete balance-seeking process. Doing this has allowed him to consider a building as a system- employing intelligent design techniques as a first step in a holistic process. Through this approach, he has designed award-winning houses and cities. In 1978 he designed a double skinned office building in New York that required 12% of the energy of a conventional office building. His Raven Run House is Kentucky’s pioneering solar project. It was the first house to combine passive and active solar systems with super-insulation and an attached greenhouse. Innovative in 1974, the house continues to be at the forefront of solar technology today and is still being published worldwide.

Richard is currently working on several projects for zero-net-energy homes and businesses through his Center for Sustainable Cities Design Studio (www.cscdesignstudio.com). He is principle author of the European Union’s Charter of Cities and Towns Towards Sustainability (Aalborg Charter), and won an international citation from the Royal Association of British Architects for his proposal designing a sustainable reclamation of a strip-mine site in Whitesburg. In addition to Kentucky, he has designed sustainable cities for Korea, and Vienna. Upon presenting him with its Passive Solar Pioneer Award, ASES commended: “Work that in every way is an exemplar of the best that architecture has to offer our collective sustainability.”

I look forward to a future that holds many more years of inspiration from Kentuckys own Solar Pioneer. Let's all work with him to bring a sustainable energy future to the commonwealth!

New Study Says Coal-Free Future Possible (without a price on carbon)

Nancy Reinhart — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:44:46 -0400

By Carrie Traud

America can achieve a coal-free (and nearly nuclear-free) future by 2050, even without a price on carbon. With federal climate legislation stalling in Congress - and giving billions away to the fossil fuel industry - the Civil Society Institute and Synapse Energy Economics investigated the possibility of a clean energy future without climate legislation. The report, "Beyond Business as Usual: Investigating a Coal- and Nuclear-Free Future for America," reveals how, with smart investments and the right incentives, the United States can transition to an energy mix based on efficiency and renewables. while saving money and achieving significant greenhouse gas reductions at the same time.

The report compares "business as usual," which assumes a continued reliance on traditional energy sources, like coal and nuclear, with a transition scenario that phases out those energy sources while phasing in wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. By 2050, the transition scenario has retired all coal-fired power plants and a quarter of nuclear plants. At the same time, while costing more in the short term, America would save $5 billion per year by 2040 and $13 billion by 2050.

The energy and financial savings of the study are conservative, for two reasons. First, the Business as Usual scenario assumes the cost of coal remains relatively flat. Even without a price on carbon, this is unlikely to be the case, as coal becomes increasingly difficult to mine and the supply, particularly in central Appalachia, declines. Second, the study is based on existing renewable energy and energy efficient technologies. It does not account for any new breakthroughs or advances, which could lower the cost and increase the capacity of renewable energy significantly.

The study is useful for Kentucky mainly from a macro-perspective. It does not consider individual states and largely ignores the potential of distributed, small-scale generation potential. It has the southeast region generally relying on imported sources of electricity.

Although the report assumes there is no cap-and-trade or other price on carbon enacted in Congress, we still need smart energy policies that invest in and deploy energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. To read an executive summary or the full report, please visit http://theclean.org.

Funding Opportunities for EE/RE Projects and Training

Nancy Reinhart — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:00:00 -0400

Several funding opportunities in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable energy are currently available! See below for details:

EE/RE JOB TRAINING FUNDS:

Kentucky Home Performance is offering incentives to contractors who participate in an upcoming training to become certified through the national Building Performance Institute. The training will be held May 24th-26th in Louisville. In order to be eligible to work as a contractor doing EE/RE on residential properties through the Ky Home Performance program, you must be BPI-certified.

Training incentives include:
• $1,000 available for up to 80% of the cost of training & certification to obtain BPI training for Building Analyst Certification for the first 100 contractors or home auditors trained under the program
• $2,000 available for equipment purchases up to 80% of the cost of qualified equipment for the first 50 contractors or companies participating in the KY Home Performance program. Terms and conditions apply.

Visit www.kyhomeperformance.org for more information.

EE/RE ENERGY PROJECT FUNDS:

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is a regional economic development agency that represents a partnership of federal, state, and local government. ARC just announced the fourth round of a grant competition this week to assist Appalachian communities in leveraging renewable-energy and energy-efficiency resources to revitalize their economies. ARC expects to provide eight to ten awards of up to $75,000 each, for a total of $545,000 in awards, to successful applicants.

Aims of the grants may include -
    •    Preparation and adoption of a community energy plan by a local government jurisdiction.
    •    Implementation of a renewable-energy or energy-efficiency project such as:
    •    Production and/or use of renewable energy, including biofuels, biomass, solar, or wind energy, to include local siting of production facilities.
    •    Distribution of renewable energy, to include customer purchasing commitments.
    •    Expansion or start-up of "clean energy" businesses, including support for business incubation programs or targeted business financing programs.
    •    New construction or renovations that follow "green building" and LEED certification guidelines.
    •    Installation of energy-efficiency equipment in public or nonprofit facilities.
Nonprofit organizations, government entities, and public education institutions located within the Appalachian Region are eligible to apply. Private, for-profit organizations are not eligible to apply.

Visit www.arc.gov/energy for more information.

***
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has announced a call for proposals related to innovative, scalable strategies for energy efficiency retrofit programs or policies that address the existing building stock in the United States.

Funding priorities include but are not limited to sustainable and scalable business models for implementing energy efficiency retrofits; policies or programs that seek to advance aggregation of disparate or fragmented opportunities in energy efficiency retrofits to increase the energy savings potential; innovative financing models and other mechanisms to ease upfront costs of efficiency improvements or increase the attractiveness of investments in energy efficiency; policies or programs to secure greater energy efficient performance in buildings such as through benchmarking or improved operations and management; policies or programs to drive deep energy efficiency retrofits in existing buildings; policies or programs to address split incentives; and mechanisms to increase the effectiveness of and property owner participation in state, local, utility-sponsored, or privately-sponsored energy efficiency programs.

Proposals may be targeted to any particular barrier or segment of the buildings market (e.g., office, commercial, institutional, retail, residential, single-family, or multi-family). Research to help formulate programs or policies to address barriers is eligible as long as the path to implementation or adoption is clear.

The foundation will invite full proposals based on from pre-proposals, with grant l ranging from $100,000 to $350,000 each. Up to a total of $3 million in grants will be awarded.
Applicants must be U.S. nonprofit 501(c)(3) organizations.

Visit
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/rfp_item.jhtml?id=291600012 for more information.

A Bill To Help Rural Residents Finance Energy Efficiency Improvements Considered at Federal Level

Nancy Reinhart — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:02:33 -0400

An important step to achieving a clean and economically viable future for rural electric cooperatives, their member-customers, and their local economies will be the establishment of “on-bill financing” programs which will help overcome the up-front costs of implementing energy efficiency and weatherization measures.

The Rural Energy Savings Program Act

(S. 3102 / H.R. 4785)

On March 10, 2010, the Rural Energy Savings Program Act was introduced in Congress. The bill was introduced in both the House and the Senate with bipartisan support.

Under the new program proposed by the bill, the US Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) will create a $4.9 billion loan program available to cooperatives with a zero percent interest rate. Cooperatives in turn will make this money available to consumer members in the form of micro-loans with an interest rate of no more than 3 percent, which can be paid back primarily through savings on their electric bills. This type of loan program is called “on-bill financing” because the loan payments would be made right on the utility bill. Another key component is that the loan would stay with the real property (i.e. the electric meter) rather than with the utility customer.

Bipartisan co-sponsors of the Senate version of the bill (S. 3102) include Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Tim Johnson (D-SD), and Michael Bennett (D-CO).

A companion bill in the House of Representatives (H.R. 4785), was introduced by Representatives James Clyburn (D-SC), Tom Perriello (D-VA), Ed Whitfield (R-KY), and John Spratt (D-SC).

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is supporting the two bills, and you can find more information on their website.

Why this bill is important and its implications for Appalachia

The East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) is a non-profit electric utility that provides power to 16 rural electric cooperatives across 87 Kentucky counties and is currently in the permitting process for the proposed construction of a new coal‐burning power plant in Clark County, KY, called the Smith plant. About half of the counties served by EKPC are in Appalachia, and about a quarter are coal-producing counties. Many of these are some of the most economically distressed counties in the nation.

A recent report commissioned by Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, Kentucky Environmental Foundation, and the Cumberland Chapter of the Sierra Club found that an investment in a combination of energy efficiency, weatherization, hydropower and wind power initiatives in the region would generate more than 8,750 new jobs for Kentucky residents, with a total impact of more than $1.7 billion on the region’s economy over the next three years. This alternative approach would meet the energy needs of EKPC customers at a lower cost than the proposed coal plant.

Federal and state policies that make possible on-bill financing for the energy efficiency and weatherization portion of the alternative are important steps toward a clean energy future for EKPC co-ops and their members. Passage of the Rural Energy Savings Program Act is integral to this future, and the jobs and positive economic impact it will bring.

Ky Green TV Launches on Earth Day

Nancy Reinhart — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:03:03 -0400

"KyGREENtv," an internet based television station dedicated to all things green in Kentucky, will launch on Earth Day, April 22, 2010. The station will feature programmingour focused on a clean and sustainable activities happening across the state.

Ky Green TV will have information about many things, including energy rating contacts, rebates, green products, websites and green collar job postings. Several KySEA members will be featured as a part of programming and KySEA will be a featured topic on the TV at some point.

Visit www.kygreen.tv tomorrow to check it out.

EE/RE Job Training Opportunity

Nancy Reinhart — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:01:23 -0400

-Article taken from Kentucky Housing Corporation

Kentucky Home Performance, the quickly developing home energy retrofit program at Kentucky Housing Corporation, uses a nationally certified training system for approved professionals from the Building Performance Institute (BPI). Here’s their online address: www.bpi.org. The current standard is the “BPI Building Analyst Certification”. Those who get the training first will be well placed to implement this program when it is operational (60-90 days).

Kentucky is a national leader in setting up a statewide system for training and standards in home energy audit and retrofit work. Aside from training there is also a ‘Quality Assurance’ component that will assist the training system to ensure that professions working in Kentucky homes will meet minimum ‘best practice’ standards. As the program is finalized you can follow our progress online: www.KYHomePerformance.org.

The required BPI “Building Analyst” Certification is a course with field work and a test. Various trainers use a 4-day “boot-camp” up to 10-days of training (KCTCS).

The first scheduled training will be hosted by the Home Builders Association of Lexington in April and May. There are rebates available for those who take the class and become certified. Up to $1000.

Class # 1 – Four Days – for Hers Raters only to become Building Analysts – April 27 – 30 – Class to be capped at 20 Students - $1,250 per student

Class # 2 – Six Days – From the ground up to become Building Analysts – May 10 – 15 – Class to be capped at 20 students - $1,450 per student

Sign-up is available at: www.hbalexington.com. Call Sandy Beck at 859-273-5117 for more information. KCTCS will be providing training in the near future. You can find KCTCS information at their website for training: www.kctcs.edu/Workforce_Solutions/.

Report Shows Major Economic Benefit from Energy Efficiency Implementation in the South

Nancy Reinhart — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:03:58 -0400

By Kristin Tracz

A report entitled “Energy Efficiency in the South” was released yesterday by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance; it reflects an in-depth modeling effort to demonstrate the potential impact of energy efficiency policies for residential and commercial buildings and industries throughout the Southern states.

A sprofile of Kentucky, within the larger report, states that projected energy consumption in residential, commercial and industrial sectors would decrease by approximately 10% if additional energy efficiency measures were enacted. These measures would also create more than 10,000 jobs in Kentucky by 2020, according to the report.

The report stresses four major findings:
♣    Aggressive energy-efficiency initiatives in the region could stop energy consumption in the RCI sectors from growing over the next twenty years.
♣    A commitment to energy efficiency means fewer new power plants would be needed.
♣    Increased investments in cost-effective energy efficiency would generate jobs and cut utility bills.
♣    Energy efficiency would result in significant water savings.

Specifically, the report states that “In 2020, energy bills in the South would be reduced by $41 billion, electricity rate increases would be moderated, 380,000 new jobs would be created, and the region’s economy would grow by $1.23 billion” if the investments in cost-effective energy efficiency modeled in the study were implemented in states throughout the region.

The importance of the South—defined by the U.S. Census Bureau to be the 16-state (and District of Columbia) region from Delaware down the Appalachians, including the Southern Atlantic seaboard, Gulf Coast and Texas—is stressed throughout the report, given that the South is the “largest and fastest growing region in the United States, with 36% of the nation’s population and a considerably larger share of the nation’s total energy consumption (44%) and supply (48%)”.

The vast majority of the region’s energy comes from fossil fuels.
Furthermore, the South consumes 51% of the nation’s total industrial energy use, 43% of the nation’s electric power, 40% of the energy consumed in residences and 38% of the energy used in commercial buildings. This demonstrates the substantial opportunity for the region and the nation that comes from increasing energy efficiency efforts in the South.

Possible reasons for this highly-consumptive pattern of energy use, according to report authors, include the region’s historically low electricity rates, significant heating and cooling loads due to weather, low implementation of energy-efficient products and low expenditures on energy-efficiency programs.

In addition to a full report detailing results of modeling impacts for the region, SEEA and the report authors include a state-specific profile for each state in the region.

Microenterprise Loans Available in KY

Nancy Reinhart — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:50:00 -0400

Gov. Steve Beshear and Cabinet for Economic Development officials announced the expansion of the Kentucky Micro Enterprise Loan Program earlier this month. These loans could be a great tool to help fund RE/EE businesses.

The program, now available to all Kentucky counties, provides financing up to $35,000 for entrepreneurs and small business operations that, in most cases, would find it difficult to obtain conventional funding. It is funded by a one-time state allocation of $125,000 from the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA).

The Cabinet for Economic Development routinely works with small business organizations from across the state to provide resources, advocacy and assistance to small and minority businesses. For more information about the Kentucky Micro Enterprise Loan Program and the cabinet’s other small business programs, visit www.ThinkKentucky.com.

Kentucky Environmental Quality Commission Meeting

Martin Richards — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:41:13 -0400