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NCTCOG Energy Management & Renewable Energy Newsletter
July 2021
 

Hello Michael, featured in this issue:

Featured Resources:
  • Reopening the Call for Applications from North Central Texas Cities for Developing City-wide Greenhouse Gas Inventories
News and Updates:
  • Renewables Aggregation Cohort Opportunity;
  • Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions Will Build Their Largest Solar Project to Date
  • Study Aims to Address Gaps in Defining Resilience
  • Energy Department Releases Request for Information on Electric Vehicle Grid Integration
  • Department of Energy Seeks Public Feedback on Removing Barriers to Participation in Funding Programs
  • U.S. Department of Energy Announces Prize to Accelerate More Equitable Solar Deployment and a New Matchmaking Tool for Clean Tech Innovators
  • EPA Tribal and Insular Area Grants: Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA)
  • DOE SolSmart Program Management
  • Green Mountain Power and Tesla Break Grid Barriers with Behind-the-Meter Batteries
Events:
  • How to Identify CHP Projects that Fit Your Goals
  • American-Made Solar Prize Round 5 Informational Webinar
  • 2021 National Energy Codes Conference
  • Department of Energy's Energy Exchange
  • 2021 National Conference on Energy Efficiency as a Resource (VIRTUAL)
NCTCOG Energy Management and Renewable Energy Resources
 

Featured Resources

Reopening the Call for Applications from North Central Texas Cities for Developing City-wide Greenhouse Gas Inventories
The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) has reopened the call for applications from cities in the North Central Texas 12-county Metropolitan Planning Area to participate in a regional cohort to produce city-wide greenhouse gas emission (GHG) inventories. In partnership with the Regional Integration of Sustainability Efforts (RISE) Coalition, and with the generous contribution from Burlington-Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, NCTCOG is providing 20 cities in the North Central Texas 12-county Metropolitan Planning Area access to Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI), ClearPath software tool at no cost. There are currently eight cities in our region that have joined the cohort, and two additional cities that have partnered in the effort by doing their own GHG study concurrently.
All participating cities will be able to use ClearPath to produce their own city-wide GHG inventories. Cities interested in participating must submit an application by July 30, 2021 and will need to be a commit to attendance of ICLEI and cohort trainings, meeting, or check-ins. ICLEI’s ClearPath software tool has been used to complete GHG inventories in over 475 jurisdictions in the United States and is considered the leading online software platform for completing GHG inventories, forecasts, and monitoring at the community-side scale.
The Call for Applications from cities has reopened from May 31 and closes July 30, 2021. Cities interested in submitting an application need to be a current NCTCOG member, commit to attendance of ICLEI and cohort trainings/meeting/check-ins and collaborate with NCTCOG to provide necessary data inputs.

More Information: NCTCOG.org

 

News & Updates

Renewables Aggregation Cohort Opportunity
To engage and support peer exchange and collaboration on environmental and sustainability initiatives, the North Texas RISE Coalition would like to make you aware of the following opportunity.
As local governments and institutions set ambitious renewable energy goals, on-site solar installations and utility solutions may not help them in meeting or exceeding those goals. The World Resources Institute (WRI) and RMI have developed a cohort to offer free workshops, tools, resources, and peer learning opportunities to help small groups of local governments (and/or other local institutions) procure large-scale renewables at economies of scale. The WRI/RMI team will be walking participants through the aggregation process and facilitating group alignment on key elements of a joint RFP for a physical or virtual power purchase agreement (PPA). The cohort combines plenary sessions - on topics like legal and accounting challenges and risk mitigation - with small group discussion.
The cohort has begun and will continue until June 2022 and will include monthly webinars featuring about 10 groups from regions across the country. There are no commitments required to join but attending the monthly virtual workshops is needed to be successful.
Those interested in signing up for the cohort, can fill out the following application below. For any questions about the opportunity, reach out to Zach Greene at zach.greene@wri.org.

Sign up for the Cohort: Application
Deadline to apply for the Cohort is June 2022.
Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions Will Build Their Largest Solar Project to Date
Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions has announced the start of construction on their 250-megawatt (MW) Pisgah Ridge Solar project in Navarro County, Texas. When it is fully operational, it will be the largest utility-scale solar facility in Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions’ fleet. Charles River Laboratories International Inc. has signed a virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA) for 102 MW of the project over 15 years. This commitment will address the entirety of the company’s North American electric power load with clean, renewable energy by 2023.

Learn More: News.Duke-Energy.com

Study Aims to Address Gaps in Defining Resilience
Results of a study conducted by the Idaho National Laboratories (INL) has recently been released as part of an effort to address the lack of a generally accepted definition and application of resilience. This study is part of INL’s work under the Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technology Office’s (WETO) Microgrids, Infrastructure Resilience, and Advanced Controls Launchpad (MIRACL) project, aimed to better define the term resilience, in turn furthering an understanding of resilience in electric energy delivery systems. INL researchers used existing research and applied the findings to distributed wind, which offered an example of how system resilience is affected by technologies and generation sources.

More Information about this Program: Resilience.inl.gov
Energy Department Releases Request for Information on
Electric Vehicle Grid Integration

Conversations around the topic of electric vehicle grid integration have been growing and now the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), and DOE’s Office of Electricity (OE), have announced a request for information (RFI) seeking feedback from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders on issues related to integrating electric vehicles (EVs) with the grid. The Energy Act of 2020 directed the DOE to submit to Congress a “Vehicles to Grid Integration Assessment Report.” By participating RFI, stakeholders are requested to provide research and development results, reports, or other information for past, present, or planned projects that are relevant to the five categories, which will be included in this report to Congress.
This RFI solicits input in five categories:
  1. An evaluation of the use of EVs to maintain the reliability of the electric grid.
  2. The impact of grid integration on EVs.
  3. The impacts to the electric grid of increased penetration by EVs.
  4. Research on the standards needed to integrate EVs with the grid, including communications systems, protocols, and charging stations.
  5. The cybersecurity challenges and needs associated with electrifying the transportation sector.

Responses to the RFI are due July 23, 2021 by 4:00 pm CST.

Learn More: EERE-Exchange.Energy.gov
Department of Energy Seeks Public Feedback on Removing Barriers to Participation in Funding Programs
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a request for information (RFI) to understand current barriers and actions needed to make its funding opportunities as well as innovation and entrepreneurship activities more inclusive, just, and equitable. To be more in line with the Biden Administration’s climate goals, acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman emphasized that the DOE is committed to developing funding opportunities that diversify the applicant pool and reach more first-time applicants. She said, “We are eager to hear from first-time applicants and a wider variety of voices. To ensure that all Americans benefit from DOE’s work, it is urgent that diversity is reflected in the funding applications we receive and fund. We know climate change disproportionally affects underserved communities, so it is also critical that we partner with these communities when developing climate solutions”.
The Biden Administration’s Justice40 initiative aims to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of relevant federal investments in climate and energy to disadvantaged communities.
Responses to the RFI are due August 6, 2021 by 4:00 pm CST.

Learn More: Energy.gov
U.S. Department of Energy Announces Prize to Accelerate More Equitable Solar Deployment and a New Matchmaking Tool for Clean Tech Innovators
The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced a $5 million American-Made Solar Prize Round 5, which is a competition designed to accelerate the commercialization of products needed for widespread, equitable solar energy deployment and domestic manufacturing. The Solar Prize, for the first time, will have two tracks, one focused on innovations in hardware and one focused on innovations in software.
The addition of the software track to the Solar Prize seeks concepts that help to address the non-hardware costs of solar, such as customer acquisition, financing, and grid integration and has a focus on enabling underserved communities to overcome systemic barriers to solar energy.
Competitors in the Software track can receive up to $2 million in prizes, using advances in communications and information technologies to rethink how to solve solar deployment challenges. An informational webinar on the Solar Prize will be held on July 13th, 2021 and applications are due by October 5th, 2021.
Also announced was a new tool that connects innovators with support from DOE’s national labs, business incubators, and other entrepreneurial resources in the American-Made Network to advance their technologies.

More Information about News Release: Energy.gov
Register for the Solar Prize Informational Webinar: Here
EPA Tribal and Insular Area Grants: Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the availability of grant funding available to Tribal and certain insular area governments. This grant is meant to implement projects aimed at reducing emissions from the nation’s existing fleet of older diesel engines. The EPA anticipates awarding approximately $5 million in Diesel Emissions Reduction Program (DERA) grants to eligible applicants. The deadline to apply is July 9, 2021.

View the Grant Opportunity: Grant.gov

DOE SolSmart Program Management
The activities to be funded under this FOA will support the government-wide approach to the climate crisis by driving the innovation that can lead to the deployment of clean energy technologies, which are critical for climate protection. Specifically, this funding program will help to reduce the soft costs of solar energy deployment—those costs not associated with the hardware—which account for up to 64% of the upfront cost of a residential solar installation. This FOA seeks an entity to manage and expand the Department of Energy's (DOE) SolSmart program, which supports and recognizes local governments that reduce soft costs and expand access to solar energy. This community designation and technical assistance program was launched in 2016 and has recognized almost 400 communities from Florida to Alaska. Now, the DOE is expanding the program to incorporate new solar-related technologies and respond to the evolving needs of local governments. The chosen entity will manage the program for the next five years. Applications are due August 17, 2021.

View the Grant Opportunity: Grant.gov

Green Mountain Power and Tesla Break Grid Barriers with Behind-the-Meter Batteries
Green Mountain Power and Tesla in recent months have proven that distributed energy resources can indeed be tapped to provide power back to the energy grid. Testing of the Tesla Powerwall batteries installed in some 200 customer homes demonstrated the responsiveness of the batteries to provide up to 1 megawatt of frequency regulation service to the grid operator.

Haresh Kamath, director of energy storage at the Electric Power Research Institute, said that Green Mountain Power is the first to aggregate home batteries for frequency regulation in U.S. markets at commercial scale and this is a small but important step in terms of demonstrating how distributed energy resources can perform the most technically challenging of grid services.

Read More: CanaryMedia.com

Upcoming Events

How to Identify CHP Projects that Fit Your Goals
Learn about the benefits combined heat and power (CHP) can provide your facility, from reducing operating costs and meeting decarbonization and sustainability goals to increasing your on-site resiliency. DOE experts will share how to identify candidate CHP project opportunities, provide an overview of the project development process, and complete a step-by-step screening analysis for CHP – a no-cost service provided to end-users through the DOE CHP Technical Assistance Partnerships (TAP) program.
Speakers:
  • Cliff Haefke, DOE Midwest CHP Technical Assistance Partnership
  • Bruce Hedman, Entropy Research, Senior Technical Advisor to DOE

Date: July 1, 2021
Time: 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm CST
Registration: Link Here

American-Made Solar Prize Round 5 Informational Webinar
A new tool that connects innovators with support from DOE’s national labs, business incubators, and other entrepreneurial resources in the American-Made Network to advance their technologies. Learn more about the Solar Prize Round 5 and how to compete in the Hardware and Software Tracks.

Date: July 13, 2021
Time: 2:00 pm CST
Registration: Link Here

2021 National Energy Codes Conference
Hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, the virtual 2021 National Energy Codes Conference will be held July 20-22, 2021. Learn about the latest updates, resources and tools supporting code advancement and implementation. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear directly from industry leaders, contribute to the conversation, and learn how states, local governments and others are looking to energy codes to build the clean energy economy. Check out the preliminary conference agenda. The highlighted sessions will feature a combination of informative presentations, panel discussions, and interactive breakout sessions. Featured topics include:
  • Emerging State & Local Goals: From Zero Energy to Electrification to Decarbonization
  • Workforce Development: Opportunities for Building Codes and Compliance Programs
  • The Role of Building Codes in Shaping Equity and Environmental Justice
  • Building Performance Standards – The Pathway to Zero-Carbon Buildings

Energy Codes 2021 will feature several continuing education options for energy code professionals. Sessions have been submitted for American Institute of Architects (AIA), International Code Council (ICC), and Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) approval.

Date: July 20 - 21, 2021
Registration: Link

Department of Energy's Energy Exchange
Save the date for the Department of Energy’s Energy Exchange 2021! With the theme, Connecting the Future, Energy Exchange 2021 will be an online event featuring engaging trainings and sessions across the federal energy and water management community.

Date: August 2-6, 2021
Registration: Link

2021 National Conference on Energy Efficiency as a Resource (VIRTUAL)
Mark your calendars, the Energy Efficiency as a Resource National Conference will be virtual in 2021. This conference on policies and programs aims to reduce customers' energy waste and thus help utilities meet the grid's demand for electricity. The role of energy efficiency in transforming the utility industry has become increasingly essential and more utilities are setting ambitious corporate carbon reduction goals. Meanwhile, policymakers are expanding their expectations for what energy efficiency programs deliver, from greenhouse gas reductions to job creation, economic recovery to bill affordability, many with a focus on energy equity and justice.
Who are the likely participants?
Utilities and program administrators, regulatory commissions, state government, consultants, manufacturers, environmental organizations, consumer groups, and research institutes.

Date: October 19 - 21, 2021 and October 26 - 27, 2021
Registration: ACEEE.org

For questions or additional information on any of these items, please contact:
Tamara Cook
Senior Program Manager of Environment and Development
tcook@nctcog.org
817-695-9221

 
View additional events and training opportunities at www.nctcog.org/envir/events
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