A digest of news and funding opportunities. 

The What Works Plus (WW+) funder collaborative is a partnership coordination hub across philanthropy, government, and nonprofits to advance equity and climate resilience through thoughtful implementation of historic federal infrastructure, climate, and economic development funding. WW+ is a project of Freedman Consulting, LLC, which provides strategic consulting services to foundations and nonprofit organizations.

September Spotlight: News from Members & Friends

Have a notable investment, partnership, or event coming up? Let Max Shipman know at shipman@tfreedmanconsulting.com and we’ll feature it next month.

• The Brookings Institution published a report, co-authored by WW+ Senior Advisor Xav Briggs, examining financing barriers to equitable climate investments across key economic sectors, including energy, decarbonization in the transportation, resilience upgrades to buildings and homes, and more. The report identifies nine “pain points” – spanning across information, pricing, and governance issues – that limit more equitable climate investment.

• Elemental Impact – re-branded from Elemental Accelerator – launched a $100 million program, funded in part by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The program will provide funding to entrepreneurs and climate technologies that are working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and are ready for commercial scale. Companies are invited to submit proposals for projects ranging from $3 million to $10 million.

• Work For America published a report identifying key recruitment, hiring, and retention challenges contributing to our nation’s local and state government staffing crisis, as well as solutions states are testing to remedy these challenges – including skills-based hiring, same-day hiring initiatives, and apprenticeships. The report also outlines some of the ways the new organization will work to address public sector staffing challenges, including ecosystem building, messaging support, and providing government agencies with outside recruitment and hiring resources.

• The NewDEAL Forum is hosting a webinar on October 1 from 12:30 - 1:30 PM ET to discuss progress resulting from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)’s investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and climate resilience. The event will feature Mandela Barnes (former Wisconsin Lt. Governor), Laurel Blatchford (Treasury’s IRA Chief Implementation Officer), Dan Carol (Senior Director at the Milken Institute), and Luke McGowan (Head of Federal Initiatives at Bloomberg Philanthropies), who will share stories of these investments, and information to help state and local leaders navigate ongoing opportunities for their communities.

• The Chronicle of Philanthropy released a piece discussing philanthropic underinvestment in rural communities. Rural areas receive about 7% of philanthropic spending even though they account for 14-20% of the U.S. population, and few national foundations have made contributions to rural America a signature issue. While a recent surge in funder collaboratives focused on rural areas, and an abundance of federal funds available through federal grants have given some rural advocates hope, others suggest more philanthropic funding is needed in order to help rural communities access federal funds.

FUNDING OPPORTUNITY

STATE CLIMATE POLICY DASHBOARD

• The State Climate Policy Dashboard, powered by Climate XChange, is a tool designed to fill critical data gaps, providing state actors with reliable, up-to-date, and comprehensive insights into climate policies across all 50 states. Tracking more than 60 policies across seven sectors, the Dashboard equips state actors with tools to identify high-impact opportunities to reduce GHG emissions, advance economic development, and promote environmental justice. 

  Climate XChange is seeking support to: 1) expand the scope of policies included in the Dashboard, 2) develop additional policy components, such as policy quality criteria and standardized metrics to assess effectiveness, 3) develop model rules for policies, and 4) integrate key policy opportunities, GHG modeling, and data visualizations for each state. To receive early access to the Dashboard or for more information on this opportunity, please reach out to Paola Ferreira Miani.

NEWS UPDATES

A snapshot of this month’s key news.

Climate and Energy:

Happy Climate Week! We hope our readers enjoyed participating in informative events online or in-person.

• The Department of the Treasury (Treasury):

  • Released an analysis of the first year of the 48(e) Low-Income Communities Bonus Credit Program – an incentive to increase solar and wind installations in low-income communities – finding that, in its first year, the program approved over 49,000 of the 54,000 applications it received from across the country. These approved applications totaled nearly 1.5 gigawatts of expected energy capacity and injected approximately $3.5 billion in public and private investment into communities. A deeper analysis of the program by Heatmap, however, found that despite overwhelming demand during the application period, the program ended up with capacity to spare, especially in tribal and low-income communities that lack transmission capacity and aren’t able to get projects to a “commercial readiness” stage.

  • Issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the 48E(h) Clean Electricity Low-Income Communities Bonus Credit Program, which builds on the previous 48(e) bonus credit to include additional energy technologies beyond wind and solar as the IRA’s Investment Tax Credit becomes technology-neutral in 2025. The agency will accept comments on the proposed rules until October 3, 2024 and a public hearing on the rules will take place on October 17, 2024 at 10 AM ET.

• The Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced $7.3 billion in funding through the Empowering Rural America Program for 16 projects to build clean energy for rural communities. Together, these projects will leverage over $29 billion in private investments to build more than 10 gigawatts of clean energy in rural communities across the country.

• The Department of Energy (DOE) announced it has selected 12 local governments and tribes to receive over $31 million in funding through the Communities Sparking Investment in Transformative Energy (C-SITE) Program. The award will support the implementation of high-impact clean energy projects in disadvantaged communities, energy communities, and small and medium sized jurisdictions. In addition to funding, the award winners will be eligible to receive a Community Energy Fellow, a clean energy professional placed in their community for up to 18 months to build capacity and improve project outcomes.

Economic Development:

• Volts released a podcast episode exploring the White House’s industrial investment strategy through a conversation with Heather Boushey, a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and Chief Economist for the Invest in America Cabinet. Boushey discusses how public-private partnerships are spurring job growth in the clean energy industry, the different economic tools the federal government is using to maximize the impact of federal funding, and more.    

Workforce:

• President Biden signed the “Good Jobs” Executive Order, which promotes labor requirements such as family-sustaining wages, workplace safety, and the free and fair opportunity to join a union. The Executive Order also creates a new task force in the Executive Office of the President, co-chaired by the Secretary of Labor and the Director of the National Economic Council, to coordinate policy across agencies and enforce the order.

• The Energy Workforce Advisory Board published a report analyzing the effectiveness of existing Department of Energy (DOE) workforce programming, and providing recommendations for DOE to meet current and future industry and labor needs of the energy sector. The report recommends DOE issue an agency directive adopting eight principles for all of its workforce activities, institutionalize and bolster the Department’s coordination of critical workforce activities internally and across federal agencies, and integrate six interdependent strategies into DOE’s work – including documenting the state of job quality in the energy sector, and building inclusive on-ramps to high-quality energy jobs.

• The Department of Labor (DOL) announced the launch of the country’s first electric vehicle (EV) technician apprenticeship program, which will begin in Pittsburgh, PA in December 2024. This one-year program, developed in partnership with local organizations, offers participants 185 hours of technical instruction, full-time paid training, a certification as EV technicians, and 15 college credits. Apprentices work in dealerships and gain technical instruction in the electric vehicle lab.

Transportation:

• The Department of Transportation (DOT) released a fact sheet celebrating progress spurred in the transportation sector by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Since BIL was passed in 2021, more than $480 billion in funding has been announced for over 60,000 specific projects. These initiatives have helped repair over 175,000 miles of roadway, expand or improve 11,200 public transportation operations, and modernize over 1,100 airports.

New Resources:

• RMI published a report highlighting methods states can leverage to harness the economic potential of federal clean energy incentives. The report looks at projected IRA funding between the years 2023 and 2031 and provides data illustrating each states’ progress toward accessing incentives, including the potential for IRA funding by industry. The report recommends states conduct a stacking analysis to identify incentive gaps, pass policies to drive demand for clean energy, and host convenings to educate and excite target sectors.

• The Center for Public Enterprise published a report outlining the role public developers play in leveraging BIL and IRA funding to drive the US energy system forward. The report argues public development of energy projects provides advantages over private financing, including enhanced sectoral knowledge, underwriting expertise, and legal powers that can help overcome high upfront costs, regulatory hurdles, and long payback periods.

WW+ Bulletin: September Edition