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Home My WebLink AboutEnergy Plan Support LtrJuly 26, 2012 Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber 254 State Capitol Salem, OR 97301-4047 Board of Cou Commissioners 1300 NWWall St. Suite 200 -Bend. OR 97701-1960 (541) 388-6570 -Fax (541 J 385-3202 www.co.deschutes.or.us board@co.deschutes.or.us Tammy Baney Anthony DeBone Alan Unger tenyearenergyplan.comments@odoe.state.or.us Governor John Kitzhaber and 10-Year Energy Plan Task Force: On behalf of the citizens of Deschutes County, we enthusiastically support your 10-Year Energy Action Plan and, in particular, to point out Clean Energy Works Oregon (CEWO) as an effective statewide organization worthy of additional State investment. We're excited to see CEWO cited in the Draft Plan as an example of a public-private partnership that is successfully maximizing energy efficiency and conservation. CEWO and several business, government and local community partners are working collaboratively to drive economic returns and energy savings, deploy capital to homeowners and improve small business and workforce opportunities in Crook, Deschutes and Jefferson counties. Key partners include Button Up Energy, Do Insulation, GreenSavers, Neil Kelly, Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council, City of Redmond, Redmond Chamber of Commerce, Umpqua Bank, Mid-Oregon Credit Union, Cascadia Green Building Council, Central Oregon Builders Association, Habitat for Humanity, The Environmental Center, Wy'East Resource Conservation & Development, Deschutes County Commissioner Alan Unger, Representative Jason Conger, Representative Gene Whisnant, and others. Clean Energy Works Oregon has helped our region achieve: • More than 250 applications to date • 13 completed home energy upgrades and counting • Nearly $100,000 in CEWO project revenue for our four small business contractors in 2011 and 2012 We strongly encourage you to provide additional programmatic funding to CEWO to enable the organization to: • Offer rebates to homeowners above those provided by utilities • Support new, existing and future contractors and workers who are the cornerstones of home performance • Encourage lending in new markets and to Oregonians who need credit to afford energy upgrades • Provide additional opportunities to build and expand business for other services, products and technologies. Additionally, we strongly encourage you to: • Build upon Energy Trust of Oregon's Energy Performance Score (EPS) program to help provide a tool that is available to all Oregon homeowners. We support the EPS program as a tool that will help accelerate the market for home performance and energy efficiency upgrades, and serve as a consumer protection tool for homeowners and for home buyers at the point of purchase. Enhancing the Lives oj Citizens by Delivering Quality Services in a Cost-Effective Manner • Expand the Energy Trust's charter to allow it to deliver broader benefits from energy efficiency investments. Homeowner and occupant comfort, health and safety are key reasons that homeowners undertake energy efficiency upgrades. Upgrades contribute to greater quality of life, fewer sick days and greater productivity. The value of these benefits should be considered in the evaluations of measures and programs. • Align workforce development and education systems to ensure measurable and sustained economic development. We wholeheartedly support investment in career pathways and contractor skill development that lead to high-wage, family-supportingjobs, as well as conducting a gap analysis to understand business and workforce needs in our emerging and evolving industry. Finally, a significant funding commitment to CEWO will also provide needed assurance and predictability in our industry that is nearing maturation but is still transfonning and expanding. We are particularly proud of our affiliation with CEWO because it is building a sustainable business model, achieving strong results and remains committed to continuous improvement. Specific CEWO highlights include: • Generation of nearly 5,500 applications/project leads. • 1,800 homes remodeled for energy efficiency. • 800 workers receiving paychecks, including 180 direct construction new hires -in a sector that, in Oregon, recently suffered a 50+% decline in employment. • Average wages of$21lhour across multiple trades-from insulation installers to HV AC technicians to electricians to plumbers. • 30% average energy savings per home, generating more than $500,000 annually into the pockets of participating citizens. • $25 million in economic development, plus an additional $11.4 million currently in the pipeline. • 4 to 1 leverage on Federal investment-primarily from private capitallenders--demonstrating effective aggregation of public and private resources. • 50 contractors who have the highest levels of certification and among the best in home perfonnance-90% of which are providing health insurance to their workers. Thank you for your consideration and work on this important program. Sincerely, Deschutes County Board of Commissioners Anthony DeBone, Chair Alan Unger, Vice Chair Tammy Baney, Commissioner Bonnie Baker Subject: FW: FW: URGENT: Support for CEWO and Gov's 10 Year Energy Plan From: Katrina Van Dis [mailto:KVanDis@coic.org] Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 2: 13 PM To: Bonnie Baker Subject: Re: FW: URGENT: Support for CEWO and Gov's 10 Year Energy Plan Bonnie, COlC is managing the contract for Clean Energy Works (CEWO) for Central Oregon, which is an energy efficiency program for residential homeowners. Commissioner Unger is familiar and has supported the launch of it for our region. Below is an email from CEWO soliciting support from regional partners. In the first paragraph is a link to the Governor's Ten Year Plan. Does that help? Katrina As you may know, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber recently released the State'e Draft 10-Year Energy Action Plan that details important initiatives which will shape short and long-term investment and deployment in energy policy, programs, practices and technologies. The plan is also an economic action plan, emphasizing priorities that can get Oregonians back to work on energy-related projects in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state. Here is a link you can use to view the draft plan -http://oregon.gov/energy/Pages[Ten Year Energy Plan Draft.aspx Clean Energy Works Oregon is cited as an example of a successful public-private partnership. The Plan includes an action item (page 22) indicating that the State will provide additional programmatic support to CEWO. This support is critical to all of us for many reasons. Among them, it will enable CEWO to continue to offer rebates to homeowners above those provided by utilities, support new, existing and future contractors and workers who are the cornerstones of the industry and encourage lending in new markets and to Oregonians who need credit to afford energy upgrades. The Governor's Office is accepting public comments until the end of July on the examples and initiatives included in the Draft Plan and we want as many voices as possible to be heard and to be supportive of CEWO. We speCifically want our partners and stakeholders in central Oregon to consider submitting a letter of support for CEWO. Please know that if this is not the right way or time for your organization to engage. that's okay. 1 For those who are willing and available, we want the process to be easy and efficient so we have drafted the attached template letter. You can either submit a customized letter (using the template as s staring point) on your organization's letterhead or sign on to a letter with signatures from other leaders in your community. We do not want or need to inundate the Governor's Office with too many letters so signing onto one letter is preferred. In order to do so, ~ the last page of the letter on your letterhead, sign and then scan and email the PDF back to <brian@cewo.org>. If easier, feel free to send your electronic signature to Brian and he will apply it and then delete it once done. Brian will create a complete PDF with all signature pages and submit it to the Governor's Office via email <tenyearenergyplan.comments@odoe.state.or.us>. Very sorry for the tight turn around on this. Input is due to the governor's office by July 31st. If you could get back to Brian by WEDNESDAY OR THURSDAY OF THIS WEEK, he will have time to compile before the due date. Thanks for your consideration. This holds tremendous potential for all of us. Wendy Katrina Van Dis Program Coordinator Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council 334 NE Hawthorne Ave., Bend OR 97701 P 541.504.3307 f 541.548.9549 e kvandis@coic.org 2