This year, at the Community-driven Clean Energy Conference (hosted by CERTs), Winona County got to show off much of the work on energy efficiency happening here. In a breakout session and a conference-wide panel, representatives of each of the 7 Community Achievement Award-winning communities shared their accomplishments and lessons with other interested folks from across the state, with the “Moving Winona Forward: A Rural Energy Collaborative” represented by John Howard from the City of Winona.
Spurred by a group of passionate residents and representatives of local institutions, many of which are members of Sustain Winona and the Winona Energy Action Team, Winona County has increased community-wide adoption of energy efficiency and conservation by bringing together community partners across Winona County as part of the Moving Winona Forward Energy Collaboration.
The resulting connections and projects have continued to advance the state’s energy goals by growing the local capacity to serve stakeholders, residents, and the broader community. The project leveraged state, federal, and utility funding sources to perform energy audits and efficiency improvements for over 200 Winona County households, the majority of which were low-income. Furnace testing, a component of the home energy audits, resulted in the replacement of two furnaces by the federal Weatherization Assistance Program. Participation in these household energy efficiency improvement programs resulted in savings of 150,557 kWh and 15,789 therms in 2017.
The City of Winona, Winona County, and Winona Area Public Schools are also helping to meet the solar energy standard through a commitment to purchasing 40%, 100%, and 100% of their annual energy use, respectively, from a community solar garden slated to be operational in 2018; their purchasing agreements extend for 25 years and are projected to offer significant savings.
In late 2017, the City of Winona adopted an Energy Action Plan, developed in collaboration with Xcel Energy’s Partners in Energy. The plan includes a bold goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Winona’s Energy Action Team members—which included elected officials, city staff, representatives from area educational institutions, and community volunteers with energy-related expertise—met to review energy use data, determine community priorities, and develop strategies to meet the identified goals. Implementation of this plan will reduce the city’s energy use by 10% by 2025.
FILLING IN THE GAPS
Moving Winona Forward helped identify, and is currently working to overcome, a policy hurdle regarding the availability of qualified insulation installers in the Winona area. Xcel Energy currently requires installers to hold Building Performance Institute Air Leakage Control (ALC) certification in order to offer customers rebates on insulation work. Presently, the closest ALC certified installers are nearly 50 miles away from the City of Winona – making it difficult for Winona area businesses and residents to obtain the rebate. The Energy Action Team is addressing this challenge by using a CERTs SEED grant, Partners in Energy support, and in-kind support from both Minnesota State College Southeast and a local business called Energy Detectives to train local installers and incorporate the training into the local technical college’s curriculum. The first local installers should be certified by early Summer of 2018.
Prior to this project, Xcel Energy’s dedicated funding for low-income household energy conservation was largely inaccessible to residents of Winona County: the majority of low-income service providers are located in the Twin Cities Metro. As a result of Moving Winona Forward, and with support from Xcel Energy, the region’s Community Action Agency (Semcac) became qualified to conduct Home Energy Savings Program audits in low-income homes. This first-of-its-kind coordination between Xcel Energy and a Minnesotan Community Action Agency expanded local capacity for energy efficiency improvements while leveraging existing funds dedicated to energy conservation. There were 34 home energy audits conducted in Winona County by Semcac through this effort, all of which resulted in energy efficiency improvements.
MEETING COMMUNITY NEEDS
A key tenet of Moving Winona Forward is that there is great value in organizational collaboration to connect needs with resources across Winona County. This strategy proved successful in solving problems, such as addressing the lack of qualified insulation installers or availability of energy auditors for low-income households. Another notable example can be found in the B3 Benchmarking outreach to communities in Winona County. When meeting with the City of Altura, it became clear that an engineering study of the wastewater pumps would be most useful. The Southeast CERTs Coordinator, one of the partners conducting outreach, connected the City of Altura with MnTAP, which provided the city with an audit at no cost. The MnTAP study’s recommendation of shutting down up to 6 of 10 aeration pumps, to be conducted in phases over the next two years, is estimated to save the City about $14,000/year and reduce electricity use by about 173,000 kWh/year.
Moving Winona Forward’s partnership-focused strategy provided greater outcomes for Winona County’s low-income households than would have been possible alone. Members of the Energy Action Team and Sustain Winona reached out to the Winona Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) about offering household energy audits to the residents in their public housing units. At first, the plan was to offer audits to a few interested residents, but the HRA later decided to implement the energy audits in all 170 of their single family residential units. In a matter of three months, this project went from proposal to plan to completion, and resulted in a large investment in energy efficiency— valued at between $30,000-$102,000—for Winona’s low-income housing stock, at no cost to the residents.
BRINGING THE COMMUNITY TOGETHER
Sustain Winona supported the Winona County Climate Dialogue in 2016, which helped provide a publicly-created agenda to guide the Moving Winona Forward work. Increased emphasis on energy efficiency and renewable energy was highlighted as one of the community recommendations. In response, the Moving Winona Forward partners organized an energy conservation contest eligible to all residents of Winona County wherein individuals and teams earned points for completing energy-saving actions. The contest increased participation in energy-conservation programs and actions while also supporting ongoing community conversations about energy use in Winona County. Other outreach efforts include tabling at home expos, an Earth Day event, and two targeted education sessions on residential energy efficiency which reached over 150 individuals. Additionally, members of Winona’s Energy Action Team gathered survey responses from more than 250 residents on how best to engage them in energy conservation which will inform future outreach efforts and strategy.
MOVING WINONA COUNTY FORWARD
The Moving Winona Forward efforts to increase energy efficiency for Winona County residents had a two-pronged approach: to support a community-wide discussion on energy use, and to focus financial resources on vulnerable households. The funds used to provide energy audits and household improvements were dedicated to low- and fixed-income households. For these residents, energy bills tend to represent a higher percentage of monthly income and expensive energy efficiency improvements are unrealistic. To further the reach of Xcel Energy’s conservation programs, the City of Winona is incorporating program and rebate information into their own home rehabilitation efforts, allowing households to save more of their earned income. In 2017, 197 Winona County households received Low Income Home Energy Squad (LIHES) visits, up nearly 1,500% from the 12 conducted in 2016. Winona-area LIHES visits made up nearly 18% of Xcel Energy’s LIHES visits statewide, despite being less than 3% of the customer base. In total, including Low Income Home Energy Squad visits and Home Energy Savings Programs, the outreach and engagement efforts of Moving Winona Forward resulted in 224 homes served in Winona County. Low- and fixed- income households in Winona County continue to benefit from these energy efficiency improvements, with another wave of Winona County residents soon to join them—a second round of energy audits and Home Energy Squad visits are currently in development.