U.S. Will Pay to Add Solar Panels to Hospitals, Schools After Disasters

Courtesy of the New York Times, a report on federal government’s plans to reimburse state and local governments that rebuild damaged public buildings to be more energy resilient:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will begin paying to install solar panels on schools, hospitals and other public buildings that are rebuilt after disasters, making them more resilient against future disasters while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The change, set to be announced on Tuesday, reflects the disaster agency’s decision to use federal dollars to expand renewable energy as it copes with worsening climate shocks.

The number of billion-dollar weather disasters keeps rising, straining the country’s ability to respond, as well as the ability of local officials to keep offering basic services to residents.

“If you’re installing solar panels, you are creating more energy independence,” Deanne Criswell, FEMA’s administrator, said in an interview.

The change comes amid major shifts in America’s response to disasters. Insurers are withdrawing from high-risk areas. People are donating directly to survivors through the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe, although that money largely benefits the wealthy. FEMA is overhauling its programs to help individual disaster survivors, after acknowledging that the current programs often fail to provide adequate support.

It’s unclear how many state and local governments will take FEMA up on its offer to add clean energy to rebuild facilities. After a major disaster, the agency will typically reimburse state, local, tribal or territorial governments 75 percent of the cost of rebuilding or repairing structures like schools, hospitals, fire stations, libraries and other buildings. FEMA has paid for more than 105,000 such projects over the past decade.

That 75 percent reimbursement would now apply to additional costs of adding solar panels and other energy-related improvements, like heat pumps, batteries or energy-efficient appliances. But state or local officials would still need to come up with 25 percent of the cost. And they would not be required to participate.

A spokeswoman for FEMA said it did not have an estimate for how many state and local governments would make use of the new options, which are funded under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

John Podesta, a senior adviser for clean energy innovation for President Biden, said the change will make up only a small part of the president’s goal of cutting United States greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The country is a long way from that goal: emissions have dropped by about 17 percent since 2005.

But the new policy demonstrates the Biden administration’s commitment to looking for emissions reductions wherever possible, Mr. Podesta said in an interview. “When we say all of government, we mean it,” he said.

The more significant consequence of the new policy, according to RMI, a research organization that works on clean energy, is that it could establish “resilience hubs” — places where residents could gather after a disaster that would still have power even if the grid is knocked out.

If a school or other community building has solar panels to generate electricity and batteries to store it, that building could serve as a respite for people whose homes lose electricity, said Alisa Petersen, the federal policy manager for RMI’s United States program team. And if the building also has energy-efficient appliances like heat pumps, it could serve more people for longer.

The promise of FEMA’s new policy, Ms. Petersen said, “is taking buildings that have been subject to disaster and making them resilient — so that the next time around, people actually have a place to go during the disaster.”



This entry was posted on Friday, February 2nd, 2024 at 3:33 am and is filed under Resilient Infrastructure.  You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.  Both comments and pings are currently closed. 

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BLACK SWANS GREEN SHOOTS
Black Swans / Green Shoots examines the collision between urbanization and resource scarcity in a world affected by climate change, identifying opportunities to build sustainable cities and resilient infrastructure through the use of revolutionary capital, increased awareness, innovative technologies, and smart design to make a difference in the face of global and local climate perils.

'Black Swans' are highly improbable events that come as a surprise, have major disruptive effects, and that are often rationalized after the fact as if they had been predictable to begin with. In our rapidly warming world, such events are occurring ever more frequently and include wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and drought.

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It is my hope that Black Swans / Green Shoots will help readers understand both climate-activated risk and opportunity so that you may invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. I believe that the tools of business and finance can help individuals, businesses, and global society make informed choices about who and what to protect, and I hope that this blog provides some insight into the policy and private sector tools used to assess investments in resilient reinforcement, response, or recovery.