The Climate Investment Plan
The Climate Investment Plan (CIP) is the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) five-year plan that guides the program's investments. In December 2024, the CIP was amended to include additional unexpected funds enabling PCEF to invest $1.6 billion to drive down carbon pollution and increase community resilience and prosperity, starting with Portlanders who are most vulnerable to the impacts of our changing climate.
Background
The CIP was developed through:
- Climate research
- Community engagement
- Multiple rounds of input from
- residents,
- businesses,
- technical experts,
- government partners,
- and community organizations.
Through the CIP, PCEF invests in community-led projects that reduce carbon emissions, create economic opportunity, and help make our city more resilient as we face a changing climate. In the next five years, PCEF will invest in community-led clean energy projects and climate solutions like energy-efficient upgrades to make apartment buildings safer and more comfortable during extreme heat, and tree planting to increase shade in neighborhoods that lack tree canopy coverage. These investments help ensure our most impacted residents are prepared for a changing climate as we support the City’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
All programs in the CIP are evaluated within PCEF’s equity and climate framework, which considers benefits to frontline communities, community leadership, implementation feasibility, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, and accountability.
Community Grants
This funding cycle is part of the inaugural CIP and is aimed at supporting planning and implementation projects that reduce GHGs and improve climate resilience in ways that advance racial and social justice. The CIP includes Strategic Programs (SP) and this Community Grants (CRG) program. In most circumstances, organizations may apply to both the CRG and one or more SPs. For example, an affordable housing provider that is building a new regulated multi-family building can access funds through SP 1. If that same provider wants to retrofit an existing building, they can apply through the CRG program.
Our Community Grant 2024 program application period closed Feb. 15, 2024. We appreciate our community partners who took the time and energy to submit applications, and we are excited to see their ideas that address the climate crisis.
Learn more about Community Grants 2024
Collaborating for Climate Action funding opportunity
This funding opportunity includes over $300 million through the next five years for projects that reduce or sequester carbon emissions, create meaningful economic opportunities, and enhance Portland’s resilience to climate change.
The PCEF Committee voted unanimously to approve a process and framework that would allocate additional clean-energy funds to projects that create climate-action solutions and center PCEF priority populations. This opportunity builds on recommendations made by the PCEF Committee in February 2024 and strategically complements the recently adopted CIP.
Learn more about this new funding opportunity
Read the Climate Investment Plan
Funding priorities
Funds will be spent on the 10 priority areas below, which are based on the original funding categories in the ballot initiative and allocations set by City Council in October 2022:
- Energy efficiency, renewable energy, and embodied carbon in housing and small commercial buildings.
- Building upgrades for government and nonprofit owned buildings that provide services in climate emergencies (also referred to as “community resilience hubs”).
- Transportation decarbonization or efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in transportation.
- Low-cost access to capital for carbon-reducing projects.
- Building community-based organization operational capacity for organizations that have a meaningful connection to advancing climate justice.
- 82nd Ave planning and early investment for low carbon equitable communities.
- Growing a diverse and well-trained workforce and contractor pool to perform work that reduces or sequesters greenhouse gases.
- Regenerative agriculture and green infrastructure projects that reduce or sequester greenhouse gases within the City and focus on priority populations.