The Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) is excited to announce its second request for proposals (RFP) for $60 million in funding. This represents a major milestone for the program and a significant increase from its inaugural RFP of $8.6 million awarded earlier this year.
“The first round tested our systems and helped us improve the process so we could ‘scale up’ and award larger grants for bigger projects,” said PCEF Program Manager Sam Baraso.
PCEF’s second RFP is soliciting proposals for projects requesting up to $10 million over a maximum of five years. Organizations working in and across Portland’s historically under-represented communities, including communities of color and low-income communities, are encouraged to submit their proposals to address climate change while advancing racial and social justice.
The program expects to fund a greater number of projects this round, including those that:
Significantly retrofit low-income homes to make them more safe, comfortable, and energy efficient, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as monthly utility bills.
Plant trees across Portland, especially where heat islands are most prevalent, to provide much-needed cooling shade and help mitigate flooding, while storing greater carbon in trees and soil.
Invest in workforce training so that workers historically excluded from living-wage clean energy jobs can join a growing, well-paying labor pool.
Why this matters
“The second round of PCEF funding couldn’t come at a more opportune time,” said Dr. Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University. “Following a tragic summer of record-breaking temperatures, we saw firsthand the extent to which our communities and institutions are woefully underprepared for extreme climate-induced events. PCEF funding will begin to address the decades of disinvestments and help to build resilience through directly investing in our homes, neighborhoods and community-based organizations.”
PCEF Committee Co-chair and journeyman electrician Michael Edden Hill said, “This year has been painful on so many fronts, but the PCEF program is a bright spot in our community. I’m excited to see us putting out funds to train hundreds of folks that look like me to be part of the solution; to install heat pumps so that people can warm their homes efficiently and save money, but also stay alive and comfortable in our hotter summers – and so much more.”
In the inaugural funding round awarded earlier this spring, PCEF funded 45 grants, 29 of which were focused on planning for future projects. Of the 16 implementation grants funded, project outcomes included dozens of deep energy retrofits of BIPOC homes, a ductless heat pump program targeting 200 homes, affordable housing retrofits, more than 1,000 tree plantings, and regenerative agriculture projects focused on low-income, immigrant, and refugee communities.
Community Energy Project (CED), a grantee from the inaugural round, received a PCEF grant for deep energy retrofits of 20 low-income Black-owned homes in NE Portland.
“We believe that everyone deserves a safe, healthy, efficient home, regardless of income,” said Charity Fain, CED executive director. “The PCEF grant is helping us do that, directly supporting Black homeowners one house, one family at a time.”
While proposals are community initiated and the PCEF fund is responsive to requests from grantees, anticipated results from the second round of funding include the training of hundreds of people for clean energy jobs, several hundreds of single-family home retrofits and even greater multifamily retrofits, tree plantings in East Portland, and acres of regenerative agriculture as well as hundreds of jobs created.
“Portlanders want climate action rooted in racial justice and economic opportunity,” said Bureau of Planning and Sustainability Commissioner Carmen Rubio. “Shifting away from fossil fuels means meaningfully centering more frontline voices and perspectives – specifically those from Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander and other communities of color, low-income Portlanders and immigrants – who experience climate change first and disproportionately. PCEF accomplished this while meeting our community’s needs.”
Per City Code, PCEF also has allocated a small portion of innovation funding for clean transportation-related projects, such as electric vehicles (EV) and EV bikes and charging stations. All submitted projects will be screened and deemed eligible for further evaluation, based on their contributions toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving climate resiliency, and contributing direct benefits to PCEF’s priority communities.
The PCEF program anticipates future annual funding opportunities ranging from $70-90 million over the next several years.
Learn more about PCEF’s second RFP offering.
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