October 24, 2004—The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Philadelphia Regional Office has awarded $1.3 million for fifteen energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in the Mid-Atlantic region. Funding is being provided through DOE’s State Energy Program Special Projects competitive grants, which have four major goals: To improve the energy efficiency of schools, homes, and other buildings; to create opportunities for distributed energy resources; to promote energy-efficient industrial technologies; and to support renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass.
Awards are given in seven categories:
- Clean Cities—a voluntary, locally-based government/industry partnership that promotes alternate fuel vehicles and their supporting infrastructure.
- Rebuild America—a voluntary network of community partnerships that provides business and technical tools, customized assistance, and information on alternative financing mechanisms to carry out building energy projects that improve building performance, reduce energy use and costs, and promote local economic development.
- Federal Energy Management Program—a program that works with facility managers, architects, utilities, and others to save energy and money at federal facilities.
- Distributed Energy Resources—a variety of small, modular power-generating technologies that can be combined with energy management and storage systems and used to improve electricity grid operation.
- State Industries of the Future—a partnership strategy of the DOE Office of Industrial Technologies to pursue industrial energy efficiency goals at the local level.
- Residential Deployment—a strategy to develop self-sustaining energy efficiency programs that incorporates marketing efforts, builder training/certification, home inspections, and quality assurance of contractor work.
- Biomass Program—a partnership with industries to foster research and development of advanced technologies that can transform biomass resources into clean, affordable, and domestically produced biofuels, biopower, and high-value bioproducts.
