A Community Energy Alliance: The Basics

Let's build this together.
The goal
Use the purchasing power of a community - its residents, businesses, and the largest energy users - to procure efficiency improvements at a lower cost. When combined with a long-range public relations campaign, a Community Energy Alliance could achieve 30-50% market penetration and utility savings of 20-40% per participating customer.
Job creation may be the most important result. Creating an Energy Alliance means that there is a guaranteed amount of efficiency work to be done. It gives entrepreneurs the confidence they need to enter the marketplace.
The model is based on an effort undertaking in Cambridge, MA and communities like the Virgin Islands, Cincinnati, and New York City are planning their own initiatives.
The grant
A RFP was issued by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) to cities in eleven states, including Arkansas. The SEEA will award up to $500,000 to successful proposals.
Details of a potential Alliance
A municipal Energy Alliance delivers results via four innovations:

• City Sponsorship - mobilizing residents and businesses by using the City's brand, authority, communications, partnership with SEEA, and relationships;With the exception of some municipal electric utilities, cities have not used their trusted and authoritative relationships with citizens to sponsor the kind of collaboration that can achieve high energy and environmental goals. Only regulated utilities have the consumer-aggregating power of a city administration.The Energy Alliance design is based on mobilizing the City's citizens and the leaders of its institutions and businesses. Because of its City sponsorship and collaboration with local and State leaders, it has access to the decision-makers that no contractor or utility representative can consistently and effectively reach. This allows the Energy Alliance to run a campaign, not unlike a political campaign in its public and high-level access. It can use certificates and endorsements and ratings and publicity to make participation a privilege and non-participation a mistake. It can offer unique value-added service to the projects it sponsors
• A Unique Delivery Mechanism infusing the City's public interests and quality control into an independent non-profit organization, free of bureaucratic procurement and personnel restrictions, combining prominent public and private governance;Winrock International, a nonprofit with offices in Northwest Arkansas, could fulfill this role. They would agree to a sunset clause to turn over operation of the program back to the city, if desired.Some may question why the Energy Alliance needs a separate entity. The Energy Alliance provides quality control via a competitively-selected Independent Engineer. As a separate entity, it has the freedom to conduct business free of political or special interests, to choose its management, to procure services, to engage employees, etc. It provides marketing and account management, arranges financing, and verifies and documents results. Most importantly, it provides quality control via a competitively-selected engineer.
• Financing Leverage of large private investment with public funding, which can be used to subsidize financing and/or guarantee loans for both small and large customers;Public funding is used to perform energy audits, and private investment is leveraged to complete the work (such as a "green mortgage").Sponsorship for energy audits could take the form of recovery funding distributed through the Arkansas Energy Office or grants from regional utilities like AEP.
• Wide and Deep Technology applications that yield maximum savings based on high-level collaboration with customer managements, utilities, political and business leaders, and energy expertsFayetteville is well-situated to employ a variety of energy-saving technologies. From Arkansas Power Electronics International with its breakthrough inverter, the National Center for Reliable Electric Power Transfer and their utility relationships, to a trained home construction workforce ready for green jobs, Fayetteville's economy could benefit quickly from an Energy Alliance.