Sarah Holt
Voting is live for Evergreen Options participants! If you're an EVO customer, you should have received an email announcing the two grant applicants on Tuesday, December 8. Please be sure to cast your vote by 5pm on December 14 to help The Mountaineers receive a $50,000 grant that will support a new solar PV system on the roof of the Tacoma Program Center!
The Mountaineers recently applied for a $50,000 grant to assist with the roughly $100,000 project to install a photovoltaic solar (solar PV) system on the roof of the Tacoma Program Center. This grant is offered through Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) Evergreen Options Program (EVO Program). Being awarded this grant would allow us to complete Phase 2 of a 3-phase effort to move the Tacoma Program Center to be a NetZero Energy building.
Our efforts to move our Tacoma Program Center toward being a NetZero Energy building - a building that balances its energy needs with energy produced from renewable, zero-emission sources* - began in 2019. In the first phase, completed earlier this year, we replaced all lights in the Tacoma Program Center with high-efficiency LED lighting; our second phase will be to install the PV solar system; and in our our third and final phase we'll replace our gas-fired furnaces and water heaters with high-efficiency electric heat pump systems.
To help with installation costs for the PV solar system, we applied for a grant through the Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) Evergreen Options Program (EVO Program). Current TPU ratepayers enrolled in the EVOs Program are the ones who vote on submitted grant proposals to determine the grant recipient.
Only one grant will be given this year, so The Mountaineers winning is not a sure thing - but you can help!
If you're a member of the EVO Program, you'll receive an email from TPU during the week of December 7, 2020 asking for your vote. Please review the proposals and vote for The Mountaineers solar PV system!
We believe our EVO Program grant application is very strong, and we hope you'll agree. Unfortunately we do not have a link to share at this time, since voting will be done via an individual voting link from TPU. Do be on the look out for correspondence from Tacoma Public Utilities and/or the Evergreen Options Program during the week of December 7 (TPU personnel have advised to check your Spam/Junk folder if you do not receive the email).
If you aren't yet an EVO Program member, you can sign up online for as little as $3 per month. In addition to giving you a vote for these annual grants, your $3 will help offset your carbon footprint, and TPU can use your program funds to buy more green power. It’s unclear if signing up now will allow you to vote for the current grant applications, but please consider supporting this innovative program nonetheless.
