Wisconsin has ambitious climate plans, but the Republican-controlled legislature has refused to pass funding to carry them out.
That’s why Wisconsin city and state leaders are especially glad for a nearly $5 billion federal initiative meant to help states and municipalities advance climate action plans.
The Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program, created by the Inflation Reduction Act, has already provided a $3 million planning grant to Wisconsin’s Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy, as well as smaller grants to the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission and four tribal governments within the state’s borders.
"This is a really awesome kickstart to emissions reductions in the state," said Maria Redmond, director of the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy.
"The challenge in Wisconsin is we haven’t been able to get a lot of resources [for climate programs] because the legislature hasn’t allocated them. The last three budget cycles, the governor proposed significant funding for climate action, including for this office. None of that has been approved. Through this grant, we can get a lot more done."
The program this year awarded $250 million in non-competitive grants to states, tribes and major metropolitan areas for climate action planning. The entities that received the planning grants can then apply for implementation grants totaling $4.3 billion to carry out their climate action plans.
This gives us the ability to go out to communities instead of having them come to us.
The implementation grant application deadline is April 1, In a guidance document released in September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it anticipates awarding 30 to 115 such grants ranging between $2 million and $500 million.
Redmond said the state has "already been doing a lot of work on decarbonization," including in keeping with Gov. Tony Evers’ 2020 action plan, and "this gives us the resources to really ramp up this work locally," including by "identifying pathways to reduce emissions, renewable deployment, optimizing energy efficiency, innovating in transportation, and improving our building stock," and also potentially looking at agriculture, forestry and carbon sequestration.
Wisconsin lawmakers have pushed legislation that limits municipalities’ ability to pursue climate goals, such as a ban on local zero-emissions mandates and a bill that would prevent local governments from operating pay electric vehicle charging stations. They’ve also thus far declined to pass a bill enabling community solar, and rebuffed advocates’ requests for legal clarity on third-party-owned solar.
Justin Backal Balik is the state program director for Evergreen Action, which was among organizations offering the administration input on designing the federal program. He said the grants are "tailor-made for a state like Wisconsin at this particular moment in time, when you have the leadership of Gov. Evers that has articulated a clean energy plan to achieve 100 percent decarbonization in the electricity sector, and also looking at the industrial sector and clean transportation goals."
"One of the reasons Evergreen advocated for the [Climate Pollution Reduction Grant] was that it is specifically designed to focus on sectoral transformations and unmet funding needs — Wisconsin has a lot," Backal Balik continued. "The policy vision is there, and particularly with the capacity Wisconsin has with the $3 million planning grant, there are a number of directions they could go in. This is a generational opportunity that’s not going to come around again, an opportunity to meet a good chunk of the unmet funding needs that have popped up as a result of the Republican intransigence in the legislature."
Planning process
Redmond said the $3 million planning grant has allowed her office to hire a full-time community engagement facilitator and another full-time staffer, basically doubling the staff. The planning grant is also used for carrying out analysis, modeling, community outreach and status reports over a four-year period.
Environmental justice is a focus of the funding, and a key metric in the scoring system for implementation grants. Redmond said this dovetails with Wisconsin’s focus on equity and inclusion.
"Understanding lived experience is one of the things we’re most excited about" augmenting with the planning grant dollars, she said. "This gives us the ability to go out to communities instead of having them come to us. It’s also about supporting organizations working in communities, making sure we are not expecting them to volunteer their time."
That could include honorariums for people to attend community meetings.
"We’re asking people to step away from their lives, maybe in the evening when they need child care, or to step away from their jobs," she said.
Redmond said the state is also planning to work with Illinois and Minnesota to "make sure we are in alignment with state plans, and not working against each other" — especially as Wisconsin metropolitan areas overlap with those states.
Climate is the justice issue.
Allison Carlson, executive director of the Wisconsin Local Government Climate Coalition, said staff capacity is a common need for local governments on the climate front, and she’s glad the planning grants can be used to hire staff.
"A lot of local governments have one person dedicated to climate action, probably being shared with other departments like recycling; they have a lot of other things on their plate," she said. "We need to be making sure we’re building capacity in local governments and in communities to sustain efforts over time."
Backal Balik noted the planning grants are meant to help governments make sense of all the incentives and opportunities on the table.
"EPA is really encouraging states and other jurisdictions to use the CPRG process to step back and look at their federal funding deployment strategy as a whole," he said. "You have Solar for All here, and direct pay here, so many different pieces. The planning process is asking states to think about how all these funding streams can be accessed together. The parts are pretty consequential in their own right, but you have the opportunity to really scale up the impact of what all the federal investments can achieve."
Local action and collaboration
States or metro areas that received planning grants can serve as coordinating entities to collaborate with other government bodies to seek grants. Redmond said her office is eager to work with Wisconsin municipalities and agencies on meeting their climate goals, and will hold nine regional meetings for that purpose.
The Wisconsin Local Government Climate Coalition is also focused on helping municipalities participate in the CPRG program.
"Many member communities have their own climate action or clean energy plans in place. They’ve done data analysis, engaging with their communities to understand what the needs are — a lot of them are already making strides," she said. "One of the big barriers is: where are the dollars to actually do these things? The competitive CPRG grants and other IRA funds are allowing communities to put their plans into action."
She added that "a lot of the climate action plans were already in place or in process, not necessarily prompted by the CPRG process."
"But what the CPRG process does is create opportunity to align the needs of local communities with the state and other stakeholders, so we can leverage even more IRA dollars and become more organized together."
Kelly Hilyard is the sustainability coordinator for the city of Middleton, not far from Madison. She said the office has been stymied by legislative inaction around electric vehicles. They had applied for federal funding for electric vehicles under the Carbon Reduction Program, a program separate from CPRG under the U.S. Department of Transportation. But the county had to switch its proposal to seek funding for LED lights instead because of constraints placed on the program by the legislature.
Huge grant opportunities like this are going to take collaboration.
Hilyard said the city "scrambled" to put together a proposal to transition their street lights to LEDs, which was necessary "low-hanging fruit," but they still hope to seek federal funds for electric vehicles.
Since being part of a seven-city collaboration on an energy plan in 2020, Middleton has been "ticking things off" on a list of priorities like in
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