Title
Resolution To Approve a Professional Services Agreement with Walker-Miller Energy Services, LLC for Administration of the Home Energy Advisor Program ($900,000.00)
Memorandum
In 2019, the Ann Arbor City Council declared a climate emergency and established a goal of a just transition to community-wide carbon neutrality by 2030. City Council directed the Office of Sustainability and Innovations (OSI) to prepare a plan to achieve this goal and in June of 2020, the living A2ZERO Carbon Neutrality Plan was adopted. The A2ZERO Plan includes seven overarching strategies and 44 individual actions that collectively achieve the community's climate goals. The first three strategies of A2ZERO call for powering the entire community with 100% renewable energy; electrifying appliances, buildings, and vehicles; and achieving a significant reduction in energy usage (deep energy efficiency investments). Given that roughly 23% of local greenhouse gas emissions come from the residential sector, staff in the City's OSI are acutely aware of the need for customized programs to help this market segment decarbonize.
OSI realizes, however, that residents of Ann Arbor face numerous challenges to home decarbonization, including our old building stock, a cold climate, high electricity costs, ubiquitous use of fossil gas for heating, lack of local control over building codes, limited contractor experience with electrification, inequitable access to rebates and incentives in our most marginalized communities, and the overall complexity of the needed retrofits.
The OSI has been working to address these barriers through a variety of initiatives, including:
1. A Solarize program that educates and motivates hundreds of residents a year on renewable energy, electrification and efficiency, helping deploy over 560 individual residential solar systems in 3 years.
2. A contractor Electrification Badge that OSI developed with Michigan Saves, the State's green bank, to educate contractors an...
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