Governor’s Workshops for Local Leaders

MD Energy Administration - Malcolm Woolf, Director

March  4, 2009

Mr. Patoka:  Our next speaker is from the Maryland Energy Administration and it's Malcolm Woolf.  Malcolm, I was looking for you back there. 

Mr. Woolf:   Well, thanks everyone for coming out today.  Who here, other than myself,  winces when you open your electric bill each month? 

Unfortunately, it's a common reaction.  And I guess what I'm here to tell you today is how we hope to use the stimulus money to maximize results and help reduce our electric bills, to the extent we can. 

This really is a transformative time in the energy fields.  The Department of Energy typically at the Federal level gets about $20 billion a year.  The stimulus gives $45 billion to DOE.  So it's more than twice what it gets annually.  And Maryland is going to get its fair share. 

How are we going to use it?  We want to use it to help folks reduce their bills and create green collar jobs.  There's no way I can go through $45 billion dollars worth of largely new programs, 31 separate programs.  So what we've quickly put together is a  Clean Energy Summit.  I encourage anyone who can -- we're holding this in Annapolis this coming Monday, a two hour meeting, from 1:00 to 3:00.  I know the time doesn't work for lots of folks, it won't be the only time that we're doing this.  Congressman Hoyer is going to be there.  He was a key leader in getting these funds, that will enable us to go into a little more detail with these programs.  But let me do what I can. 

For starters -- oh, I'm sorry.  It will be in Annapolis in the Senate -- the Miller Senate Building, starting at 12:45 to 3:00 on Monday.   More information, including the agenda, is available on the Maryland Energy Administration's web page.  Just Google it and you'll see the agenda there.  I'm not even sure the press release has gone out.  We're quickly trying to put these events together. 

Real quickly, there's at least four pots of money that folks might be interested in.  The Maryland Energy Administration is getting a formula grant of $57 million, we're about a $5 million agency, so that gives you a sense as to order of magnitude. 

DHCD isn't here, but they're getting about $65 million -- they are here.   I missed your presentation.  Okay, I apologize.  Great.   One less thing I've got to cover.

Another thing that has not gotten a lot of press, but should and it should be of great interest to folks, is a brand new program, the Energy Efficiency Community Block Grant Program.  This is a program that never funded before.  It got $3 billion.  The formula for how that money is going to get allocated is not clear, but it's about the same amount of money as the State Energy Office has got.  So if MEA is getting north of $50 million, I would think that localities and counties and cities in Maryland should get north of $50 million as part of this money.  They should figure out the formula and get that money out in the coming weeks. 

What are we going to do with it.  There's all different pots of money, but we're all going to be doing basically the same thing.  We're going to be spending money on energy efficiency to try to reduce people's bills; we're going to be trying to incur renewable systems, so you don't have to pay the utilities, you can generate your own power.  And we're going to be training people to install the energy efficiency measures and to install the solar systems, the green jobs.

Let me quickly highlight eight programs.  I'll do them very quickly, because I know time is short.  One is a multi-family building program, which MEA hopes to run.  We're going to try to get to as many buildings as we can, apartment buildings -- targeting low income families, to try to retrofit them so that their bills will be less.  We're hoping to be able to help at least 2,500 apartment dwellers, we've never even tried to tackle that before in  the State.  That will create at least 100 new jobs in terms of doing all of that work. 

We want to create a revolving loan program for energy efficiency and renewable systems.  This will be a huge game-changer.  Right now if you know your home is leaky, you know that you -- it's cold when you go into certain rooms, it costs money to get insulation, it costs money to get the ducts sealed, you don't have that up-front money.  You know it will pay for itself over time.  You want to create a low-interest, below-market fund.  So you can take out money from the State, two percent perhaps.  The savings you get each month in your electrical bill will more than make up the payment from the energy efficiency or the renewable system.  So we plan to get that running.  Again, we're hoping that the money will be able to help 800 families and it will be a revolving loan fund.  So that when you pay back yours, this will last past the stimulus and the jobs will last past the stimulus to keep folks going. 

We've got a pot of money set aside for commercial, industrial and farms so that we can  keep those jobs and help them reduce their bills and keep folks employed. 

We've got a State agency loan program.  We typically provide about $1 million a year, zero interest, so the State can lead by example and reduce all of our taxes by reducing the State's energy bills.  We want to put that on steroids, maybe do about $10 million using the stimulus money. 

We've got also a creation component where we're going to train a whole lot of folks in partnership with DHCD, in terms of who is going to be doing the weatherizing, who is going to be doing the energy retrofits, who is going to be fixing the multi-family low income buildings and we want to partner with them on that. 

I haven't even mentioned alternative fuel vehicles and cars.  As part of a cleaner energy economy, we know we've got to ultimately transition so we're less dependent on foreign oil.  This gives us some money so we can get some alternative fuel pumps. So if you've got a car that can take alternative fuels -- the State has a huge fleet of them, we don't have  a whole lot of places to refuel them.  This will give us the ability to kind of jump-start towards plug-in electric hybrids and kind of next generation biofuels. 

The last category is our renewable grant program.  In prior years we've never been able to give away the money that the State has allocated for renewable systems at your own home. 

Under  Governor O'Malley's leadership we changed the program.  We've increased the amount of the grants, we gave away all our money the first week.  We've got a huge wait list.  We were able to pump about $1.5 million into the program a couple weeks ago.  We hope to pump another $2 million in this fiscal year because there are 300 Marylanders who have signed a contract with a company to install a renewable system at their home as soon as the grant becomes available.  It only pays for a portion of the money but that will be something that we hope not only will get everyone off the wait list, but have money for the next year to dramatically expand. 

Last, but certainly not least, there is a  pot of money that we are targeting so that --  for economic development in partnership with DBED.  We know that there is -- while the economy has been struggling, one area that still shows great promise is clean energy, economic development. 

You need to make these solar panels somewhere, you need to have tin-film solar, you need to have wind turbines.  We need to get some of those manufacturing facilities here in Maryland to employ Marylanders and we hope to kind of replenish some of the existing tools so we can attract those companies so they don't just go to New York and Texas, but they look at Maryland as well. 

So happy to answer questions down the road.  (Applause.)

Mr. Patoka:  Thanks, Malcolm.  That's awesome stuff. 

 

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