Background
On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law. This “bipartisan infrastructure bill” funded the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program at $550M. The EECBG was created in 2007 under the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA)1 and was intended to enable states, local governments and tribes to 1) reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, 2) reduce their energy use overall and 3) improve efficiency.
Fourteen years later, the electric sector has made significant strides in reducing the use of fossil fuels in power generation and driving down the carbon emissions associated with electric power generation. It is consistent with the aims of the program, therefore, for eligible entities to use EECBG funds for electrification programs — programs enabling the energy efficient switch to electricity from fossil fuel combustion for certain end-uses — and policies that can improve energy efficiency.
EISA authorizes grant recipients to use their funds under any one of 14 categories. BEL has analyzed the categories and provides a proposed set of model activities under several categories to advance beneficial electrification efforts. These proposals are included in the table in the link here and BEL encourages grant recipients to consider these.
For more information or to provide additional input to BEL on this topic, please email info@be-league.org
DOE/BEL December 15 EEBCG Webinar
On December 15, 2022, the Beneficial Electrification League held a joint webinar with the Department of Energy and BEL staff on how the recently announced $550 million Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program funding opportunity can be accessed to support beneficial electrification and other community-level clean energy programs.
1,878 local governments will be eligible to receive at least $75,000 in funding by formula under this program. With more than $299 million in formula funding going to local governments, $123.2 million to states and $8.8 million to eligible tribes, participants will get an overview of the recently released notice of intent, understand more about how this funding can be utilized, a sense of timeline for the program, and learn what kinds of electrification projects are likely to qualify so they can prepare and make efficient use of the funding opportunity.