A total of 15 proposals were submitted by 14 organizations in response to the Northwest Clean Air Agency’s request for proposals, or RPF. The RFP offers $3.5 million in total funding for up to three projects.
The RFP called for projects that would provide clear, tangible and positive benefits to local communities. Specifically, projects were asked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, build community resilience to climate impacts, provide co-benefits within the community and advance environmental justice and equity, according to a presentation given to interested parties.
Proposals range from a shutdown of sewage incinerators to the connection of heat pumps to water from an abandoned coal mine to the electrification and weatherization of homes, according to documents from the NWCAA.
Of the 15 projects proposed, 10 take place in Whatcom County. These 10 were submitted by the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association, RE Sources, Bellingham Technical College, the City of Bellingham, the Port of Bellingham, Bellingham Public Schools, Western Washington University and PeaceHealth.
This funding comes from a settlement between NWCAA and Petrogas LLC. Petrogas, without permit, undertook projects which led to an annual increase in hundreds of tons of emissions. Petrogas’s failure to disclose these emissions led to a lawsuit and settlement for $4 million in 2023.
NWCAA’s Board will be meeting on April 10 to decide who wins the award, according to Seth Preston, the communications program manager for the NWCAA.
The City of Bellingham
The City is requesting $1.7 million to construct a community solar array, with an anticipated capacity of at least 500 kW and up to 1 MW, according to the proposal. The project would facilitate the City’s broader goals to decarbonize and protect its vulnerable populations, said Seth Vidaña, the project lead and climate and energy manager for the City of Bellingham.
The Department of Commerce provided $165,000 to the City for a solar feasibility study across 29 city-owned sites.
This solar array would be the largest owned by the City, eclipsing the planned 231.1 kW capacity on the City’s Pacific Street operations center. The energy generated by this solar array would be sold to Puget Sound Energy, bringing approximately $69,000 annually into the City’s Climate Action Fund, which would primarily benefit low-income residents, according to the proposal.
“We’re really trying to make sure that it’s our vulnerable populations that are being taken care of first,” said Vidaña.
The City has learned from the 2021 heat dome, when more than 750 people died in the Pacific Northwest, Vidaña said. The groups most impacted by this event include the elderly, unhoused people, people who work outside and those without air conditioning. Funds raised by the solar array could go to projects like weatherizing homes for low-income people, which would reduce harm in a similar event.
Why a solar array?
This project would fall in line with city and state goals. The Clean Energy Transformation Act requires Washington’s electricity supply to be carbon-neutral by 2030 and 100% carbon-free by 2045. By 2030, the city aims to reduce carbon emissions by 40% compared to 2000 and by 85% by 2050, Vidaña said.
These goals exist to mitigate the worst of climate change, driven by greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten Bellingham with extreme temperatures, both cold and hot, air quality degradation from wildfires, sea level rise, flooding from storms and more.
Building solar as soon as possible is ideal, Vidaña said.
“The earlier we spend money on solar, the better. Because it sort of shortens the time period in which we are paying back the capital cost,” Vidaña said. “Eventually, everything that is coming in is essentially free power.”
The Port of Bellingham | Crane Hybridization and Whatcom Unified Command Center Solar
The Port proposed two projects. The first requests $1.495 million for the hybridization of a diesel crane, according to the Port’s proposals.
Bellingham Shipping Terminal is largely idle right now while the Port modernizes it under a two-year project. The Port wants to hybridize the Liebherr crane it acquired recently while the terminal is being electrified and the dock reinforced to hold heavier loads, said Adrienne Douglass-Scott, the sustainability program manager for the Port of Bellingham.
In addition to cutting the crane’s diesel emissions by 50%, hybridizing the crane would reduce noise pollution in the vulnerable, economically disadvantaged area, bringing the operating noise level from the equivalent of a concert to a vacuum cleaner, the proposal said.
The Port also requests $1.62 million to install solar panels and battery storage at the Whatcom Unified Command Center, the communication center for disaster responses in Whatcom County. The building served as the center of operations during COVID-19, SARS and the 2021 flood, according to Douglass-Scott.
The battery storage and solar array would create a microgrid and provide power to the WUCC, ensuring it can operate during power outages without reliance on diesel fuel. According to the proposal, the WUCC would be able to operate at 100% energy demand for 44 hours without external power in the event of a December power outage, requiring only 16 hours of generator operation in a week. In a June outage, the WUCC would be able to operate indefinitely at 100% demand.
Because the WUCC is the communication hub in the event of a crisis, maintaining power is critical, Douglass-Scott said.
“If you lost power there, you would lose the ability for our first responders and their command center to respond effectively,” Douglass-Scott said. “I mean, you would be going back in time.”
The project would make the WUCC more resilient and capable of withstanding disasters like earthquakes, major flooding and wildfires, particularly when the facility is islanded, meaning isolated from the grid and roads. Bellingham was islanded during the 2021 floods, Douglass-Scott said.
Opportunity Council | Home Weatherization
The Opportunity Council proposed an initiative as part of its Community Energy Challenge partnership with Sustainable Connections. The proposal has three tiers of funding: $1.25 million, $2 million, and $3.5 million. Core to these initiatives is educating people and repairing and renovating homes, making them more energy efficient in the process, according to the Opportunity Council’s proposal.
The Lummi Reservation would receive home upgrades first, with all three tiers of funding providing energy audits, home repairs and energy renovations for homes on the reservation. The second tier of funding would provide energy audits and projects for commercial and non-profit facilities in vulnerable areas, and the third tier would provide for a heat pump project for 51 units at Sterling Meadows family housing, according to the proposal.
The Lummi Reservation is near Petrogas LLC’s liquid petroleum gas export terminal, which makes their proposal more impactful, said Mark Schofield, the Community Energy Challenge manager for the Opportunity Council.
“We like the idea of bringing the benefits of those settlement funds close to the source of the settlement funds,” said Schofield.
Sterling Meadows is operated by Mercy Housing and provides housing for farm workers who make 45% or less than the region’s median income.
Units at Sterling Meadows lack cooling and operate on electric heating, according to the proposal. At the third tier of funding, heat pumps would be installed in all of these units, reducing energy costs and providing cooling in the summer, Schofield said.
By weatherizing and repairing homes, these initiatives would ensure residents can be comfortable during temperature snaps and could afford electricity if costs spike.
Where this leaves us
This grant is the first of its kind and scale from the NWCAA.
“We have taken a very deliberate approach to it by meeting with our advisory council members to get ideas, going to our board and looking for their direction and thoughts,” Preston said. “We hired a consultant to help us with the process.”
The applying organizations are not missing out on this opportunity.
“This grant through NWCAA is just an interesting opportunity to maybe make our work more visible because that was a part of NWCAA’s priority, to have projects that help tell a story,” Schofield said.
Douglass-Scott said that because of budget cuts at the Port, it relies on grants like this to undertake larger projects.
Preston said the most difficult decision left for the NWCAA is whether to give the grant money to multiple projects or invest all of it into one bigger project.
Steven Colson (they/them) is a city news reporter for The Front. They are a fourth-year environmental journalism major. Beyond the newsroom they like to be outside with the stars, trees and water, or in busy spaces jumping to loud music. You can reach them at stevencolson.thefront@gmail.com
