Southeast and Southcentral Alaska awarded $38M to launch heat pump rebate program

An air-to-air power pump tin supply a much businesslike replacement for heating a home, peculiarly successful regions pinch little melodramatic somesthesia swings for illustration Southeast Alaska. (Erin McKinstry/KCAW)

Southeast Conference and nan Juneau-based nonprofit Alaska Heat Smart person received a $38.6 cardinal national assistance to thief homeowners successful Southeast and Southcentral coastal Alaska buy electric power pumps to switch accepted fossil-fuel based heating systems.

AK Heat Smart has already helped to get power pumps successful 1,000 households crossed nan region. This caller infusion of money, which came successful an announcement from nan Environmental Protection Agency past week, will “supercharge” those efforts.

“It was, you know, decidedly a emotion of shock,” said Andy Romanoff, Alaska Heat Smart’s executive director. “Then a small little spot of panic astatine nan aforesaid time, which soon translated into excitement.”

Romanoff says nan region is poised for much power pump installations.

“We for illustration to opportunity coastal Alaska, from Ketchikan to Kodiak, is benignant of nan Goldilocks area for power pumps,” he said.

On Alaska’s confederate coast, winters are not excessively acold and summers aren’t excessively hot, truthful power pumps tin easy support comfortable temperatures. And communities for illustration Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan person clean, renewable energy successful nan shape of hydropower, while Kodiak combines hydropower pinch upwind energy. When power pumps pat into those grids, they’re fundamentally emissions-free.

But moreover erstwhile they tally connected diesel-generated electricity, power pumps tin prevention homeowners up betwixt 25% to 50% connected heating bills erstwhile compared to accepted oil-based heating systems.

“That’s a really large lift, particularly successful our agrarian communities,” said Robert Venables, executive head of Southeast Conference. “And that is 1 of nan superior focuses of this project, wherever complete half nan costs are really intended to those mini agrarian villages that struggle pinch heating costs.”

The caller backing will found nan Accelerating Clean Energy Savings successful Alaska’s Coastal Communities Program, administered by Southeast Conference and AK Heat Smart, pinch thief from Alaska Municipal League. The programme will dole retired financial incentives for power pumps successful communities from Ketchikan to Kodiak. Homeowners will beryllium eligible for rebates betwixt $4,000 up to $8,500, depending connected family income.

The programme connection was selected from much than 300 applicants nationwide who submitted bids nether nan EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program, which yet divvied up $4.3 cardinal dollars full to states, section governments and a people for 25 projects that will trim down connected nan nation’s greenhouse state emissions.

The biggest imaginable hurdle to this program’s success, Romanoff says, may beryllium nan workforce. There’s money for power pumps, but there’s not really capable group to instal them. He hopes much HVAC professionals, plumbers, electricians and moreover companies that person traditionally serviced lipid boilers will spell all-in connected power pumps, pursuing this backing announcement.

“This is simply a chance to either turn a business, commencement a business, move into nan abstraction and admit that this is wherever things are going, particularly pinch this benignant of infusion of money,” he said. “Now is simply a awesome clip to get connected nan train and spell for nan thrust pinch us, because we’re leaving nan station.”

The programme is expected to beryllium officially up and moving sometime adjacent spring.