The Green Building Alliance will launch a new effort to reduce energy consumption in New Kensington on Wednesday.
The nonprofit already leads two similar “2030 Districts” in Pittsburgh and Erie, where hundreds of building owners are working to reduce their carbon emissions. Building owners in the districts commit to reducing their energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions: In return, they receive training and a community of support that will help them lower their utility bills.
“We want to bring people together to have sort of like positive peer pressure,” said Ashley DiGregorio, the senior director of the Alliance’s 2030 District programs. “I call it like a friendship pact to help make these changes together.”
Like Erie and Pittsburgh, New Kensington lost its former industrial core but has more recently seen a spike of economic energy, DiGregorio said. For example, she said, a former Alcoa factory has been turned into an advanced manufacturing park that has drawn tens of millions of dollars in economic development.
“We just want to come in and jump on the bandwagon of the business district revitalization that they're already doing and help to see how we can help those local businesses with one or two other improvements,” DiGregorio said.
New Kensington will be one of the smallest 2030 Districts in the country, DiGregorio said. (There are about two dozen districts nationwide.) With funding help from the West Penn Power Sustainable Energy Fund, the nonprofit has already received pledges from two leadership groups: New Kensington’s municipal officials and the economic development agencies that own the 18 buildings at the advanced manufacturing park. The building owners will send in their utility bills over the coming year and then work with the nonprofit to develop strategies for how to reduce their energy consumption.
“Also we can connect them to the funding opportunities — there are grants or tax credits or rebates — and potentially even help in drafting the applications for those opportunities,” she said.
Right now there is a large amount of local, state and federal funding available for building owners who want to make energy-efficient improvements, DiGregorio said. And many times, she said, local communities have a better chance at receiving grants if they are already working together.
“It’s really competitive for those funds,” she said.
DiGregorio said the launch event will be an opportunity for building owners, facility managers or people interested in getting into green-energy jobs, to learn more about how they can be part of the effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, she said.
The Green Building Alliance is always on the lookout for similar groups of local leaders in other communities who want to do similar work, DiGregorio said.
“So even if your township isn't necessarily on a path that you are on as a building owner or manager to pursue these goals and targets,” she said, “we will always meet with and partner with folks from all over southwestern PA.”
