SanCap Resilience reported that it was awarded a federal grant to support a multi-stakeholder focus on energy resilience. The grant is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) programs.

The non-cash grant includes consulting from the NREL network of energy experts for communities seeking to solve specific renewable energy and energy resilience challenges.

“We’re excited to receive this grant and the expert guidance it will bring us,” SanCap Resilience Co-chair Bob Moore said. “After losing so much of our electric grid infrastructure in Hurricane Ian, there is a lot of interest in how we can adapt that infrastructure on Sanibel and Captiva to harden it against future storms. At the same time, as a barrier island community vulnerable to the future impacts of climate change, there is strong interest in adopting new, renewable energy technologies to make our energy supply more sustainable to preserve these sanctuary islands for future generations.”

To address the topic of energy resilience, the SanCap Resilience’s Steering Committee asked one of its partner organizations, the Sanibel-Captiva Renewable Energy Working Group (REWG), to lead the planning process. The REWG will manage the consulting grant on behalf of SanCap Resilience.

SanCap Resilience reported that the first step to addressing the complex set of issues that go into energy resilience is to bring together various stakeholders to agree on a high-level set of goals as a basis for future planning. Identified stakeholders include residents, businesses, nonprofits, the city of Sanibel and Lee County Electric Co-op (LCEC).

“We want to build a process to reflect the concerns and priorities of various parts of the community,” Dr. Michael Savarese, professor in the Department of Marine & Earth Sciences at the Florida Gulf Coast University’s Water School and a REWG member, said. “We agreed that getting a high level of stakeholder engagement right from the beginning will improve the chance of long-term success.”

“The timing of finding the NREL Expert Match program couldn’t have been better,” Tom Bierma, a retired environmental health professor and member of the working group, said. “The customized consulting the grant provides is tailor-made to our needs for this project.”

SanCap Resilience reported that the consulting agreement targets three work areas to better understand and plan for energy resilience in the community:

– Assessment of vulnerabilities and solutions: Develop a matrix of energy resilience issues and solutions with examples.

– Research to support a partnership with LCEC: Provide a report on regulatory aspects of distribution only electric co-ops, questions to help forward collaboration with the utility, and examples of resilient energy case study solutions among similar utilities.

– Outline of a resilience planning process roadmap: Provide a proposed process roadmap for stakeholder engagement and highlight existing resources to support community planning.

SanCap Resilience reported that the grant provides about 40-60 hours of consulting over a three-to-four-month period. By the end of the period, the goal is to have the community actively engage in a planning process to create a stronger and more sustainable energy system that incorporates centralized and distributed energy resources, energy efficiency, and the newest resilient energy technologies.

“As we face the impacts of climate change, this is an incredibly important topic for our community,” Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation Chief Executive Officer and REWG Co-chair James Evans said. “At SCCF, we’ve tried to lead by example. In the three facilities we are renovating or rebuilding after the storm, we have incorporated energy efficiency designs and solar energy, along with the solar we already had on other buildings. Resilience is central to our organization’s five-year strategic plan.”

For more information, visit https://www.sancapresilience.org/.