Maryland Energy Administration Announces Awards for 2020 Maryland Smart Energy Communities
By Briggs Cunningham, Energy Program Manager
The Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) is proud to announce over $750,000 in funding for 19 Maryland Smart Energy Community grantees in Fiscal Year 2020 (FY20). Distributed across the state, these energy projects stimulate economic growth and are estimated to yield an annual energy cost savings of $403,000. The estimated annual energy savings is 3,127,713 kilowatt-hours (kWh) which is enough energy to power 260 Maryland homes. The approximate decrease in transportation fuel is more than 15,000 gallons annually or equivalent to removing 30 cars off the road permanently (approximately 133 metric tons of CO2).
Now in its eighth year, MSEC was created to support local governments as they adopt long term, smart energy policies. Communities benefit from sustained energy reduction, cost savings, and additional opportunities for renewable energy development. To date, 78 municipal and county governments are MSEC communities.
The MSEC FY20 grantees have been awarded funding for energy efficiency measures, renewable energy installations, and transportation changes which reduce fossil fuel consumption. Some examples of each type of project include:
Baltimore County will use a $100,000 grant for lighting and HVAC upgrades at the Reisterstown Public Library. Along with other renovations, these energy efficiency measures will assist in decreasing the facility’s energy consumption by approximately 340,703 kWh annually which is enough energy to power 28 Maryland homes.
Salisbury will use the $50,000 grant to continue a previous MSEC project, converting their streetlights to LED. This effort would involve retrofitting another 151 fixtures around the city. Annual expected electricity savings is 122,092 kWh, or $7,150.
Charles County, one of two new MSEC members in FY20, will use the MSEC grant for a larger effort involving an energy services company to supplement the cost of a county-wide lighting upgrade to many county facilities. The $4.4 million lighting project is expected to reduce annual electricity use by roughly 2,346,000 kWh across the county; which is enough energy to power 195 Maryland homes.
MSEC FY20 award totals ranged from $10,000 to $100,000, and a full list of awardees can be found below:
Funding for the program comes from the Strategic Energy Investment Fund, which was created from public auctions of carbon credits through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. For more information on MSEC, visit our website here. For more information on all the programs from MEA, click here or follow us on social media, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
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