2021-642-E-AMS-Habitat for Humanity of Orange County-Community Climate Action Grant

Browse Search

P a g e 17 o f 20 1,200 tons from the landfill by receiving and reselling 8,113 items from Triangle residents. As a renewable energy company, Southern Energy Management also seeks to ensure that its operations are as green as possible. Its solar panels are American-made. The company also gives each of its employees eight hours of paid time off to volunteer each year. 34. Please describe any other aspect of your project that is relevant to local economic development. This project will help North Carolina and Duke Energy achieve their goals of carbon neutrality by 2050. Habitat is the sixth largest homebuilder in the U.S. As of 2019, only fifty Habitat affiliates across the country and two in North Carolina used solar panels. If funded, we hope that this significant project will serve as a model for other Habitat affiliates and help Habitat toward becoming a national leader in solarizing homes for our lower-income neighbors. Funding of this proposal will send a strong message that Orange County supports expanding renewable energy and making it accessible to everyone. Amount and Duration of Engagement 35. Please describe how you will engage with and/or educate project participants. We will work closely with the buyers of each potential solar home to ensure that they fully understand the benefits and potential risks of solar and are fully informed to make a decision on whether or not to participate in the program. On all of its homes, Habitat works with individual buyers through the duration of the project and is also available for guidance and support after closing. On this project specifically, we will work with Rotary and our solar partner to ensure that we are giving buyers all of the information they need to know. We will also work with East Chapel Hill Rotary Club to educate its members and the members of other area chapters on solar and its benefits. We will encourage similar collaboration between other Rotary clubs and their local Habitat affiliates and ask them to join with us in applying for Rotary district grants and fundraising. Habitat remains engaged with its homebuyers throughout the life of their 30-year mortgage. 36. How will you measure the success of that engagement or educational effort? We will measure the success of our engagement and educational efforts by measuring the number of Habitat homes that receive rooftop solar over time, measuring the numbers of homebuyers educated, measuring the number of club members educated, measuring the number of grants and donations received, and measuring the number of solar advocates created. 37. Please describe any other aspect of your project that is relevant to the amount, or quality, or length of engagement and education that your project will produce. We will complete our first solar panel installation in early 2021. With this funding, we will be able to complete an additional ten installations over the next two years. Throughout this process, we will seek to have high-quality engagement with each of the ten homebuying families. Following the completion of this project, we hope to continue assessing each of our homes for solar readiness, and to create a sustainable partnership and funding model that will allow us to install solar panels on any viable home where the buyer chooses to participate. Over the next few years, Orange Habitat is also ramping up its homebuilding from 12 to 20 homes per year. We hope that solar will be a part of this expansion. Time to Complete DocuSign Envelope ID: 0E2E518B-BEF7-4AF0-8D07-FCD05F094BD6