Jackson, WY
The Town of Jackson first contacted Climate Solutions in early 2009, when the community accepted a challenge from former World Bank head Jim Wolfensohn to create a bold strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become a showcase community for the 2-3 million visitors from across the globe who travel through the Teton Valley every year.
The Climate Solutions New Energy Cities team conducted a two-day workshop in Jackson in May 2009 with 60 community leaders in government, business, and the nonprofit community, from which we produced a Roadmap and an Action Plan, whcih led to the creation of the Jackson Hole Energy Sustainability Project (JHESP) .
Since that time, the JHESP has been working aggressively to implement its Action Plan with the New Energy Cities team by:
- Creating a tri-partite governance structure with the Town of Jackson, Teton County, and Lower Valley Energy to oversee the work of the JHESP.
- Successfully passing a ballot measure in August 2010 that will fund $3.8m through special purpose excise taxes (SPET) to retrofit public buildings.
- Performing the data analysis to determine the payback and return on investment for an energy efficiency and smart metering pilot project of up to 300 buildings in Jackson.
- Developing a 0% loan program with a loan loss reserve fund to offer home owners to fund their energy efficiency retrofits.
- Initiating the development of a public outreach campaign to sign up residential and commercial customers for the program.