LISC, in Partnership with Four National Nonprofits, Proposes Plan for Making Greenhouse Gas Reduction a Reality
LISC has joined forces with Enterprise, Habitat for Humanity, United Way and Rewiring America to propose deploying $9.5 billion of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s National Clean Investment Fund. If awarded the grant, the partnership, known as Power Forward, will work with 156 communities across the country to decarbonize homes and help transform the housing market, reinvest in communities and tackle the climate crisis as part of the process.
A New Coalition Forms for Unprecedented U.S. Housing Decarbonization
Rewiring America, Enterprise Community Partners, LISC, United Way, and Habitat for Humanity apply for $9.5 billion in funding from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund as new entity: Power Forward Communities
For immediate release, October 12, 2023 — Congress’s most far-reaching climate legislation and investment in history, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), has already provided billions of dollars to catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars more investment in our clean energy future. Over the next decade, the IRA could invest up to $567 billion in residential decarbonization alone across 124 million households. The benefits for low-income and disadvantaged communities can be immense, for residents who will be able to lower their utility bills and improve their health with clean, efficient electric technologies, and for homeowners and multifamily building owners who will build equity in their property thanks to structural and efficiency improvements, all while materially lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
Responding to the need to rapidly and equitably decarbonize homes and communities nationwide, Rewiring America, Enterprise Community Partners, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), United Way, and Habitat for Humanity International are partnering to form a coalition — Power Forward Communities — to apply for $9.5 billion from the IRA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) for residential decarbonization and electrification. Former Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos will serve as CEO of Power Forward Communities.
Because 42 percent of U.S. energy-related emissions are directly influenced by decisions we make about how we heat our air and water, cook our food, dry our clothes, power our cars and our lives — the Power Forward Communities’ application takes a unique, housing- and equity-focused approach to transform the marketplace for decarbonization and home improvement for communities at all income levels, providing significant health, economic, and resilience benefits.
The community-driven, national-scale housing decarbonization program will serve single-family and multifamily building owners and residents through a strategy where over 80% of financial assistance funds will go to low-income and disadvantaged communities — double the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF) target. Specifically, the program will fund projects that:
- Rapidly convert fossil-fuel appliances and equipment to decarbonized and electrified alternatives while improving homes, including home energy audits, electrical panel and wiring upgrades, smart thermostat installation, weatherization and roof improvements, remediation, heat pump space heaters (which also cool), heat pump water heaters, induction stoves, and electric or heat pump dryers.
- Deploy rooftop solar, community solar subscriptions, and energy storage resources, making clean energy supply more readily available for building owners and renters everywhere,
- Install EV charging infrastructure, facilitating broader and faster adoption of zero-emissions transportation, and
- Include resilience requirements that prepare communities and protect them from rising seas, increasing rain, more frequent heatwaves and other climate hazards.
This application is already supported by 321 partners who have pledged to decarbonize housing units across 46 states and every EPA region in partnership with Power Forward Communities over the seven year life of the program. This includes 94 pipeline and transaction partners like the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, nonprofit housing developer Mercy Housing, Roofstock, and dozens of others who have pledged to decarbonize housing units. It also includes 156 communities pledging to decarbonize housing units, particularly in low-income and disadvantaged communities, and rural and Tribal communities. Pledges have come from large cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, and Phoenix; rural communities like DeSoto, Georgia and Rural People’s Voice, Washington; and Tribal communities including the Coalition of Large Tribes and the Gila River Indian Community.
Working with community-based organizations and community lenders, the program will reduce the cost of participation by aligning government subsidies, organizing the market for zero-emissions technologies, aggregating demand to ensure availability and make products and services more affordable, and creating an avenue for corporate and philanthropic hello@powerforwardcommunities.org investment. The program will respond to local priorities and unique needs, provide low-cost financing, invest in workforce development and small businesses, support awareness through planning tools and reliable support services, and build local capacity.
Through all these measures, the strategy would cut the cost to decarbonize housing by more than half, attracting increasing capital and sparking a virtuous cycle of investment in our homes and communities. It would also add units of rental housing with new or extended affordability restrictions.
For more detailed information on the application, including a full list of coalition partners, please see this Fact Sheet on Power Forward Communities.