Transcription
[Music] So hi everybody. I think we've got our technology under control at the moment, um, and it's a bitter cold night here in Milwaukee, so it's good to see some of us present and many of you online. We have, um, Martin Luther King Day coming up this coming weekend. We are one of the co-sponsors of the Martin L. Luther King Justice Coalition here in Milwaukee. We have been, uh, signed on as a co-sponsor for several years, and I just want to start out, uh, with a quote that Dr. King gave about healing the Earth. I had never heard it before, but I thought it would be something nice to, when I found it, to share. He said, "Join with the Earth and each other to bring new life to the land, to restore the waters, to refresh the air, to renew the forest, to care for the plants, to protect the creatures, to celebrate the Seas, to rejoice in the sunlight, to sing the song of the Stars, to recall our destiny, to renew our spirits, to reinvigorate our bodies, to recreate the human Community, to promote peace and Justice, to love our children and love one another, to join together as many and diverse expressions of one loving mystery for the healing of the earth and the renewal of all life." Oh, that's beautiful, King. Very good. Thank you for sharing that with us. Yes, I could. I appreciate it. Wonderful.
So we're going to, uh, proceed with, um, our speaker for the evening intro. All right. Tonight we're gonna hear from Cat Claus, who's the Southeast Wisconsin Co-op organizer for Citizen Action. She has a master's degree in education policy from Marquette University and is now serving as Citizen Action's climate action policy coordinator. Through Citizen Action, she is helping to lead the charge to upgrade energy and efficient homes disproportionately impacting Black families on the north side of Milwaukee. The program is designed to create good-paying jobs, reduce energy bills, and lower carbon emissions. We are fortunate to have Cat here tonight to describe this impressive and desperately needed program, and in our present situation of not so positive things happening, this is a wonderful positive, um, program she's going to be telling us all about. So Cat, take it away.
Thank you. All right, I will get ready to share my screen, which I believe we can pin up there so our friends in person will be able to see what I am sharing. All right. Right. Can I get a thumbs up from somebody on Zoom that they can see my screen? Okay, everything's working. Alrighty, perfect. So now, um, for those who I don't know, I would love it if you would introduce yourself in the chat. I've had a chance to meet everybody here in person. I'd love to know your name, where you live, and your favorite winter activity. And staying indoors counts, um, if you're not one of those people who enjoy the… I love sledding with my kids. I have a two- and three-year-old, but no judgment. Um, I want to know everybody here online.
Um, while we're doing that, um, today we're here to talk about the IRA—it's an acronym for the Inflation Reduction Act. This is landmark Federal legislation that passed in 2022. It is the biggest amount of grant funding that has ever existed in our nation. It is even bigger than the New Deal during the Great Depression, um, and so we're going to be talking about this thing called the IRA and how it impacts homeowners. But I want to let you all know that there's so much more money out there. There's not just money for homeowners, which is what we're going to talk about today. There's money for nonprofits; there's money for schools; there's money for cities; there's money for states; there's even some money out there for businesses. And we're just getting started on this money. Uh, this law passed in 2022, and there's hopefully over a decade of funding out there, and it is expected that smaller, but impactful investments will be made in years to come. Uh, what this is is focused on clean energy, climate action, and Energy Efficiency. So it wants to help our planet, which I know I don't need to tell you all here why that is important, um, but it's also focused on Energy Efficiency, which is things that make us use less energy and lower people's bills, um, and it targets a whole bunch of sectors like renewable energy, building decarbonization, and Transportation. So we're going to jump into it. Maybe there you go.
So I just wanted to have a quick minute or two discussion before we jump into the meat and potatoes of our presentation of why I think this is important. So, um, my first question for just discussion here around the table is: What would it mean for low-income individuals to have their energy bills decreased by 20%? So you can either unmute yourself or put yourself in the chat, or my uh friends here can comment. Like, what would that mean for our whole Community if we could wave a magic wand and reduce everybody's bills by 20%? Well, specifically for 350, yeah, it would mean that we would be consuming less fossil fuels, yeah, a significant amount because those homes are probably using them much more percentage-wise than than many of us that have, uh, have insulated homes. Yeah, just making sure you heard that—lower our reliance on fossil fuels. Any other ideas? See if I can see the chat as we certainly address the energy burden crisis. Yeah, that it's, it's the equity side of the Milwaukee climate and Equity plan. Yeah, so it addresses both sides of this very important and in itself very unique, yeah, legislation. So this is downright exciting. Yeah. And you asked a question on the table. Yeah, more food on the table. This is exactly it.
So in Milwaukee specifically, um, Black and brown Milwaukeeans pay three times the energy burden, which means their bills are three times higher than their white counterparts. And this is for a number of reasons. A lot of Black and brown folks have been redlined, meaning restricted to only living in areas of the city with the oldest housing stock. And so what you have happening is people live in houses built in the 1800s that aren't insulated well, so they have to pay a lot; and also those folks living in these older houses are also low-income, so it's kind of a double whammy. So not only are you know, drafty houses, they also don't make a lot—make close to minimum wage, you know, they all of those other things that mean it's worse. And then this next question: How different would Wisconsin be if we didn't need any more gas plants because we reduced our energy usage? I think Greg is what you were talking about, right? That's, that's a start. Would also mean a change in the infrastructure; would mean that there were probably more money available for other what we see at least there's more important things. Yeah, yeah. Joe, he's got a question in the chat which probably should be interjected at this point. Coming is great for the long run, but at what cost upfront? Joel, do you want to elaborate on that because I think that's a challenge?
Yeah, the previous question was, uh, uh, what do you think about this for low-income people? And, uh, it's great for the long run, but, uh, they have to come up with some money up front if this is tax credits, um, maybe their tax, uh, situation is, is, is not great for getting these, uh, rebates, um, I don't know, uh, what the tax form is going to look like, whether it's a rebate like a cash rebate, so say that they don't owe any, any money, um, does this come out to be a negative thing? I mean, cash in the pocket. No, that makes sense. And I will cover that because really exciting news is that for low-income Milwaukeeans, it is 100% free, as in they do not have to put a single dollar down to get 20% Energy savings, and even if they don't have a tax burden. So you're right, a lot of low-income folks, they don't, they don't pay a lot of taxes because they're low-income, right? Um, and so this, the, the program is set up in a way where our low-income folks don't have, have to pay anything, and the money goes straight to the contractor who did the work. So there's, uh, the contractor does the paperwork, does all the backend stuff, and I can share more exactly about how it works, uh, specifically in Milwaukee. Other parts of the state are a little bit different, but it's still possible for our low-income folks across the state to pay nothing down for these upgrades. All right, I'll go on to the next thing.
Uh, so, um, here is a presentation that I've been giving with Green Homers United. You'll see it is co-branded. Green Homers United has been contracted with Citizen Action; um, they are a business, um, they're a woman-owned Union business in Southeast Wisconsin that really specializes in green homeowner upgrades—the only one like it in the state—um, and so we're going to talk about some of their presentation things that they have and how they, as a contractor, get people that money for free, like I've been talking about. All right. So like I said, this is the largest investment our country has made to take on climate change for homeowners. There's three programs. The thing I want you to know is there's a bucket of money owned by the state of Wisconsin and there's a bucket of money owned by the federal government. The bucket of money owned by the state of Wisconsin is really great for our low-income homeowners because they, it's not involved in taxes; it is literally a program where you do the work and your contractor does the work and they send a form in and the contractor gets paid, so the homeowner doesn't… I don't say they don't have to be involved because it's their home, but they literally don't have to do anything with it. The second bucket of money is the Federal, uh, Energy Efficiency tax credits. Anybody can get those, so everybody here I'm talking to can get something, and those are better for our middle-class folks or maybe our upper-class folks who still want to do energy improvements. The program is set up so everybody gets something, and there's two buckets of money, um, so the, the Federal Energy Efficiency tax credits, um, are up to $1,200 per year, um, those can do things that I'll talk about at the end, like if you want to buy an electric vehicle car. What I'm talking about today is more the homeowner part, but I wanted to talk about that because if you hear things about the IRA, it's very confusing hearing about all the different buckets of money, um, and you can see some photos here of some things that we've had done, um, for our low-income homeowners here. This is a home getting insulated. I think this is a basement if I remember correctly that was 100% covered by this money, um, and this is the governor touring one of the houses that Kevin did, talking all about weatherizing their basement. All right. The last bucket of money that I want to talk about is heat pumps, um, which is a different bucket of money, um, but I'll talk about it at the end. I just want to let you all know. All right. So if I'm… Is that a question? Oh, yep, Joe.
Yeah, I have a question about the, um… Oh, do all… Does the all the work that's, uh, prescribed by the energy audit, which I've had the energy audit recently with Green Homers United, does the same trade ally have to do all of the work, or can the… How does the trade ally, uh, situation work with multiple projects that I might have in mind? In other words, I can find one contractor that could do one job but not another job, uh, how does it all get worked out?
Yeah, so, uh, for those who don't know, you can have what's called an energy audit—we call it an energy assessment; people don't like the word audit because it makes it seem like, uh, what an IRS tax audit—it's not like that. What it is is you pay a company like Kevin's or another one, Green Homers United, whoever you want to choose, and they come into your house and they do a really cool technology; it looks like a giant fan, and they blow it out your windows and doors, and they see where air is leaking, um, they've also got ones that can measure electricity; they've got some cool gadgets that can measure where your leaks are, um, other things like that. And then they do some crazy math that says the goal of this program is to reduce your energy bill by 20%. Okay. So, so my family currently pays about $200 per month on our energy bills. We just recently purchased a home, um, in the Harambee neighborhood, so a few blocks from here. It is an 1895 home that does not have insulation; it has newspapers from the moon landing as insulation—not an exaggeration; I was pulling out stuff in the walls. We don't live there yet, uh, but, um, if we saved 20% on our energy bills, that's about an extra $500 per year in our pocket. And also, nobody wants to live in a drafty home; it's bad for the family, and it's bad for the environment. So what happens, and what Joe is asking about, is he got an energy audit done, which we also did where we invited Kevin to come in and do his crazy math. Energy audits, just so you know, are the first step in getting this money. If anybody wants to get this money, they have to have a company come in and do an energy audit. There's many different companies and individuals that can do energy audits. If you are not low-income, energy audits are somewhere between $500 to $600 out of pocket. Okay. If you are low-income, I'll talk about this later, the city of Milwaukee is covering these for free, so our low-income city of Milwaukeeans can get these energy audits to either do work or to just know what's going on in their house, right? Um, and so if you do an energy assessment, um, everybody can get between $1,500 and $10,000 in rebates for home energy upgrades. If what we went through—Kevin for our home energy audit—and my family makes approximately $120,000 per year, I have two little kids and my partner, and with that, um, we're eligible for somewhere between $5,000 and $6,000 in free money to weatherize our home, which is really exciting. We don't have to go just with Kevin to answer your question, Joe. So, for example, we are going to insulate our home because it needs insulation. We've also been thinking about doing a heat pump. A heat pump is something optional; a heat pump is a new technology that it doesn't just heat—it circulates air, so it'll help with cooling, and it helps with Energy Efficiency, but all of my money won't cover the full cost of a heat pump, and also Kevin doesn't do heat pumps; Green Homers United doesn't. So that means I can shop around to different companies once I have this energy audit done and do a little bit of work here, do a little bit of work there, and you can space the work out as well, too. You don't need to do it all within the same calendar year. So what you're all seeing there is some of the math, um, you know, about energy bills, about how much the saving is. So again, the magic number is at least 20%. If you want to get really fancy and do a heat pump and pay more, more of your own money, um, most likely your own money, you can get $4,000. Okay. But if somebody is a person in poverty, they either get $5,000 or $10,000. I know that's really confusing. So if you are a low-income person, and I'll show you a chart, um, they just get $5,000. Does that make sense? It's a little bit less complicated for them; there's not weird math to, to work it out.
So here is the chart that I was telling you about, um, that you see there. And this is if you can, if someone earns less than the amount below, the amount is either $5,000 or $10,000. So this is the Milwaukee numbers. If you live in the city of Milwaukee and you make less than $57,000, you get $5,000 for free. If you have two people, $65,000; three people, $73,000; four people, $81,000. But remember again, everybody gets something. Okay, everybody gets at least $1,200. All right. Yes, uh, Joel's got another follow-up here. He's asking, and the contractors can let be focused on energy trade allies; they must be. And I will get to that, so hang tight. I got a slide about that coming up. Um, and if somebody earns, uh, more than the below the amount, is either $1,500 or $3,000. So as I told you, my family of four, we make about, uh, $120,000, and so we're less than $150,000, so we're guaranteed at least $3,000, and then the math gets a little bit more specific. All right. As of… Whoops, just kidding. As of today, the only people that can get helped are people in, uh, single-family homes or duplexes. Multi-family homes are coming soon. I just want to let you know that. So if you are in a single-family home or a duplex, Kevin or whoever you choose as your company can help you today, um, but this is money that anybody could use, and you don't have to just own your own home. Right now we're renting while we renovate the house that I told you about, and my landlord is looking to renovate the house I'm currently living in, so this isn't just great for homeowners; this will also help our low-income people who aren't homeowners. So you don't have to be a homeowner to take advantage of this money, um, and you have to have 12 months of utility bills if you are a landlord looking to help your tenants. All right. Oops, just kidding. There we go.
So like I told you, um, here's all about energy assessments. They look at your windows, insulation, heating, cooling system, health and safety concerns, all of that, um, and you can see this little, uh, image here, which is what I was showing you about is the crazy little fans that Kevin uses that are really precise that talks you about where your leaks are, how thick the insulation is, if there is insulation in a home, and other areas to be aware of in the house, um, so here's a little image that'll show if you get it done in your house; it's really non-invasive. They put a traveling door; they unfold it, and it goes in your front door, and then they put gadgets everywhere that measure stuff, and that's it—not invasive. They open your front door, and they put a special red door into it. Oh, I think I see a question there. Oh, that was already the question about trade allies. Okay. All right. So here's some more images as well, too—the things that they can find of what it'll look like on the back end that tells us we're literally losing energy, which is in our case, in Wisconsin, created by fossil fuels and gas plant energy, uh, out through the windows, out through the doors, uh, other things like that, and it can help you find dirty insulation. So even if you do have insulation in your home, sometimes insulation, it basically turns to paper; it'll crumble, and that's bad because then it's not doing its job. So even if you think you already have an insulated house, water can get in there and cause damage; it, it could help you catch a lot of different issues. All right. So here's an example of a home in Sherman Park. This is a whole bunch of math, but it basically just talks about the Energy savings here. The thing that I want to show you here is where it says 18% and 3%. Of all the things that you do, you just need to reduce energy bills by 20%; you don't need to worry about, you know, all of this weird math. But if you get an energy assessment done, they'll tell you what it'll save you. So if you seal your air leaks in your house, that's going to save you 8% of your energy. So even if you don't decide to do the whole 20%, if you're a middle-income person, you can pay on your own to seal your air leaks because that's just, that's good for you in general. But if you want to use this federal and state money that I'm telling you about, the magic number is at least 20%, or if you want to go real fancy, is 35%. Does that make sense to everybody? This home specifically, um, in Sherman Park qualified for $597 in instant rebates, which is a grant. The final cost to this low-income homeowner was literally a dollar—that's not an exaggeration—and how it works right now is for Kevin, is the organization that did this, the business. Uh, Kevin filled out this energy assessment, which you see here; he sent it in to the state of Wisconsin and said, "I want to do this for this homeowner." They sent in a copy of their We Energies bill; he did the work, and then he submitted this math back to the state of Wisconsin, and Kevin gets the check directly, so the homeowner doesn't have to front any money; the homeowner doesn't have to fill out the paperwork themselves, which is a big… I mean, Federal paperwork is scary.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Joe, is that you, uh, asking a question? No. Oh, I thought I heard a noise. I apologize. Yeah, I know how to do that. I will pause if there's any questions. I'm going into much more detail next, but any questions of anything I previously covered? I gotta get in here. Just trying to get it there. All right. Here. None. All right. Um, all right. The one thing that Kevin wants me to tell everybody is there are no grants for windows. You are not going to achieve that 20% with windows on your own, which is why I was telling you my home story. We want to get a heat pump, and we're also going to be replacing some windows; the money I'm getting probably won't cover those specific things. Kevin can still do the work, or another company can still do the work, but windows is not going to get you there. Can I get a head nod for everybody who understands? We're not going to call Kevin and be like, "I just need new windows." Not how it works; that's the… He gets hundreds of calls a day. I've gotten questions about that. Actually, Cat, um, yeah, uh, high-efficiency windows, uh, do get Federal money back. I, I just had some done, and I'm getting, I think it's $600. Yeah, so the next thing I'm going to talk about is we have specific financing and a different grant for that, um, for windows if desired, which is separate from the IRA, which I'll go through at the end. But yeah, what about, uh, new storms and screens? New storms can make it… It just… You have to have the math with the energy assess, and K… Don't, don't say I said specifically because I don't know your specific house, but it's worth asking. We asked everything of Kevin's company, and there's other energy assessors you could use. All right. So a second… So this is specifically for the no-cost people for the City of Milwaukee. So energy assessment: a no-cost report that qualifies you for rebates. The city in Milwaukee is covering the cost for energy assessments for low-income Milwaukeeans, and I will talk about how we can get the word out about that. Uh, the best thing that you can do for most people, which I didn't know because I'm not in the construction trades, is basement…
Wall insulation, if they're basement walls, have you ever seen the basement walls that stick out like a foot or so? Those Milwaukee houses, where you go up on the East side, is perfect with it. You have those like half-story houses, if you know what I'm talking about. Um, if the basement walls stick out at least above a foot and a half, um, insulating walls reduces heat loss, and you can almost get to the 20% just insulating the basement walls.
Yeah, do you have to insulate on the inside? Yes, sometimes you do, inside and outside. Outside. Uh, some houses you can, but yeah, you can insulate the inside and you insulate the what is it? The Jo-Jo in between? Jo? Yeah, Jo, there you go. Yeah, so um, other things, um, there's also money for electrical service and paneling wiring, which basically just uh is a safety issue, and it also—I don't want to say the electricity flows better because that's not the best way of saying it—that's another easy thing to do for our low-income Milwaukeeans.
And then a dual fuel heat pump. It replaces an air conditioner and adds AC, and it heats and cools with electricity, um, with a gas furnace of backup. Um, it won't necessarily save you money, but it can make the home far more comfortable and reduce energy use. And if you also want to put solar panels in, so Kevin has this list here, which is a good starting list for our low-income Milwaukeeans. This is not a list of anything and everything; we're really talking about who can get the most out of this money.
Oh, here's some pictures here that we're talking about insulating a basement. You can see this little white—I don't know if you can see on the picture, you might be able to see it here—this is insulation on the inside here. Okay, is it foam insulation? It's a type—uh, it's like a board, right? Fo board? Yeah, it's a foam board. It's naturally pink, so uh, this is uh one of the tools that we have. So if you know somebody who has a basement that needs to be weatherized, there's a specific grant. So if you own the home or you are a tenant, um, and you live in the city of Milwaukee, um, it'll take you through um how to get the specific weatherization basement grant. Okay, the partners with the IRA.
All right, one second. K, I just wanted to alert you to the fact that except for me, I think, and and Dan, most most of the people here are not residents of Milwaukee. That is good to know. So uh, same thing that I'm telling you here, even if you live in a suburb, you will also get something, uh, but it's done by area medium income, so I'll go to this here. Let's second, I'm going to pull it open now. Oops, maybe my computer will load. We do, but everybody else doesn't. So um, one of the things that I will be sending you all a copy of, and I'll put it in the chat for our virtual friends here, is this calculator that takes you through everything. So as I mentioned, you don't have to remember anything I'm telling you; I'm giving it to you, so you bring it out to the community, but this is the tool. So I'm going to fill it on behalf of my family. We we own a home. Um, what Metro County do you live in? It does by area medium income, so I live in the city of Milwaukee, which has special bonus options. There are four people that live in my household, and um, our income is about $120,000. So it's going to ask me a question: Does your household um earn less than the number here? So my income was not below this number, so I'm going to put no because my income was a little bit higher. All right, is my income um more than this number? The answer is no because we make $120,000 a year, um, and then it'll ask you other questions. So it'll ask what we want to do to our house, and it'll tell me what I'm eligible for. So I want to do attic insulation and ceiling exterior wall insulation. I probably want to do windows, um, basement wall installation, and we can get covered for about half the cost. Um, I'm going to select this one too, so you can go through on what you want, and it'll tell you um if I want to do a 35% reduction, I can get more money; if I want to stick at 20, I get less money. The difference between that is um oftentimes if you want to do the 35% reduction in your middle class, you have to put your own money towards it, just so you know. So here is telling me I am eligible for $199,400 in energy rebates and tax credits. I don't want to do all of that work I just showed you for example, um, but this calculator will take you through it, and you can play around with it. So I'm going to go back and say, you know, maybe I don't want to do a heat pump this year, so I'm going to unclick it. Um, so just with a new furnace and some insulation and windows, what am I eligible for? I'm eligible for 11,000. Um, so in my family specific case, we're looking at more about five or 6,000, and we'll probably have to match that money with about the same, so 5 to 6,000, maybe 4,000 that we have. And this is a tool you can use anywhere in the state; um, it goes by area medium, which just basically means the average income for your county. So we reset this. I will put this in the chat for everybody, um, and I will also make sure everybody in person gets a copy of it. I have a handout as well which says the same information you see in this website here. It is not working, um, that you have as a tool. So um, the only people who can get free energy audits currently are in the city of Milwaukee, but other municipalities and parts of the state are considering programs. So the state of Wisconsin is considering a program. Uh, the problem is is let's say somebody lives in Cudahy and they're eligible for $10,000 for free, they would still have to pay $500 to $600 upfront to start this process for the energy audit, for the energy assessment. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's not refundable; uh, only $200 of it is refundable uh in taxes, but if you're a low-income folk, you don't pay taxes often, so that is things to not have to charge the homeowner. Does that make sense? Had to pay tax easily, and I'm already making money doing this work, I can forego $500 of profit to make it accessible to low-income homeowners. Does that make sense? So people of the kindness of their own heart are taking a loss basically, uh, to help with some of this federal money. So this is one of the tools that talks through everything I'm showing you here, um, but I wanted to give you a little bit of background so you can ask questions. One second. Here you go. So this is one of the tools that we talked about; it'll go through by income. The most important um thing to remember is that it's done by area medium income. Um, this uh I'm really excited about the IRAs because it's creating so many jobs. I don't want to spend a whole bunch of time on it, but there's a growing green workforce in Wisconsin, and we need so many people to install insulation; we need so many drywallers and other things like that. So there's a lot of work being done across the state to get people ready for this work, um, because we have hopefully 10 years of funding uh to improve people's homes in the state of Wisconsin. So if you are interested in getting any work done related to any of this federal or state money that I'm telling you about, you have to go through an IRA contractor, which is certified by Focus on Energy. Focus on Energy, a pseudo-state nonprofit website; they're an organization um that gets funded by the state of Wisconsin and utility providers, and they are overseeing and holding all of the state money that we have um in the state of Wisconsin. They have just shy of $200 million to give out, which is is really exciting. And then on top of that, there's a whole bunch of federal money that I was talking about that we're not focusing on today. Almost everything I've told you about today is in that $200 million of state funding. So um, you have to use an IRA contractor; you can choose who you want to use, but they have to be a certified contractor. So don't go with your friend named, I don't know, uh, Sam, who has his own drywalling business, as great as he is, or own insulation business, because you can only use this federal money if they've gone through federal training. When I repeat that one more time: You can only use contractors who've gone through federal training. I would hate for somebody to owe a whole bunch of money because they didn't go through an approved contractor because then they'll be stuck with a bill. Uh, so you can look up the IRA registered contractors there. I would start with an energy assessment first because you need that done to get anything. Okay, so that is the first part. I have some other resources for you here. I'm just going to mention this one quickly. This is for the City of Milwaukee; the Home Improvement Resource Navigator talks to you all about city resources and grants and other things like that you might be eligible for it. Uh, this next one—just kidding—this one is also technically a city resource, but I want to recommend it to everybody. The Environmental Collaboration Office created a Healthy Home Guide. This is a guide for like hundreds of things to look at in your home, and I think if you're going to use any kind of improvement to your home, you might want to look at this guide. It talks about things like testing for lead, pesticides, radon, mold, uh, you you know, asthma triggers and allergens, water use, recycling practices. It is literally this whole guide of a whole bunch of things to look at for your house, and anybody can use it, even though it's created by the city of Milwaukee. So if you're considering doing improvements to your home, I want to recommend you look at this as well because it might give you other ideas of things to do, not just funded here. So the example that I will give in our home is uh we are testing—I have a two- and three-year-old—we're testing our paint for lead, and guess what? It has lead. Uh, so now at the same time going to be insulating our home, I'm going to be scraping some lead paint off, and that's not something I would have gone through on my checklist uh had I not been looking at the Healthy Home Guide of how can you tell, you know, if it's lead paint, what do you do there? Uh, so I really recommend this as a starting point as well if you begin this work. Yeah, might—PL—Oh, I know we do. My my partner is a HA a water supply engineer, so we also have lead plumbing, which this also talks about. Do you plan to replace that? We do. Yes, we do actually. We plan to coat it. Coat it. Yeah, there are safe ways of coating it. For the record, I used to live in Flint, Michigan, during the Water Crisis. I'm very familiar with uh uh lead in the water. Yeah, there's a puts what is essentially a safe spray foam in there, and it permanently cloths it with a type of—it's almost like porcelain; it feels like porcelain—and then it you don't have to rip the pipes out; you don't have to do anything fancy like that. It is the more costly one, but the pipes last longer because you've got multiple layers of insulation there for the pipes. I understand that the city of Milwaukee has something that they put into the water system that helps coat the inside of the lead pipes. Really has made a big difference. It is. Yeah, so in the city of Milwaukee, I don't want to say it could never happen, but because of the way that we treat our water, we are not going to become Flint. And that's what Chris does for a living, for the record, and I trust him a lot. Not not only am I with him, uh, so the next program is a statewide program that's launching soon. It's called Solar for All. So if you are doing some of this work, this is a state program that could help put solar panels on your house. It's for low-income and moderate-income households across the state, and WEDC, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, um, is helping set this up. So you can either get a loan or do what's called group-buy solar. So if everybody buys solar together, it's cheaper, um, and so in my family we want to put a heat pump in, um, and a few other upgrades. If we put a heat pump in and solar, that's going to save us so much money because, you know, then we don't have to pay for electricity for a heat pump. Um, so this is an exciting program that I was told would be launching in February, but between everybody here, I think it's going to take an extra month or two to get off the ground because the state of Wisconsin is just a bit slow launching things. Um, so if you are doing improvements to your home and you are interested in solar, I would mention that uh to whoever you're having an energy assessment done with, and they might be able to tell you if you put a heat pump in or a new induction stove, how much money it'll save you if you now have all electric appliances and solar on your roof. Um, so there's some really interesting ways to pair this, and Solar for All has some additional federal money and that federal bucket of money that I told you about that can reduce the cost of solar for you. So you can also get—is it $1,100 for solar, matching it with the IRA? Well, if you can't put solar in your house, you can connect with a community grid. Yes, some of them. Yeah, you there there community buys going on. Oh, I think I've got a question. You if you can't put solar on—other words—Tre, so we can put—we want to connect with a a grid somehow. So you can do a uh basically a local solar array, which means a field near your house, a park near your house; you can get connected to if somebody owns a property or a city will lease it to you, and they'll do a mini solar array and connect it to the houses in that neighborhood, and then usually what happens—it's a lot of logistics because you got to talk to your neighbors about who's buying in, all of those kinds of things—but those projects are popping up. Uh, the next programs do projects like this; they're not set up to do solar panels; they're really good at getting you a loan to buy a car or a house, but like anything green like that, uh, they don't know how to do. So the state of Wisconsin is setting up basically a special bank with some federal funding and state funding where you can go and get a loan for some of these projects. Businesses can do it, cities can do it, and you as homeowners can do it. So if you want to put solar panels on, uh, that could be a cool $10,000 right there. Good luck finding a credit union or bank willing to give you $10,000 for solar panels because they don't know how they work. And the benefits of the Green Innovation Fund, um, also called The Green Bank, is that they know about these projects. So not only are you getting a loan from them, they can help you walk through the state process because they're also connected to this big pool of federal money. I was told that this was also launching in uh, you know, early this year, but it's the state of Wisconsin, so it might take a few extra months. Any questions about the Green Innovation Fund? Is there anything for um um a wind generation? There could be. So the best part about the Green Innovation Fund is they're going to specialize in anything they call green. So you can do—I don't want to say the sky's the limit—you know, crazy new technology that you want to do, wind generation, um, solar battery storage, anything you want to do that could be labeled as green, they're going to specialize in it. Now, is this state money? This is state and federal money. Okay. Now, the Republican—is there danger that the Republican legislature can hijack some of this? Dammit. My next slide. Okay, so our IRA tax credits, federal. I think the two of you in co-rehearse this. We, yeah. So everything that I've told you about for homeowners thus far is owned by the state and is safe. There's about $200 million. When we spend that $200 million, it is gone. So we want to make sure our low- and moderate-income folks get something because otherwise what's going to happen is our millionaires in the state are going to have huge solar arrays and dip into that money, and it's going to be gone because they can get it too. Uh, the uh federal energy tax credits that we're talking about, some of this is federal money; those are safe through the end of 2026 because they're written into tax law. It has never happened where somebody has rewritten tax code in the middle of the tax code years. It would take both houses of Congress, and my assessment is they don't have the votes to do that. Okay, but that means the federal part that I'm talking to you about will likely end in 2027. State money for homeowners is safe; Wisconsin has it in the bank account. The Green Innovation Fund has some federal money, but they already have it. Okay, that just might mean that there might not be future future money coming, or as much future money coming. Citizen Action is a part of a national network called People's Action. So basically there's a cat in every state who does climate work like I do, and our national policy experts and I have been talking, and we think the IRA in some form will continue because it is so popular. I can send you tons of articles of Republicans talking about how great it's been um for every $1 invested in the IRA, it's created $4 in return. That is an amazing return, and so um what we think will happen is they'll start unwinding certain parts of the IRA, especially the stuff that the federal government still has, um, but it'll take time. So the federal money that I wanted to talk about next is you can get tax credits if you pay taxes um to do things like buy an electric vehicle, uh you can buy an induction stove, you can buy an electric washer and dryer, uh you can buy an electric fridge, um a heat pump that we talked about that uh you know you can get tax credits for that. Those are potentially at risk; they're safe again, like I said, till 2027; they might roll back some of those. And another part is right now 40% of the federal money is supposed to go to low-income and diverse communities. Um, so of all the millions we're talking about, 40%—the goal is to go to historically underserved communities, as it should, because historically underserved—I think that that 40% underserved money is going to be the first thing that goes away, which means anybody could get this money, which means billionaires, corporate corporate can get it too. Yeah, go back to the $200 million that the state controls. Yeah, does it look like there's a lot of uptake in middle- and low-income people? So for—I'm doing some math in my head—so we have only had contractors be paid out for the last eight weeks, so we do not have enough data to know how much it's been uptake. Kevin and I and Focus on Energy are doing outreach to homeowners who are low- and moderate-income, so our hope is that those are the first people in line using the money. So it's the governor's control that money? Uh, yes, so it was uh it was gifted to the state of Wisconsin; the governor um had helped decide where it goes because it's it's kind of like federal disaster relief money; it's not, but the mechanism of which the governor can control it is very similar. If you didn't know, in a federal disaster, when the federal government gives a state money, it goes to the governor. Okay, the governor's office gets to decide what to do with it, very similar to what happened here, and they gave it to Focus on Energy to administer. So it's safe; it's held by—technically they're not even really government; they're quasi-government. Okay, so Robin Voss can't hijack—Robin Voss cannot hijack it. No, it would it would have to be reallocated through Congress. So Congress would have to be the one to vote and agree that we take the right away from states to administer their programs. The state of Wisconsin and every state gets to decide who's eligible, how much for, and how they're going to use their money. Every state got a certain amount of money depending on how many people live in the state, and we have been working, and Green Homeowners United have been working to make sure a huge chunk of it goes to our low-income folks. We specifically helped write rules that are more restrictive than other states. So like I said, billionaires can still get stuff, but we fought really hard to make sure that our low-income folks can get $10,000 for free and remove as many hurdles as we possibly could to designing this program. Very impressive. Well, thank you. Well, so we'll see; we're still rolling out. So like I said, um, this money is very new, but the important thing to know is that um it's only here until it's gone, and so that's why I'm excited to talk to so many groups about this opportunity and how you should tell your neighbors, how you should tell your community group, whoever it is, your church, um about this money. Um, yeah, and one thing I didn't mention is um it's really easy to get retired folks this money because it counts their income differently, uh so if you're retired, even if you are getting a pension, um retired folks a little bit easier to help get this help from, and also oftentimes retired folks are low income, um so we have started reaching out to senior centers and some of the Meals on Wheels programs uh to start with, but I love direct connections because it's so hard when you email a group and there's 50 people working there, I never know who you know who the correct person to reach to about—people have been disconnected by We Energies, so uh We Energies is not sharing their data with us because we—we—Kevin could look at somebody's energy bill and be like, their house is this big, it probably means they have a drafty house. Does that make sense? Uh, we could look at the data by block and say who pays the most for energy burden, so who pay—who has high electric and heating bills, and We Energies is choosing to not give that—not to us, just uh Focus on Energy, who should have access to it. Yeah, they want to be able to make more money off these people; they have a vested interest and not—they're not mailing out information about it. We've asked them to mail it out to all customers who would qualify because if you're on energy assistance, We Energies knows that, and we—if you're on energy assistance, you would qualify for this program. Uh, so we are going to go door-to-door in certain neighborhoods that we know uh you know are more likely eligible, but it's it's not as efficient. We Energies has to go to the um PSC every year, right? Yeah, PSC. Yeah, what if you lobby them to say to require We Energies to give that information out? We have—get it through the Public Service Commission, right? Saying—I don't think the Public Service Commission is likely to do it at this point, uh, but we have considered that. Okay, and the PSC can only consider things brought forth on their docket; they can't just turn around and tell utility providers what to do. So a case has to be brought, and that would almost have to be by a utility provider or the legislature. How about CUB? Does CUB have leverage? They work nice together, but Tom has not said that he's interested in pushing this specific issue because We Energies, I'm sure, is coming back from another rate increase at some point. They are. Yes, they are. That would be the time to bring it up. Yeah, yeah. We testified to the PSC in—was it November or October—about that and specifically mentioned our requests, and they did not address it. We had a lot of people testifying in favor of it. Oh, I mean, we have two new gas plants going—going in southeast—
Wisconsin that are going to go through; we're protesting them, of course, but um, there's a math out there that says basically everybody weiz their home to the fullest extent or a reasonable extent. Um, we wouldn't need those new gas plants. I mean, you know, so and gas plants are there for 30 years, and they're expensive, and they're really bad for the environment; so it's another reason why this is so important.
Um, my last slide is just about us. So, um, I do a whole bunch of policy work related to the IRA and climate work, but we also do health care work, and we're working on expanding Badger Care, which would get over 100,000 Wisconsinites access to healthcare. Um, we also do economic justice, so we're working on Green Job expansion, Fair work, Fair wages, worker rights; we do racial Justice work and energy burden. So specifically Milwaukee, like I said, there's a disparity between black and brown folks paying more of their income for heating and cooling their home.
Um, so this is my contact information; I'll make sure everybody has it. Um, if not, I'm happy to answer any questions. And yes, I will send out the community outreach Google Forum to everybody, um, or I'll send it to Greg. Um, and um, then you can reach out to me or fill out that form, which will specifically ask you for organizations um to reach out to, or if you have direct contact information that is so helpful for me, so I'm not just calling you know random phone numbers and hoping I get the right person. And thank you, thank you. But uh, everybody in the state of Wisconsin is eligible for this; you just you have to pay for your own energy assessment; that's literally the only difference; still apply, you can still apply, and you can go to the IRA incentive calculator that I showed you all here, which I think I still have up. Um, and it'll tell you exactly how much you can get. Let me see if I can uh reset this. So, um, if you own a home, it'll say your metro area is you will be rest of Milwaukee County or one of the wow counties here. Oh wait, I'm not sharing my screen; whoops, apologies everybody; let me try that again. Okay, so this is the IRA incentive calculator. Um, you will fill out the same way if you're a homeowner, um, and then you would put the resta Milwaukee County or wakaa or wasaki, or if you live in one of these municipalities, you can put it in here. Um, and it's the same way: how many people in your household, answer how much you make, um, and then it'll you can select how much uh you want to do to your home, and it'll give you a different number. So you keep referring to Kevin, and I didn't catch who he's working with. Sorry, name of his company is… yeah, Kevin is Green Homeowners United; he's the one who helped me create this presentation; he did our energy audit, our assessment on my house. Um, he's the one we've been working with the most because Kevin was the first certified IRA contractor, and he specializes in this, so he homeowners, yep, it's on the paper there; that's the Brandon document we gave you. And um, that's cute. Yeah, so he basically only does IRA work; there's other companies you can do other Home upgrades to, but Kevin really specializes in this IRA work. I'm talking about Kevin Kane. I am. Yes, he's a well-known guy, but you can use any company, so you can go to the what is it… oops, you can go to this is the registered IRA contractors thing, which is also on your form, and you can look up other contractors that you want to use, so it does not have to be Kevin; he's just the one who helped us create the presentation. So cat, uh uh, I'm gonna ask the question again because I don't remember the answer. Uh, can you uh use multiple contractors to do this IRA work? Yep. So I will be having Kevin do insulate my home and my windows, and then I'm also going to be going through a different company for a heat pump. So yes, you can; you can use multiple contractors. Because when I asked um him or Green Homeowners United to do the work here in Kenosha, he says, "H, maybe you could find somebody that's closer to you." He didn't he did not want to go down this far. So then I I got on the trade, I mean the IRA Contracting list, and uh I didn't find anybody in my area that would be willing to do the work, so that is a difficulty because the program uh people started getting paid about eight weeks ago; I think there'll be a slight delay in contractors getting certified. Um, I don't know specifically the Kenosha area, um, but if you have a contractor you want to do something with, it's good to let them know to become a certified contractor. We're also doing some work trying to get the word out to these contractors so they do the work, uh because a lot of our uh small businesses and construction trade businesses don't even know that this money is out here and that they can be doing jobs and getting it paid for for their homeowners; they just have to go through the training. So this is, I'm sorry, this is 14049 million, and your sense of whether there's more money coming… I don't know if I want to talk… I I don't know if I want to speculate. We at least have money for the next uh Focus on Energy thinks this money will last us 10 years. I do not… the state money, I think this money will last us somewhere around three to five years, and I don't know if more is coming. I know that if it's a really popular program, the state could kick in its own money, which is possible. And so the homes uh rebate is the one that I've been talking to you about is 149 million; the HER rebates is about 50 million. So total between all this buckets of money, there's about 200 million that you can go out and use between the next three to five years or whenever it's gone. If people don't use it, we might have 10 years of money because people aren't using that pot of money; they don't need the help. Yeah, they don't need the help. Yeah, I understand. Sure, but if you've already done the work, can you… you can then apply for rate after… if you didn't do an energy assessment, you cannot. Oh, and if it wasn't done by an IRA contractor, there's a few exceptions where if you did a smart thermostat, you can keep the receipt and send it into the IRS for the federal bucket of money, but I haven't heard of anybody doing that, but you can't… but I mean, I just the thing that I think about specifically in Milwaukee is, I mean, even in this neighborhood or anywhere I'm driving, just how many houses, how different they would look if I if we could get them $10,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah; how different those homeowners' lives would be. Um, and I think that that this is a great opportunity uh that's not going to happen; it's not going to help everybody if we don't do our due diligence and tell the community about it. Yeah, have you said about you know advertising on radio stations or… yes, we have; we have a ton of ads; Kevin has a billboard on 94. Um, we've been on all the new… not all but many of the news stations talking about it. Um, I know that there's some radio ads in the works too, at least I believe there is, so we're trying to get the word out as much as we can. Okay, the hard part is it seems scammy. Have you ever had somebody like send you a flyer so they can get you free Windows or a roof estimate? I think a lot of people are afraid of this program because it sounds like a scammy program where they're going to do all the work and be on the hook for the money, which is specifically why the only people people who can do the work for this as IRA contractors have gone through training and are vetted, so it kind of gets rid of the snake oil salesman and the scummy contractors. Uh, and so it takes a little bit longer, and that's why there's not as many people approved yet, but I think in the long run it'll be better once we get more contractors through the training and get these kinks worked out; it'll mean that we have a safe pool of competent people doing the work and submitting the paperwork because I've seen the forms that Kevin has to fill out; they're not easy to understand. And if this was on homeowner… yeah, yeah, good luck. So well, everybody gets something; I think everybody should look at it, um, even if I wasn't going to do all this work to my house, which I am, um, even at the current house that I live in, which is very livable, I would still do an energy assessment if it were me to know what I could do. I mean, it's a $500 gamble on easy things you can do to, you know, make your house more energy efficient and lower your carbon footprint. Um, but every everybody can get something, so everybody on your mailing list qualifies. Oh, it's great, the work you're doing; it's really fantastic. Yeah, I'm really excited. So this basically whole next year, my my entire life is going to be the IRA, so buckling up for a long [Music] year.