Evaluation and Recommendations for the Department of Energy-Farmers Home Administration Small-Town Energy-Planning Grant Program

摘要

DOE funded several small-town energy planning projects, through the Farmer's Home Administration (FmHA) Area Development Assistance Planning Grant Program. DOE intended that this program should: (1) encourage community energy planning and the development of Integrated Community Energy Systems (ICES) and (2) provide a testing ground for the technologies and planning methods developed by its Buildings and Community Systems Division. FmHA intended that the joint program should further the development of rural areas and make DOE expertise available to grant recipients doing energy planning. All grantees under this joint program endeavored to define their local energy problems and to find local solutions. However, the resulting energy cost savings were not always impressive, and generally they were not very well documented. Lack of implementation power, lack of focus, and inability to generate local financial support for projects and further planning were the main reasons for this performance. The lack of sufficient documentation could be the result of DOE's failure to require a standardized and systematic accounting of grantees' accomplishments. The recommended changes in the scope-of-work requirements suggested in this report would cause grantees to focus their energy-planning activities so as to increase local financial support. The appendixes give a standardized format by which grantees would account for the energy savings and production made possible by their planning efforts. (ERA citation 06:014332)