INDIANAPOLIS — The City of Indianapolis’s Office of Sustainability recently announced it received funding from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Office of Sustainability will use the $787,040 grant to lower energy use and decrease overall utility costs in municipally owned buildings. Investing in these changes will also reduce climate pollution and improve public health for all Indianapolis community members via healthier air quality.
The funds will be used in several ways, including partnering with the Purdue University School of Engineering and Technology, a DOE Industrial Assessment Center, to deploy their learn-on-the-job workforce training program to perform energy audits on up to 200 municipal buildings.
The Energy Team will use the workforce audit program data to determine priority locations where high-efficiency updates would maximize impact, work with city staff to implement those installations, and capture the savings outcomes to finance future efficiency work.
The City of Indianapolis owns more than 200 buildings throughout Marion County with diverse uses ranging from office space like the City-County Building downtown to park family centers, police stations, fire stations, and public works facilities. The total square footage of indoor space is nearly 5.5 million square feet, demonstrating a great opportunity to implement energy efficiency measures. Even seemingly small changes, like LED lighting transitions or efficient HVAC equipment upgrades, can have a huge impact on a building’s overall energy use.