There is a large sum of Federal money headed to Arkansas to support protecting our beautiful Natural State and reducing pollution. But how will this impact us in Little Rock? And what can we expect next? We reached out to Wes Prewitt, Chair of the City of Little Rock’s Sustainability Commission to learn more.
The Grant Program
The EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) award is a nearly $5 billion program designed to provide states, localities, and native tribes with grant funds to implement ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) reducing projects.
The Application Process Pivot from State-Wide to Three Regional Metro Areas
The State of Arkansas (through the Division of Environmental Quality and the Arkansas Energy Office) won a small planning grant last year to pay for the development of a robust state-wide grant application. The State sub-awarded the planning funds to three regional planning bodies: Metroplan in Central Arkansas, the NWA Regional Planning Commission, and the City of Fort Smith. The idea was that each of these bodies would provide GHG reduction plans for their metro area and the State government would develop a plan for the rest of the state. The State, then, decided not to pursue implementation funds through this program and gave their blessing for the three sub-awardees to submit an application on behalf of Arkansas.
Listening and Learning from the Community
Metroplan, the NWA Regional Planning Commission, and the City of Fort Smith then embarked on a large-scale community engagement operation to better understand how their communities wanted to prioritize GHG reduction and which specific interventions the communities found most appealing. They conducted interviews with community leaders, distributed surveys, and held focus groups with sector-specific stakeholders.
Focus Areas for the Plan
Ultimately, they submitted an application for $100m based on the findings of their robust community engagement that includes GHG reducing interventions in four broad categories:
- Green Networks / Ecosystem Restoration – bike/ped trail development, tree planting, land acquisition for ecosystem restoration (wetlands, forests, & prairies, etc.)
- Transportation Efficiency – EV charging infrastructure, streetlight conversion to LED (which is a surprisingly large energy user in Central Arkansas)
- Building Efficiency – creation of a revolving loan for commercial building energy efficiency, a grant program for government building energy efficiency
- Waste Management & Recycling – gasification of waste to energy, composting and improved recycling.
Central Arkansas’ Total Funding & Implementation Plan
The $100m CPRG award will be split among the three metro areas involved by relative population size, with Central Arkansas receiving approximately 45% of the total award. Metroplan will receive their portion of the award and will use the funds to make targeted grants to cities, counties, quasi-governmental entities, and eligible non-profits to implement the projects outlined in the application. The awarded entities will be negotiating the terms of these funds with the EPA until September, and I anticipate grant funds becoming available to sub-grantees in early 2025. This has the potential to be a transformative and catalytic opportunity to invest in Central Arkansa’s infrastructure and make real strides to address climate change in our region.
The Little Rock Sustainability Commission’s Role
We’ve been partners with Metroplan during the planning and application process, providing input and feedback on specific interventions that would make sense for the City of Little Rock. Going forward, we plan to connect appropriate City functions with the relevant grant funding at Metroplan to implement the projects as laid out (i.e., making sure that Little Rock Public Works are aware of the energy efficiency grants, connecting Fleet Services with the EV charging funds, etc.).
Thank you, Wes for keeping us informed!
Want to get deeper in the (hopefully non-invasive) weeds?
Metroplan has a lot of great material available on their website:
- Link to EPA press release here.
- More information about CPRG can be found here.
- The Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment’s planning effort is outlined on its website.
- Central Arkansas’ Plan: www.metroplan.org/eei
- Do you have more questions? Contact Sydney Dozier, Public Outreach Planner, Metroplan, sdozier@metroplan.org
