Earth2Green AUGUST 14, 2019
Earth2Green Neighborhood Assessment Program
Opportunity for Municipalities and Economic Development Agencies in the Texas Coastal Bend
Earth2Green, in partnership with EarthX, offers resilient neighborhood assessment to communities under a grant from Wells Fargo foundation. Communities in Dallas and the Coastal Bend have been selected for 2019. Earth2Green’s team of national experts will evaluate how selected neighborhoods can build resilience via a catalytic project. We’re seeking to build a collaborative projects with students and local government officials for a fall Semester project in the Coastal Bend for a project in partnership with Texas A&M.
Resilience can be viewed as a growth and economic development strategy. In the Coastal Bend we will pursue this concept by advancing one or all of the following:
- Assessing high priority hazard mitigation challenges from local to regional in scale, and providing analysis, GIS training and assistance to advance resilient data-driven policy solutions (e.g., low-impact development plan).
- Assessing compatibility of current economic development programs with needs of hazard mitigation and offering solutions, potentially through a Resilience Incubator.
- Building resilience indices to strengthen linkages between economic development, socioeconomic well-being, public health, and environmental robustness, focusing on ecotourism growth and port development.
Examples of potential business and policy solutions
Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing: Allows incremental cost of energy-efficient and hurricane-resilient reconstruction to be covered through financing secured by an incremental property tax assessment. Ongoing savings to owners (whose energy bills would be negligible) more than cover payments due under PACE financing. PACE could help Texas build a more resilient real estate market while providing a boost to local job market at no upfront cost. Commercial property assessed clean energy (CPACE) financing also can be used to fund improvements that make buildings more resilient.
Financing Water Resilience and Water Bonds: Work with municipalities to create enabling policy or projects to build water resilience. For example, an Environmental Impact Bond (EIB) that uses a Pay for Success approach can provide up-front capital from private investors for environmental projects, either to pilot a new approach whose performance is viewed as uncertain or to scale up a solution that has been tested in a pilot program.
Resilient Upgrades and the Fortified Construction: FORTIFIED is the industry standard for disaster mitigation, and is based on decades of research and data collection. All MyStrongHome (MSH) customers will receive a FORTIFIED certificate as proof of their designation. As an example of a potential deployment mechanism, Earth2Green is partnering with MSH which delivers home upgrades that meet the FORTIFIED requirements of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS). Policy and business applications will be evaluated for deploying resilient upgrades.
For more information, contact your local partner: Dr. Katya Wowk (sustainability@earth2green.org)
