Salt Lake City seeking applications for energy efficiency funding

Salt Lake City is accepting applications from local businesses for its Energy Efficiency Revolving Loan Fund.

The loan fund is designed to work with incentive and rebate programs from Rocky Mountain Power and Questar Gas to provide Salt Lake City business owners with low-interest loans between $5,000 and $35,000 to fund energy-efficient equipment upgrades and building retrofits.

Administered by the city’s Community & Economic Development Department and its Division of Sustainability, the loan fund aims to help businesses reduce their energy usage, cut down on their carbon emissions and positively impact their economic bottom lines.

And, according to a statement from the city, the loans are designed to be virtually cash flow neutral for participating businesses. The goal is for loan funds to be paid back with the savings created by the efficiency upgrades. Salt Lake Tribune

$99M project will be most significant U. overhaul in 40 years

Utility failures are a part of life. But at the University of Utah, power and water failures happen frequently and often last for hours.

Each building on the U. campus spends an average of 16 hours in the dark per year — affecting classes, research and even medical care at University Hospital, said Cory Higgins, director of Facilities Management. Corroded water pipes, 20 years past due for replacement, have caused heating systems to fail and have sent thousands of gallons of super-heated water into the ground and air.

While some repair work is already under way, the university will begin a four-year, $99 million project in July to replace its aging electrical grid and high-temperature water system. It will be the most significant overhaul of the campus infrastructure in 40 years, Higgins said. When finished, the water, heat and power failures that have become commonplace on campus will be "a thing of the past." Deseret News

EBay And Republican Lawmaker Score Clean Energy Win In Utah

When eBay, the world’s largest online marketplace, built its first-ever data center in South Jordan, Utah, it wanted to not only design and build the site to LEED Gold standards, it wanted to use clean energy to power much of the sprawling facility. This wasn’t simply part of eBay’s company-wide commitment to sustainable operations, it was a bottom-line business decision: sourcing renewable energy would stabilize and reduce long-term energy costs and minimize environmental impacts in a state that gets 94 percent of its electricity from coal.

But there was a problem: Utah law didn’t allow non-utility energy consumers to buy and transmit power directly from renewable energy developers.

Together with Data Center Pulse, an association of data center professionals representing individuals from over a 1,000 companies. A working group that included representatives of eBay, Republican State Senator Mark Madsen, Rocky Mountain Power, renewable energy producers, consumer groups and industrial stakeholders got together to craft legislation to make renewable energy available to Utah energy consumers – with the key provision of not raising electricity rates or taxes for local Utah residents.

That legislation, Senate Bill 12, was unanimously approved this month by the Utah Senate and House and was signed into law yesterday by Governor Gary Herbert. The law goes into effect this summer.

This success story occurs at the intersection of economic growth and clean energy and is a win-win for Utah’s economy and its environment. eBay, which employs more than 1,500 people in the state, says the green-power option is a key prerequisite for boosting its presence there. The company plans to build a second data center and add 2,200 jobs in Utah. Forbes

Salt Lake leaders consider charging new fee to keep streetlights shining

Mayor Ralph Becker has proposed a street-lighting fee that would fund operation, maintenance and upgrades for more than 15,000 street lights.

Under the proposal, an additional $2.29 street-lighting charge would be added to residents' monthly utility bills. Businesses would pay $41.53 per month for every 75 feet of street frontage. Deseret News