Energy Innovation Fund Announcement

Grants Available for Multifamily Energy-Efficiency Upgrades

HUD’s Office of Affordable Housing Preservation is issuing a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the Multifamily Energy Innovation Fund. This fund provides a total of $25 million in grants to be used for energy-efficiency upgrades at multifamily properties. The goals of this NOFA are to:

1. Demonstrate solutions to the primary and longstanding challenges of implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy improvements in existing affordable multifamily properties.
2. Leverage private capital and additional public funding to demonstrate “proof of concept” relative to specific models.
3. Conduct applied research to document and disseminate mainstream, scalable approaches to retrofitting affordable multifamily properties.

The overall objective of the Energy Innovation Fund is to help catalyze a home energy retrofit market in the United States by accelerating private investment in cost-saving, energy-efficient retrofits in the residential sector. Innovative and replicable strategies to improve the usefulness of existing HUD programs — as well as developing new financing tools — will lead to significant reductions in energy consumption, operating costs, and the carbon footprint of both affordable and market-rate housing.

You can view the full Energy Innovation NOFA on our website. Please join us for a webcast on September 19, 2011 from 11:00am-12:30pm, when we’ll present the highlights of the NOFA and answer your questions. The webcast can be viewed at http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/webcasts/schedule. In advance of the webcast, please send your questions to EIFApplication@hud.gov.

Applications for Energy Innovation Funds grants must be received by HUD no later than October 20, 2011. Detailed application instructions are included in the General Section of HUD’s FY2010 NOFAs for Discretionary Programs and in the Energy Innovation Fund NOFA. Applicants are reminded that when applying for funding through Grants.Gov, a multistep registration process is required. For information, visit http://www.grants.gov/applicants/get_registered.jsp and click on “Organization Registration.” Upon registration, you’ll automatically receive updates on the progress of the NOFA, along with additional relevant information as it becomes available.