PG&E Announces 7 Recipients of $400,000 in Resilience Hubs Grants to Help Communities Withstand Extreme Weather Events
23 December 2021 - 4:00AM
Business Wire
Includes Organizations in Northern and Central
California That Support Disadvantaged, Vulnerable, and Historically
Underserved Communities
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced the
2021 recipients of its new Resilience Hubs grants, a program that
provides support for local, safe gathering places and access to
critical services during extreme weather events and other emergency
situations.
The Resilience Hubs grant program is in its first of five years
and aims to help communities create a physical space or set of
resources that supports community resilience—such as access to
power, shelter, and information—to climate-driven disruptions as
well as Public Safety Power Shutoff events. Once developed, these
resilience hubs can also be accessed year-round as a community
resource.
The program awarded $25,000 each to four Feasibility
Projects to fund an assessment of resilience hub needs and/or
conceptual ideas for a resilience hub. Grant recipients are the
following organizations:
- Albany CERT Inc.
- Blue Lake Rancheria
- Cooperation Humboldt
- County of Santa Barbara
Additionally, the program awarded $100,000 each to three
Design and Build Projects toward the design and/or creation of
a resilience hub to the following grant recipients. Through these
projects, the organizations will either plan and design new
physical spaces or mobile resources, or retrofit existing buildings
or structures to support community resilience.
- City of Richmond
- Hopland Band of Pomo Indians
- The Latino Equity Advocacy and Policy Institute (LEAP)
“Communities across California need safe gathering places during
extreme climate-driven weather events or other local emergencies,”
said Carla Peterman, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs
and Chief Sustainability Officer for PG&E Corporation. “Through
these grants, PG&E is seeing and meeting an emerging need in
California, helping our hometowns develop resilience hubs in a
sustainable manner to support their residents for years to
come.”
Feasibility Projects: Profiles of Grant Recipients
- Albany CERT Inc. is an all-volunteer organization
focused on the safety of City of Albany residents, especially
during emergency situations. The organization will conduct outreach
to collect community input on locations for resilience hubs,
components and resources for hubs, and opportunities for training
citizens on disaster preparation. “Albany CERT Inc will apply this
grant toward establishing Emergency Communication Hubs in all
regions of our city,” said Blake Yeaman, President of the
organization. “These funds will allow us to do a comprehensive
feasibility study, including outreach to our underserved and
low-income community members and will help ensure they will be
equally served during emergency situations. We will share the
results of this study and our prototypes with PG&E, other CERT
organizations and on our website so that other communities will
benefit from the findings, as well.”
- Blue Lake Rancheria will conduct a feasibility study of
a Food-Anchored Resilience Hub at the site’s Tribal Convenience
Store and identify strategies to ensure access to food and other
emergency items for identified vulnerable populations. “The Blue
Lake Rancheria is excited about exploring and developing regional
resilience in all its dimensions, including food resilience and
addressing regional inequities in food distribution and access,”
said Jason Ramos, the Rancheria’s Tribal Administrator. “We are
looking forward to assessing the opportunities for a resilient food
hub at the Rancheria and are grateful to PG&E for the grant
assistance.”
- Working directly with community members, Cooperation
Humboldt will conduct analyses to determine the site for a
resilience hub and what functions it will provide to serve highest
priority needs. “With support from the City of Arcata, a team of
community members from Comunidad Unida del Norte de Arcata and
Cooperation Humboldt's Disaster Response through Community
Resilience program will be conducting research on the need for a
resilience hub and community center in the Valley West community of
North Arcata,” said Sabrina Miller, Program Coordinator for
Cooperation Humboldt. “This project will center the voices of a
vulnerable population within Arcata in an effort to address climate
hazards and build resilience within the surrounding
community.”
- The County of Santa Barbara will use community input and
data to identify a site and conceptual design for a pilot
resilience hub to serve indigenous migrant communities and develop
a design toolkit to further the practice throughout the county. “We
look forward to establishing a resilience hub for our most
vulnerable communities,” said Ashley Watkins, Sustainability
Division Chief with the county. “The support from PG&E will
ensure we create meaningful relationships with community members as
we embark on this process.”
Design and Build Projects: Profiles of Grant
Recipients
- The City of Richmond will install portable solar panels
at two existing community centers to create “power hubs” for
residents to use electricity and WiFi during outages and
emergencies. The clean electricity will be available for both
outdoor and indoor use at the centers. “The City of Richmond is
grateful for the opportunity to strengthen our communities,” said
LaShonda White, Interim Library and Community Services Director.
“With the PG&E Resilience Hubs Grant, we will help residents
respond to disruptions, such as power outages and extreme heat,
caused by climate change.”
- The Hopland Band of Pomo Indians’ Pomo Inter-Tribal
Resiliency Hub will provide year-round workshops on climate
adaptation, including demonstration projects on rainwater catchment
systems, greywater systems, firesafe landscaping, aquaponics, and
emergency response. “The Hopland Band of Pomo Indians have been
increasingly impacted by the changing climate, with catastrophic
wildfires causing evacuations and unhealthy air quality, drought
and extreme heat leading to food and water insecurity, and the loss
of traditional foods, teas, fibers and medicines,” said Tribal
Chairman Sonny J. Elliott. “Hopland Tribe is collaborating with
PG&E in increasing inter-Tribal resiliency to climate change,
and will be coordinating workshops and demonstration projects with
the grant. Resilience hubs projects will provide Tribal members in
Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino Counties the tools they need to increase
food and water security, with aquaponics systems, rainwater
catchment, and other adaptation methods.”
- The LEAP Institute will build 16 Mobile Resilience Hubs
in the Central Valley, using the grant funding complemented by
additional funding, and will provide training to community members
to build and operate resilience hubs. “Designing resilience hubs to
provide mobile climate and air quality control centers will have
multiple benefits for our community and region,” said Ray Leon,
Executive Director of The LEAP Institute. “LEAP has been advancing
to become leaders in innovation for equity and PG&E’s support
will enable us to train, hire and build locally mobile Resilience
Hubs in the heart of the Central Valley.”
About the Resilience Hubs Grants
The Resilience Hubs grant program will award $400,000 annually
over five years. Grants for the Resilience Hubs grant program were
distributed through a competitive solicitation and bid process to
eligible nonprofit or government organizations (including tribal
governments) within PG&E’s service territory. Priority was
given to proposals that addressed the needs of disadvantaged and/or
vulnerable communities. Grants are funded by PG&E shareholders
as part of the company’s investments in statewide wildfire
resiliency and response, in accordance with a mandate from the
California Public Utilities Commission. Please check the Resilience
Hubs grant program website for more information.
About PG&E
PG&E, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG), is a
combined natural gas and electric utility serving more than 16
million people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central
California. For more information, visit pge.com and
pge.com/news.
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