It’s been a tough year for climate work around the country, with the Trump administration slashing funding for programs intended to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the threats of the climate crisis. But Portland has a secret weapon for local environmental action: The Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund, also known as PCEF. To date, the fund has allocated $1.71 billion in grants for climate projects. This year, the fund is set to dole out more than $60 million for climate projects in its latest round of grants to nonprofits.
The funding will help pay for 59 nonprofit-led projects addressing a range of climate issues, from energy efficiency in homes to transportation emissions. The funding is prioritized for projects targeting low-income communities and Portlanders of color, who are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
The city has calculated the grant-funded projects will result in a lifetime reduction of roughly 76,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. That’s about equal to the carbon emissions generated in one year by roughly 17,770 gas-powered cars. However, PCEF leaders say the project benefits to Portlanders extend beyond greenhouse gas reduction, with anticipated benefits including improved indoor air quality, connection to living-wage jobs, and access to high-quality, fresh foods.
"Together, these community-led projects demonstrate the power of collective action to advance the City's climate goals while creating lasting benefits for Portland's communities,” PCEF Program Manager Sam Baraso said in a press release.
PCEF was approved by voters as a 2018 ballot measure. The program, which is funded by a 1 percent tax on large retailers in Portland, was initially dedicated primarily to funding climate projects via grants to nonprofit organizations. But PCEF raked in significantly more money than initially anticipated. While early estimates calculated PCEF would generate $40 to $60 million annually, it’s currently raising about $200 million a year. As its funding capacity increased, so did its scope.
PCEF now provides funding to public agencies for large-scale climate projects. The fund has also been used to backfill budget shortfalls within the city’s own bureaus, as long as the money is used for projects that can be tied to carbon reduction or environmental justice goals. The decision to allow financially-constrained bureaus to tap into PCEF has been controversial among the program’s leaders, who don’t want to water down the climate fund into the city’s all-purpose piggy bank. Their fears aren’t baseless: The Portland Police Association is currently supporting an effort to reroute 25 percent of PCEF revenue toward police hiring.
Despite PCEF’s evolution, the program has kept dedicated funding available for nonprofits working on climate projects. Last year, the fund allocated nearly $92 million in grants to local nonprofits. This year, the program will distribute roughly $64 million to 59 organizations. About half of the money, or $33.6 million, will be allocated to organizations for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Another $25 million will be split roughly equally among projects dedicated to transportation decarbonization ($8.1 million) climate workforce development ($9.3 million), and regenerative agriculture/green infrastructure ($7.5 million). Most of the money will be given to organizations to implement projects, though a fraction of the grants are intended for planning future programming.
PCEF received 216 applications for grant funding, with requests totaling more than $260 million. Program leaders took the strong response as a reflection of how “local organizations have continued to strengthen their capacity and maintain their ambition in recent years.” In other words, there’s a lot of demand for climate funding, and despite the program’s financial windfall, PCEF can’t meet it all.
The largest grants allocated in this cycle were two $4.9 million awards to the Williams and Russell Community Development Corporation (CDC) and Self Enhancement, Inc, both for energy efficiency projects. The former grant is for an energy-efficient Black business hub, intended to be an economic and community resource for the historically Black Albina district, while the second is meant for the construction of 31 net-zero emissions homes to address housing affordability and displacement in Northeast Portland.
Other notable projects include Earth Advantage, Inc’s plan to install 405 easy-install heat pumps in eligible affordable housing units across the city ($2.9 million), the Black American Chamber of Commerce’s plan to provide subsidies to small businesses for electric car purchases ($2 million), and Bike Bus PDX’s proposal to increase programming in support children biking to school together ($895,000).
Portland YouthBuilders was granted $1.5 million for a pre-apprenticeship program offering clean energy training and career development to 100 young adults from underserved communities,and the Columbia Land Trust was awarded nearly $1 million to provide landscaping services, trees, and plants to PCEF priority households and community spaces, enabling people and businesses to create backyard habitats that provide shade and capture stormwater, as well as providing habitat for wildlife.
The full list of grant awards is available here.
Applications were vetted by program staff and a review panel made up of PCEF committee volunteers, community representatives, and subject matter experts. City Administrator Michael Jordan ultimately approved the grant funding based on the recommendations.
This is a change from previous grant cycles, when the City Council was given the final say over the distribution of PCEF funds. While the Council’s approval was mostly seen as a formality, it gave PCEF leaders and grantees the opportunity to speak to city leaders in a public forum.
Councilor Steve Novick, who co-chairs the Climate and Sustainability Committee with Councilor Angelita Morillo, told the Mercury in theory, he’s fine with administrative staff taking over the PCEF grant approval process. Novick has been openly skeptical about the Council intervening in matters he considers administrative—for example, when a group of councilors moved to reject the recommendations of city staff and advisory bodies to overturn a slate of Portland Children’s Levy grants.
Novick said he thinks the City Council should be tasked with adopting broad initiatives, such as the Climate Investment Plan that guides PCEF’s investments, and let administrative staff take over the details.
“It doesn't make sense for Council to approve individual grants or even the slate of grants for a year,” Novick said. “There’s a process for awarding community grants that the Council is not involved with in a detailed way, and I think that’s the way it should work.”
But moving the process completely behind the scenes may limit opportunities for discussion and engagement between city leaders and residents. Novick said after looking through the latest slate of PCEF grants, he had some questions about the awards and how they were decided. Even if the City Council isn’t in charge of the decisions, Novick thinks it is in the councilors’ best interest to stay engaged with the program and how PCEF dollars are spent.
“I think in broad parameters, the Council is pretty well-informed [about PCEF], but that doesn't mean that there isn't room for us to be more engaged,” Novick said.
Novick said the Council’s engagement in PCEF is particularly important as the program faces threats from those who want to cash in on its earnings. He plans to look into opportunities for the Council’s Climate Committee to hear more from PCEF staff and grantees in a public forum.
“The amount of money we have in PCEF to spend on climate issues is far less than a reasonable society would be spending to address climate issues. The fact that it's bringing in more money than originally projected is a red herring,” Novick said. “But since we do want to be able to prove we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck, we should be constantly looking at that.”
