The Southeast Conference hopes to know by the end of the month whether $38.6 million in federal funds to help install electric heat pumps in coastal Alaska communities will come through on schedule or whether the Trump administration will pull the plug or turn down the power on the project.
“We’re moving forward cautiously, carefully,” said Robert Venables, Southeast Conference executive director.
The new administration has ordered widespread halts to federal contracts, loans and grants, as the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and new cabinet secretaries examine spending in line with the president’s executive orders and government-cutting policies.
The money for heat pumps in Alaska already has been frozen twice in the past few weeks.
“Even though we lost it twice, we got it back a third time,” Venables said last week.
The federal grant, announced last summer, was awarded to the Southeast Conference, a community and economic development nonprofit for the region, and Alaska Heat Smart, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing the cost of living and increasing the use of clean energy.
The money was to help lower the cost of converting homes from diesel-fueled heating systems to energy-saving heat pumps for an estimated 6,100 Alaska households stretching from Ketchikan to Kodiak, including Wrangell.
The money will provide rebates of between $4,000 and $8,500 per household for the purchase and installation of a heat pump. The amount of money would vary, based on household income.
Under terms of the grant, the Southeast Conference is allowed to draw on the federal funds for reimbursement as it spends money on the program.
Within 24 hours of Trump’s first executive order, “those funds were no longer accessible or visible,” Venables said. Then the account reappeared and the nonprofit withdrew some money, only to have the account close down a second time.
It later came back.
To date, the Southeast Conference and Heat Smart have spent less than $10,000 on planning and to build the website portal for applications, as they gear up to launch the program, hopefully later this summer.
Assuming the funding remains in place, the nonprofits will build a list of qualified vendors to supply heat pumps and a list of qualified contractors to install the units, Venables said.
One concession to the uncertainty of the federal money, he said, is that the project team is leaning more toward hiring part-time staff or contractors to run the program, avoiding the addition of full-time staff.
“We’re waiting for the dust to settle,” Venables said.
The money was awarded through the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, a nationwide program funded under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The national grant program allocated nearly $5 billion to states, local governments, tribes and territories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help reduce energy costs.
Venables said half of the $38.6 million for coastal Alaska will be designated for low-income and Alaska Native households.
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