Final state grants fuel East Iowa energy projects

CEDAR RAPIDS - The Iowa Power Fund is gone, but communities in Eastern Iowa continue to carry out the projects with its final funding to find smarter ways to use energy.

In Cedar Rapids, a sustainability alliance has businesses gathering to reduce landfill waste and energy consumption, with the Quaker plant showing the way.

Meanwhile, high school students in Decorah are learning to monitor energy savings while learning to garden and make biodiesel fuel.

The state set its sights on energy in 2007 when former Gov. Chet Culver signed into law the $100 million Iowa Power Fund to invest in research of renewable energy such as wind and ethanol.

Iowa's Office of Energy Independence administered the fund and in 2008 started giving 4 percent of its yearly allotment to community projects to improve energy efficiency on a grass-roots level.

The last of the fund was assigned to projects earlier this year. The applicants for community grants narrowly escaped the chopping block as Gov. Terry Branstad canceled the Iowa Power Fund, dissolved the energy office and considered cutting the sought-after remains of the fund.

Kitty Edwards is the head of the Regional Sustainable Business Alliance funded by the Power Fund community grant program.

Edwards, purchasing manager at the Cedar Rapids Quaker plant, with the largest cereal mill in the world, is a self-proclaimed “trash queen.”

When PepsiCo, Quaker's owner, set a corporate goal of reducing its landfill waste beginning in 2006, Edwards took on the challenge, assembling an eight-person green team within the plant.

One by one, she found ways to recycle the company's waste. Edwards struck a deal with the manufacturers of wood pallets used in milling machinery, who now take back broken pallets and use them to make mulch.

Quaker reported earning more than $300,000 in 2010 for products otherwise destined for the landfill. Edwards said the plant reduced landfill waste by 10 percent in 2010, and by 35 percent in 2011, exceeding corporate goals. Next year, Edwards aims to achieve zero landfill waste.

Sheila Samuelson, founder of an Iowa City sustainable business consultancy, Bright Green Strategies, attended the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce's first Sustainable Business Alliance meeting in April.

“Shortly after the first meeting, I heard about the grant from the Energy Office,” said Samuelson. “It seemed like a perfect fit for our new group.”

Samuelson applied on behalf of the chamber, which was awarded a community grant of $28,460 to support the sustainability alliance's efforts.

Since then, more than 50 area businesses, non-profits and schools have joined the alliance. They have held green facility tours, done case studies, heard expert speakers and are working on a website complete with tools for businesses to achieve sustainability goals.

Edwards said they are putting tools in place that will support the alliance long after the grant funding is gone.

“The grant is that first tank of gas,” said Edwards. “It gets the team going.”

Decorah projects

That first tank of gas has gone a long way for Decorah High School, which was named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education this year. Principal Kim Sheppard attributed the award to sustainability programs that she said have heightened student achievement.

Sheppard said the school's interest in the environment began when a group of teachers gathered in 2008 to discuss ways to rejuvenate the ninth grade curriculum. “That was what sparked this whole initiative,” said Sheppard.

They designed a program that encourages students to explore their relationship with the environment. Students have chosen topics such as wind energy, recycling, mining and agriculture and present their findings to the class.

Sheppard said students continuously take part in hands-on activities, harvesting vegetables from the school garden, and cleaning local trails and rivers.

Decorah High School received its first community grant from the energy office in 2010, which helped pay for solar panels that students monitor and maintain through the Sun4Schools program.

This year, the office awarded the school $50,000 for an energy research lab, where students learn energy saving methods and track results. So far they have purchased supplies to create a biodiesel plant to fuel school tractors, a blast chiller to preserve produce from the school garden for use in the cafeteria, and a composting unit for fertilizer.

“This lab focuses on energy and how we can teach kids to take good care of the environment,” said Sheppard.

Grants missed

For those with ideas of how to cut waste in their community but with little means to do it, the end of the Iowa Power Fund and the community grant program came as unwelcome news.

But those who received the program's final grants hope to have created projects with lasting effects.

“Our lab will create learning activities year after year,” said Sheppard.