CCMUA Wins Funding For Microgrid Project: Officials

CAMDEN COUNTY, NJ - Camden County will use funds procured from a recent bond challenge to pay for an innovative program to prevent power outages in the City of Camden, officials announced. Camden County was the second winner of the Environmental Impact Bond Challenge, funded by The Rockefeller Foundation to empower cities to improve community resilience.

The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA) will use the funds from this award for an extension of a planned microgrid to critical infrastructure in Camden, officials said. The microgrid will help protect the citizens of Camden from power outages in the case of storms, flooding, or other emergencies.

“This is a first-of-its kind technological achievement that will bring enormous benefits to the City of Camden and the county,” Freeholder Jeff Nash, liaison to the CCMUA, said. “Never before in our state has there been a resilient off-the-grid source of renewable energy like this. Because of this project, parts of the city that are currently without critical backup infrastructure will now be able to have clean, renewable energy during times of crisis.”

The CCMUA will work with advisory firm Quantified Ventures to come up with an Environmental Impact Bond (EIB) to finance the project. Through this form of financing, repayment of the bond is directly tied to the success of the microgrid, officials said.

CCMUA is the second winner of the Environmental Impact Bond Challenge supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, following the City of Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management (DWM), which will issue an EIB in early 2019 to finance green infrastructure projects in Atlanta’s Westside. CCMUA’s EIB will be the first investment of its kind in the nation to support an energy or power project.

Camden is increasingly prone to major storms, as seen during Irene and Sandy. Critical facilities such as hospitals lack access to sources of backup power in the event of long-term outages. The proposed microgrid would connect the CCMUA’s main wastewater treatment plant to a waste-to-energy plant owned by Covanta, Inc.

The EIB will fill an existing capital gap to extend the underground microgrid into the City of Camden, providing hospitals, schools, police, fire, or other critical facilities with a backup, and potentially main, source of power.

“What this does is take a reliable source of clean, renewable energy and transfer it to the City of Camden where it can be used to support the critical infrastructure that exists here,” CCMUA Executive Director Andy Kricun said. “With the model that’s being put in place, CCMUA is going to be able to finance the project responsibly by minimizing its risk. This is going to set a standard for how the rest of the country goes about financing similar projects in the future.”

“This is another case where people from across the state and from across the country are going to be coming to the City of Camden to learn how to improve their infrastructure and how to prepare for the economy of the future,” Nash said. “Just as we’ve seen with businesses investing billions of dollars here, and the success of the Eds and Meds corridor, Camden is once again a place where major innovation is taking place.”

The project also has support from the federal government and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-1) as it moves forward.

“We’ve seen tremendous job growth in Camden, along with major improvements to city schools, parks and public safety – and now we’re bringing home a clean-energy investment that will make our city even more resilient,” Norcross said. “As a former electrician, I’ve long-been pushing my colleagues to focus on and invest in American infrastructure projects, specifically involving our Grid. This opportunity to have a new renewable energy source in Camden will help our local economy, our environment and our residents.”

The microgrid project in Camden is part of a broader effort in New Jersey to increase energy resilience and renewable power generation, and is supported by the State’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU).

“The Board has long recognized that encouraging municipalities, with their critical facilities, to develop standalone grids that would continue to operate if a main grid is rendered nonfunctional is critical to ensuring that our state’s residents continue to receive public health and safety services in dire circumstances,” New Jersey Board of Utilities President Joseph L. Fiordaliso said. “Investing in infrastructure improvements, like these microgrids in Camden, will help mitigate the impacts of major storms like Irene or Sandy and improve the city’s resiliency in the face of crisis.”

“The BPU sponsored microgrid project between Covanta and CCMUA will be an exceptional model of public/private partnership that will increase the sustainability, efficiency and resiliency of critical utility infrastructure,” Covanta New York/New Jersey Region Vice President and General Manager Richard Sandner said. “We sincerely appreciate the help and support of all the parties involved in the project and look forward to continued collaboration to make it a reality.”

Quantified Ventures helped issue the first-ever EIB with DC Water in 2016, and has been duplicating this effort nationwide.

“By tying investor repayment directly to the delivery of successful social, health and environmental outcomes, Environmental Impact Bonds (EIBs) enable governments to pay for success on the back end rather than pay for everything up front and hope for the best. As a result, the public sector can make spending of often-scarce public funds more efficient, and catalyze greater investment into innovative projects without taking all the risk,” Quantified Ventures CEO Eric Letsinger said. “Camden’s microgrid project will become a model for how resilience is built and financed globally tomorrow while filling an immediate need for its communities today. We're quite humbled to be a part of this bold effort.”

The Environmental Impact Bond Challenge was launched in 2017 with funding from The Rockefeller Foundation, who supported the initiative as a way to promote innovative financing solutions to build resilience in vulnerable and economically distressed communities.

“We’re grateful to our partner Quantified Ventures for their continued support of the Environmental Impact Bond Challenge, which expands efforts to bring financing to municipal resilience projects meant to benefit our poorest and most vulnerable community residents,” Rockefeller Foundation Managing Director for Innovative Finance Saadia Madsbjerg said. “Communities like Camden County, New Jersey are being creative and innovative about how they deliver infrastructure and services in a cost-effective way to build resilience for their constituents, and that should be applauded.”

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