Forest County Potawatomi Community – 2019 Project

NOTE: Project pages are being updated regularly to reflect changes, if any; however, some of the information may be dated.

Summary

The Forest County Potawatomi Community (FCPC) will install eight energy efficiency measures (EEMs) and a 200-killowatt (kW) solar photovoltaic (PV) energy system on its new community center.

This project will benefit the Tribe by reducing the new community center’s natural gas needs by 42.1% and by reducing its grid electricity needs by 16.5%, which will save an average of $111,109 per year over a 30-year period.

FCPC descends from the original inhabitants of Southeastern Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois around the shores of Lake Michigan. It ceded territory through a series of treaties, and rather than marching west, a number of Potawatomi fled to Wisconsin’s North Woods, eventually becoming the FCPC. The Tribe’s membership, consisting of more than 1,600 members, is its most important asset. Notably, the majority of the tribal members reside on the Tribe’s Forest County Reservation lands in the communities of Stone Lake, Carter, and Blackwell in rural northern Wisconsin.

Until the Tribe achieves energy independence, it can highlight the extensive efforts it has made toward this goal. FCPC voluntarily joined the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Green Power Partnership, which requires FCPC to both report its green power use annually and to commit to a minimum green energy use. In recognition of its efforts, FCPC was ranked 12^th nationally in the EPA’s 2019 Top 30 Local Government list accounting for 100% of the Tribe’s electricity through renewable energy generation and purchasing. The Tribe’s commitment to renewable energy is evidenced by not only its nearly 2 megawatts (MW) of installed solar PV, but also its 2-MW anaerobic digestion biogas facility. In addition, FCPC invests in energy auditing and has applied for a grant to explore the feasibility of retro commissioning the highest energy demanding buildings in the Stone Lake Reservation. Finally, FCPC has reduced its own energy demand and that of its employees by shifting from a five-day to a four-day work week, effectively decreasing the required commutes and building heating/cooling days.

While green energy and sustainability are of strategic importance to FCPC, the Tribe must also consider its own cultural sustainability. The new community center (construction of which is outside the scope of this project) will house several new spaces for community gathering and will more than double the capacity of FCPC to hold tribal meetings. These spaces will allow tribal members to come together in ways never before possible and will ensure the resilience of Potawatomi culture for generations to come. With these considerations, the tribe set a goal for the project: to create new opportunities for community gathering in the community center, while pursuing tribal energy sovereignty through cost effective energy efficiency and generation measures. This goal will be achieved through the following project objectives:

• Objective 1: To install a comprehensive range of eight EEMs
• Objective 2: To deploy a 200-kW solar PV system
• Objective 3: To evaluate the economic and environmental benefits of deployed infrastructure over a 12-month period through an evaluation, monitoring, and verification (EM&V) process.

This project aligns the FCPC’s goals of cultural perseverance and sustainability. The community center will be a powerful force to bring tribal members together and will profoundly transform the everyday lives of tribal members. The deployment of the eight EEMs and the 200-kW solar PV system will assist FCPC in reaching its goal of energy sovereignty through the use of 100% carbon neutral renewable energy. The project will also benefit the Tribe by reducing the new community center’s natural gas needs by 42.1% and reducing its grid electricity needs by 16.5%, which will save an average of $111,109 per year over a 30-year period. This will avoid 719.13 metric tons (MT) of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions per year.

This project will install eight EEMs and a 200-kW solar PV energy system on the Tribe’s new community center. The community center will house several gathering spaces that will allow for increased participation in community events, including General Council meetings, where tribal members come together to discuss and vote on important community and governmental matters. With the addition of new opportunities for tribal members to come together, the community center will ensure cultural perseverance in line with FCPC values to protect Mother Earth.

FCPC has evaluated a range of commercially proven and warrantied options to optimize energy demand and renewable energy generation for the new community center. With the selected EEMs and solar PV system, this project will benefit the Tribe by reducing the new community center’s natural gas needs by 42.1% and by reducing its grid electricity needs by 16.5%, which will save an average of $111,109 per year over a 30-year period. This will reduce CO₂ emissions by an average of 719.13 MT per year. FCPC staff will conduct evaluation, monitoring, and verification (EM&V) of the installed EEMs’ and solar PV system’s performance on a monthly basis over a period of 12 months.

Only the incremental costs of the EEMs and the PV system are specifically covered under this project, not the construction of the new community center. FCPC will assess the performance of the EEMs and solar PV, verify energy savings through an EM&V process, and analyze and report on the long-term economic and environmental costs for all energy measures and PV systems implemented.

The selected location for the new community center will enable tribal members to easily access the building due to its close proximity to existing buildings essential to governmental functioning, which Tribal members use frequently. With this strategic location, the Tribe has designated the new community center to be its Stone Lake shelter in the event of an emergency. The new building will be southeast facing and has been designed to accommodate the full weight of the proposed 200-kW solar PV system. The solar modules will be mounted at a fixed tilt (30%) to attain maximum exposure to sunlight. The project is scheduled to break ground in May 2020, and planned construction for the first EEM deliverable is expected to begin in late 2020.

The FCPC Reservation lands consist of 12,000 acres in rural Forest County, Wisconsin. The Tribe's Reservation lands are "checker boarded," meaning that non-Indian-owned land and tribal reservation land border each other in several locations, resulting in a visual "checkerboard" of Indian and non-Indian lands. The proposed project will be located on tribal trust lands in FCPC’s Stone Lake Reservation, near the City of Crandon, Wisconsin. The Tribe comprises more than 1,400 members, many of whom reside in the tribal communities of Stone Lake, Carter, and Blackwell in rural northern Wisconsin.

The project was competitively selected under the Office of Indian Energy's Fiscal Year 2019 funding opportunity announcement “Energy Infrastructure Deployment on Tribal Lands - 2019” (DE-FOA-0002032) and started in October 2019.

The project status reports provide more information.