The Longmont City Council this week praised Longmont Power & Communications for receiving a Smart Energy Provider designation from the American Public Power Association.
The designation recognizes the city’s efforts in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and environmental initiatives as they relate to electric services, a city staff report to the city council states.
The APPA began the Smart Energy Provider designation in 2019, Longmont was in that first group of recipients, Scott Rochat, spokesperson for Longmont Power & Communications, said in an email.
The designation is good for two years, so Longmont is in its second consecutive Smart Energy Provider recognition status, Rochat said. A utility must score at 70 points out of a possible 100 to receive the designation: LPC had a score of 87, Rochat said.
He said the actual scoreboard for a utility runs about 17 pages, but some of the items that earned LPC points include:
- Establishing “smart energy” goals, objectives and plans, such as the city’s Sustainability Plan and Climate Action Resolution
- Enabling low-interest energy loans for LPC customers in partnership with Elevations Credit Union
- Offering LPC’s Energy Works energy efficiency programs for homes and businesses, as well as a commercial building benchmarking program
- Offering city-owned electric vehicle charging stations
- The city’s tracking of greenhouse gas emissions and of emissions savings from smart energy programs
- Participating in DER (distributed energy resource) research/planning with Platte River Power Authority.
Every application for the designation is reviewed by an expert panel of public power representatives who are from diverse backgrounds and regions with expertise in smart energy programs, the APPA website states.
There are now 94 public power utilities holding the SEP designation, four in Colorado, out of over 2,000 public power utilities in the United States, the staff report states.
Mayor Joan Peck congratulated the entire LPC staff for the designation during Tuesday’s city council work session. “This shows how hard you are working to get us where we want to go,” Peck said.
