ROARING FORK BROADCASTING COMPANY
One of the most important programs ever hatched by Pitkin County and the city of Aspen is undergoing a financial transformation that’s either going to kill it or send it soaring to new heights.
The Community Office for Resource Efficiency, better known as CORE, has relied for nearly 20 years on funding from what is essentially a carbon tax. The governments established an energy budget for new homes in 1999. If builders exceeded the threshold and failed to offset consumption with on-site mitigation, they paid a fee into what was known as the Renewable Energy Mitigation Program.
The program, championed by the late Randy Udall, a former CORE executive director, was an immediate success due to the energy glutton homes being constructed in the area. REMP generated millions of dollars to help CORE pursue its mission of boosting energy efficiency of local homes and commercial buildings and reducing the regional carbon footprint.
But as the city and county energy efficiency requirements have ratcheted up in recent years, REMP funds have started to fall and are expected to do so even more drastically in the near future. The codes require energy compliance.
“They couldn’t buy their way out anymore,” said Bill Stirling, a former Aspen mayor who has been on CORE’s board of directors since it was founded in 1994. “It was good that the contributions stopped coming in as they did.”
Or as current Aspen Councilman John Doyle sees it, the REMP program did just what was intended. “It was in the business of putting itself out of business,” he said.
The result has been good for the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions but bad for CORE’s bottom line. CORE estimated in 2017 that REMP had provided $20 million in funding that was spent on energy efficiency rebates and projects for homeowners, businesses and nonprofits in the region. So now — when the effects of climate change are becoming clearer every day — can CORE keep up its momentum of reducing emissions?
CORE interim director John Daugherty contends the financial overhaul can be liberating rather than debilitating.
“We never really pushed ourselves to say ‘How else can we get this work done?’ We sort of settled at REMP,” he said.
As a result, CORE was working on a problem that deserved an expenditure of $30 million per year, hypothetically, on a $3 million budget.
“Instead of defining the problem that we’re trying to solve and then going after it, we sort of said here’s what we have in our budget, what can be done with that?” Daugherty said. “We have to do more and we have to do it in different ways.”
For Stirling, CORE is kind of like his baby. While he was still mayor of Aspen he “started learning what global warming was all about” and formed an energy efficiency group to seek solutions. That early effort was related to CORE’s creation in 1994. Stirling has been on the board of directors ever since.
“I probably worked as much on that as anything I did as mayor,” he said.
So obviously he doesn’t want to see CORE wither on the vine but he is enthused about the new direction. Pitkin County Commissioner Greg Poschman is also on CORE’s board of directors and said he would be pleased if his legacy in office was helping CORE successfully navigate its financial transition and continue its good work for decades.
“Anticipating the decline in REMP funds while the demand for what we do is even more dire, of course we need to look for other funding strategies,” he said. “I think we’re off and rolling. We’ve actually done quite well. We’ve raised enough money to keep all of our projects rolling.”
CORE still received REMP funds for its 2024 budget from the city and county. Each entity contributed $850,000 in REMP funds or about 56% of the nonprofit organization’s budget for 2024, according to Daugherty. But he noted that just a few years ago, REMP accounted for 95% or more of the funds. For this year, grants accounted for another 18% of CORE’s funds while contracts and fees for services generated the remaining 26%.
Poschman said more REMP funds came in than anticipated in 2023.
“We had some huge projects that paid to play and just put the money into REMP so we had more money than we anticipated,” he said.
But that windfall didn’t automatically go to CORE. Pitkin County is pursuing electrification of the library and its health and human services building. While it is reaping a grant from the state of Colorado, it needs some of the REMP funds to cover the multimillion-dollar cost of converting its buildings to electric power sources.
“So all of a sudden CORE has competition for its funds,” Poschman said. Going forward, the commissioners must decide how the REMP funds will deliver the biggest impact.
Unlike many government programs that have little impact on the average household, CORE’s fiscal health has consequences for owners of residential and commercial property in the Roaring Fork Valley. For 2024, CORE is offering funding of up to $200,000 in grants to construction projects that have the biggest impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Projects in Pitkin County and the Eagle County portion of the Roaring Fork Valley are eligible. Installation of heat pumps for heating and sometimes cooling is a growing emphasis.
Grants used to be capped in prior years at $50,000. In 2023, CORE awarded $990,931 to support 177 energy-saving projects, up from $706,811 for 129 projects in 2022. More on CORE’s work can be found at aspencore.org.
Poschman believes the tangible results of CORE’s work will be a boon for fundraising.
“The fact is, if somebody were to contribute money to CORE, that money can go directly into a heat pump that’s helping a local, perhaps even lower income family that needs a boost electrifying their home,” he said. “The fascinating thing about our philanthropic effort is that CORE is actually walking the talk while there are a lot of climate organizations that are raising a lot of money that can’t provide an actual tangible result to show you and CORE can.”
One of the ways that CORE plans to attract private funds is by expanding its board. It will add up to six board members for a total of up to 21, focusing on people who can commit the “time, talent and treasure” necessary to help the organization achieve its goals. Each board member will be expected to personally commit to fundraising goals. Elected officials will be removed from the board in the near future because there is a conflict for them to solicit funds for the organization.
Dougherty said there is no doubt the funding transition will be a challenge. The organization has hired its first development associate to focus on fundraising efforts.
“It is going to be a lift but I think CORE is up for it,” he said. “We have to do more and we have to do it in different ways.”
Doyle said he would support continuing to contribute to CORE from city funds even if REMP funds dry up. “It has to succeed,” he said. “The alternative is a warmer planet.”