A Las Cruces project to cool the city’s hottest homes will move forward despite a loss of federal funds, with state funding providing a stopgap.
City officials last June downscaled the project to install all-electric heat pumps at no cost to residents after failing to receive more than $900,000 in expected U.S. Department of Energy funds from its Energy Future grants and Building Upgrades Prize programs.
The DOE never sent notice that they had revoked the funds, according to the city’s Sustainability Officer Jenny Hernandez. The DOE did not respond to Source NM’s emailed requests for comment by publication.
The program, which has $642,000 to operate, recently received an additional $160,000 award from the state’s New Mexico Community Energy Efficiency Development Program, established in 2022 to help local and tribal governments with their energy efficiency efforts.
With the total funding, the city can install heat pumps in June and July for an anticipated 70 homes. The city has committed to installation in 60 residences, and is seeking an additional 10 homes to participate, Hernandez said.
Though diminished from the approximately 150 installations the city had intended to complete with the lost federal funding, Hernandez emphasized the importance of the program, noting that March temperatures spiked during the recent heat wave.
“We have to get this work done because it is a matter of life and death in some instances and for sure, health and safety,” Hernandez told Source NM. “We’re pushing really, really hard to install pumps before it gets really, really bad in our July, August months.”
In 2020, Las Cruces mapped the urban heat island effect and found that asphalt- and concrete-trapping heat raised temperatures by an average of 14 degrees in low-income neighborhoods compared to higher-income counterparts.
Despite the name, heat pumps offer efficient cooling of outside or underground air. The devices operate more efficiently in humid conditions than swamp coolers, and may be cheaper than air conditioning, said Marcus Crawford, the operations manager at the Las Cruces nonprofit Community Action Agency of Southern New Mexico, which is connecting people to the city’s program.
“The longer we fail to address climate change and let it go unchecked, the hotter it’s going to get and the more adverse those consequences are going to be for the people who are at least able to insulate themselves,” Crawford said.
State Rep. Kristina Ortez (D-Taos), the lead sponsor for the Community Energy Efficiency Development Program, told Source NM the fund was originally intended to provide state matches to federal or philanthropic funding.
“I think it’s really awful that we can’t count on our federal funds when they were already issued, but am really glad that the state can make up that support,” Ortez said.
While the Community Energy Efficiency Development Program received an additional $15 million last year, Ortez said the program needs to grow faster to address New Mexico’s warming temperatures.
“I think it’s going to take hundreds of millions of dollars to have that big impact that we want, which is where low-income New Mexicans have lower energy bills and they also have safer homes,” she said.
