The Town of Jackson first contacted Climate Solutions in early 2009, when the community accepted a challenge from former World Bank head Jim Wolfensohn to create a bold strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become a showcase community for the 2-3 million visitors from across the globe who travel through the Teton Valley every year.

The Climate Solutions New Energy Cities team conducted a two-day workshop in Jackson in May 2009 with 60 community leaders in government, business, and the nonprofit community, from which we produced a Roadmap and an Action Plan, which led to the creation of the Jackson Hole Energy Sustainability Project (JHESP).

Since that time, the JHESP has been working aggressively to implement its Action Plan with the New Energy Cities team by:

• Creating a tri-partite governance structure with the Town of Jackson, Teton County, and Lower Valley Energy to oversee the work of the JHESP.
• Successfully passing a ballot measure in August 2010 that will fund $3.8m through special purpose excise taxes (SPET) to retrofit public buildings.
• Performing the data analysis to determine the payback and return on investment for an energy efficiency and smart metering pilot project of up to 300 buildings in Jackson.
• Developing a 0% loan program with a loan loss reserve fund to offer home owners to fund their energy efficiency retrofits.
• Initiating the development of a public outreach campaign to sign up residential and commercial customers for the program.