IGA, INC.’s Post

✨ North Devon+ launches Round 2 of Rural England Prosperity Fund support scheme ✨ Round 2 of the Rural England Prosperity Fund support scheme has been announced by North Devon+, the region's economic delivery partner for both North Devon and Torridge District Councils. ✨ Grants ranging from £2,000 to £35,000 to support rural jobs and improve local facilities are available until 30 Nov 2024 (or until all funds are allocated, so don't delay). ✨ All applicants must to be able to provide match funding of 10-20%, and can apply for funding for: • Net zero infrastructure for rural businesses e.g. energy saving equipment, energy efficiency measures etc • Diversification of farm businesses outside of agriculture, where this involves converting farm buildings into other commercial uses • Growing the local social economy and supporting innovation • Developing and promoting the visitor economy ✨ More information on the programme including eligibility criteria, guidance, application details are available below. https://lnkd.in/eRBFQnVP

King Charles STOP! Why spend tax payers money on solar installations for the crown estate when you could partner with the Low Carbon Hub. We use money people in the local community have chosen to invest in our projects, and we pay it back annually with 5% interest! I expect you’re: ·       Frustrated with the price of your electricity bills ·       Anxious about price spikes ·       Striving to decarbonise your estate ·       Have the upfront capital BUT also have other pressing causes to address Speak with me and LCH will fully fund the design, installation and maintenance of your solar arrays. We will then sell the generated electricity, that you use, to you at a price that’s much better than your supplier. Our clients use us because: ·       We’re experts in Solar PV with over 55 installations across Oxfordshire and beyond ·       As a Community Benefit Society, we measure ourselves by our impact. The first thing we will do is building assessments to analyse, optimise and reduce your electricity consumption and emissions. ·       Any surplus income we generate goes into community benefit. We recently surpassed £1m in community benefit donations. See our website for all the fantastic community projects that combat climate change. ·       We’re not afraid to think outside of the box with solar farms, carports, batteries and Smart Community Energy Schemes.  ·       Winner of the Environmental Social Enterprise category at the Social Enterprise Awards 2022, for our work towards an energy system based on community energy supply, and reducing energy demand. King Charles please do get in touch. If your business has large energy demands and a large rooftop then do get in contact. #crownestate #kingcharles #paidbackwithinterest #5% #itmakessense

Australia's massive city- country disconnect.. Regional Australian roads have become a “dangerous disgrace”, according to a new report that warns they will get worse due to paltry funding that favours cities and forces poorer regional councils to waste repair money erecting signs in tribute to government grants. In a new report on the state of local roads, the Grattan Institute has found that roads across the country have become riddled with potholes and other hazards because inadequate federal and state government funding has left councils under resourced and without sufficient knowledge or data to maintain the roads they’re responsible for. Councils need an additional $1bn next year – an extra 25% of what they currently spend – just to keep already crumbling surfaces in their current condition and prevent further deterioration, the Grattan report estimated. The report calls on the federal government to inject the extra $1bn via $600m in financial assistance grants and $400m in “roads to recovery” funds, and for the programs to be indexed annually to keep up with inflation and population growth. “You don’t need to drive too far on a rural road in Australia to encounter a pothole, soft edge, or other hazard. Our local roads, especially in the bush, are a dangerous disgrace,” the Grattan report said.

From early August, Wellingtonians will be receiving their first rates notice for the new financial year. We’ve seen your questions on social media and have created this article to answer them. Rates help us deliver over 400 day-to-day services! These include essential services like drinking water, recycling, roading, social housing, and safety. Plus, they support things that make our city vibrant and enjoyable, such as parks, recreation centres, pools, libraries, and community centres. We mentioned that average rates increases will be around 16.9%, with an additional sludge levy of about 1.6%. But why might your rates seem higher? That’s because your total bill includes rates for both Wellington City Council and Greater Wellington Regional Council, as well as the sludge levy. Check out the story below for answers to: 💧 What do rates pay for? 🏭 What is the additional sludge levy? 🧾 How are rates set? 🔍How do I find out what my rates will be this year? 📈 My rates have a higher percentage increase. Why? 📊 This year there is a rating valuation – what is that? 💸 How do revaluations affect rates? 🤝 What help is there for people who are experiencing financial hardship? #OurWellington #TōTātouPōneke

On April 4, the EPA announced 8 recipients of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, one of the most significant clean energy programs in the Inflation Reduction Act. Five of those awardees are on the receiving end of Clean Communities Investment Accelerator (CCIA) funding, which specifically focuses on bringing #CleanEnergy to low-income communities that have been previously boxed out of the market due to high upfront costs. Alexander Dane and I just published a new article on WRI's Insights blog explaining all about the CCIA: Why is it significant? How much money has been awarded, and to whom? What kinds of projects will the money go to? And what additional legwork must be done to ensure the program’s success? Check out the article here: https://lnkd.in/exSEv5aU

While the newly announced Permanent Public Transit fund will significantly help upgrading or expanding transit 'hardware', it is indeed not helping with the other big(er) issue: fund everything needed to operate the hardware. Leadership and alignment at all political levels across the country is needed to quickly come up with solutions to keep existing transit running, and find strategies that will be scalable with the growth the new funding will bring. While the shiny things are necessary, using them to operate reliable, frequent, clean, pleasant (etc.) service is the only way to transfer and keep more trips on sustainable modes (and reduce motorization). But let's see this new funding as a possible 'accelerator' to advance the operating funding discussions.

Thursday, November 2, 2023 / DAILY TALKING POINTS - President Biden Highlights Investments in Rural America: Yesterday, President Biden kicked off the administration’s Investing in Rural America Event Series to highlight the Biden-Harris administration's commitment to delivering for rural America. The president announced over $5 billion in new investments in rural America from his Bidenomics agenda – including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. These investments include: $1.7 billion to support the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices, including a historic investment in conservation, $1.1 billion to shore up and modernize rural infrastructure, $2 billion to fund economic development projects that will help create jobs and increase access to quality health care, affordable housing, and clean water and energy, $274 million to expand access to rural high-speed internet, and $145 million to expand access to renewable energy and lower energy costs. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and other 2024 MAGA Republicans have years-long records of gutting support for farmers and ranchers and leaving rural American communities behind. Rural communities repeatedly suffered under Donald Trump’s extreme MAGA agenda that sought to gut support for farmers and ranchers who struggled through a multiyear slump in the U.S. farm economy under his watch, Ron DeSantis has opposed crucial agricultural and economic aid to rural communities throughout his political career, including refusing to push for Medicaid expansion in Florida and axing money from a budget that would have gone to farmers as part of a rural conservation program, Nikki Haley consistently rejected support for rural South Carolinians, including vetoing crucial disaster relief for farmers affected by severe flooding, And Tim Scott has a long history of opposing aid for rural farmers, families, and communities. State of the 2024 GOP Field As the 2024 Republicans continue campaigning throughout the country, here is a reminder that whoever the nominee is, they are guaranteed to be too extreme and out of touch for American families. These hopefuls are all embracing extreme positions in order to win over the MAGA base. Three key toplines: The GOP field continues to threaten health care for millions and put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, Every GOP contender has an extreme anti-choice record and support for a federal ban has become a litmus test in their primary, GOP contenders have embraced some of the most dangerous elements of their party, such as banning books, denying free and fair elections, and choosing the NRA over public safety. Extreme Republicans Continue to Push MAGAnomics Agenda MAGA Republicans’ economic trickle-down plan has failed Americans: it created new incentives to ship jobs overseas, hurt main-street businesses, and blew up the deficit.

The online checker for the Improving Farm Productivity Grant closes this week! There is still plenty of time to check if your farm and your project is eligible for grant funding, and you can find out more information using the link below: https://loom.ly/krAbw-U If you would like assistance or more information on the grant, please contact our team on 01725 511422 or info@hydor.co.uk. #FarmingGrant #ImprovingFarmProductivityGrant #GovernmentGrant

Hands up if you're a bit tired 😫 of reading these sorts of headlines over the past two years...! If you work in the #watersector there's a high chance you've had to embrace financial acumen 💰 perhaps more than what you would've liked just to do your job! I for one have realised that non-public finance can be a short-term enabler 🔑 as rates and development alone will not create the step change 📈 we need. Our Councils need as much help as they can to lift drinking water, stormwater and wastewater #infrastructure delivery. 💥 Alas! 💥 We are discussing this very topic at the upcoming Water New Zealand #stormwater conference 🌧 at Wellington in May. So join me as I chair 🎤 an interesting PANEL DISCUSSION: "Can we enable investment through sustainable finance?" We will bring together experts from the investment & finance side 💲, and the infrastructure delivery side 🚧 including Helmut Modlik, Tonia Haskell, Sam Stubbs, David Hall (and others TBC) to discuss the challenges, but more importantly innovative finance instruments to enable action. We will talk #investing, non-public finance, #impactfinance, #debt, public-private partnerships, #greenbonds #sustainablefinance and infrastruture delivery to benefit our #communities 🏠. Is #Aotearoa #NewZealand courageous to be financially innovative? I think so. See you there! (with probabaly less emojis). Stormwater Professionals Group, Stormwater Investment Group, George Hawkins, Gillian Blythe, Nick Leggett, Dean Spicer, CFA, ANZ, Caroline Poujol, Ross Pennington, León Willis, Tonkin + Taylor, Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ), Auckland Council, Justine Sefton, Sam Inglis, Rhys Clark, Wellington Water

Good Day or Evening, please help me fund the Livingstone Range School Division food program so that #BigCoal doesn't need to. Northback Holdings is looking to regain approval for metallurgical coal mining in an area deemed by the courts to be under a MORATORIUM as the risk to the public is too great. That risk is much greater today, than it was three years ago when ruled, as the project scope entails the pollution of billions of liters of fresh water when rivers, like the neighbouring Crowsness, run dry for the first time in our recorded history. "The folks down here in Southern Alberta are mad about this but there's a huge cognitive dissonance. To be mad at this means being at odds with the UCP. That means they just might agree with the opposition or worse yet, challenge the group think of the far right. There is a small faction of the electorate in the Crowsnest Pass whose allegiance to mining is still strong. They very much had the ear of our previous MLA and it looks like our present one is similarly beholden. Our LRSD main office is in Ft. Macleod, a hotbed of right-wing, pro convoy, Alberta Prosperity Project, TBA group think. I don't suggest that our trustees are active supporters of that ideology but they are marinating in it. It's a tale generations old here about how our rural school division has been made to do more with less. The optics of taking $75K from a foreign polluter is not good. Slim chance though of going to the UCP asking for that support. Support that should have already been there. So here we are. We've given the devil our soul. And he'll hold it up at every meeting, every hearing, every press release, every chance to prove they're benevolent corporate citizens with our children's welfare at heart. There will be more. Rec facilities, parks, clinics, you name it. All things our tax dollars should already supply. Wait, they are. But they're just being laundered through those corporate machines who are leveraging those tax credits, royalty holidays, and subsidies. We're being fooled. And we will pay. Twice. We paid those taxes. We assumed there were regulators who would safeguard our environment. Now we will pay again in the loss of our water, our ag industry, and our reputation as an environmentally conscious economy to invest in. Yes we will pay. And we will continue to do so as long as we're conscripts of this populist government cult of the far right wing. Lougheed said we have to have our hand on the throttle and he was criticised for being anti-development. If we don't use the brakes now, the runaway will be a monumental wreck. You think Northback cares? They'll be just fine when they pack up and leave us with the smoldering ruins. And Ft. Macleod will blow away when the river is a sludgy trickle." -Morgan Wilson, SOAB https://lnkd.in/g4eT7__f #ProtectOurHeadwaters #abpoli #cdnpoli #worldpoli #gofundme