Monadnock Ledger-Transcript – Peterborough and Harrisville get $700,000 Department of Energy grant

As part of its pilot program with energy technology and financing company BlocPower, the Peterborough Renewable Energy Project (PREP) was hoping to help 10 to 15 building-owners replace their fossil-fuel furnaces with electric heat pumps.

Now that the towns of Peterborough and Harrisville have received a $700,000 U.S. Department of Energy grant for building energy efficiency and electrification, that project can be expanded as Peterborough works toward transitioning to 100 percent renewable sources of electricity by 2030 and for all other energy needs by 2050.

“It really helps kickstart the plan,” said Dori Drachman, who wrote the majority of the grant with fellow PREP co-chair Bob Haring-Smith and said she was originally…