About LEAP

Get an inside look at LEAP with our 2011 Annual Report!

What is LEAP?

The Local Energy Alliance Program is a community-based 501c3 nonprofit serving Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson counties, the City of Charlottesville, and soon the northern Virginia area.

Leveraging and bundling existing incentives from all levels of government and local utilities, LEAP provides local residents and property owners with a one-stop shop of who to call, what to do, and how to pay for it when it comes to creating a healthier, more comfortable and affordable home or building. As the energy efficiency program sponsor for the community, we seek to streamline the home energy assessment-to-retrofit process in order to keep costs down for everyone.

Established in the fall of 2009 with the formation of our Governance Board, our mission is to lead the effort in our local community to conserve energy in buildings to promote cost savings, job creation, sustainability, local economic development, and environmental stewardship. The initial grant funding for our organization came from a $500,000 competitive grant awarded to the City of Charlottesville and County of Albemarle from the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA).

We are also proud to be a subgrantee to SEEA in the Department of Energy's BetterBuildings Neighborhood program. The funding we received under this program has allowed us to provide cash rebates to customers in residential and commercial building sectors, as well as loan buy downs in conjunction with our financing partner the UVA Community Credit Union. Watch the video below for more details about this innovative program and LEAP's participation in it.

Another funding source for LEAP has been our state energy office, who has won grants from the Department of Energy for residential and commercial programs. We are subrecipients on these grants, which will enable us to launch programs for both building sectors in northern Virginia in Q1 2012.

Learn more about LEAP and the Department of Energy's BetterBuildings program in this short video: