I recently installed a charger in my garage to accommodate one of my rooming house boarders who drives an electric car. I figured she wouldn’t be the last person sharing my home who would own such a vehicle. Imagine my delight when I discovered that I would receive a $500 rebate for doing this — covering a significant portion of the cost!
Rebates usually give me pause because they seem to involve lots of forms and more effort than they’re worth. I’m here to report that the Lansing Board of Water & Light’s residential electric charger rebate was as painless as I’ve ever pursued.
BWL offers several hefty rebates to encourage electrification and solar-powered energy. I learned about the newest of these rebates at a presentation to the Community and Economic Development Network recently by Aileen Gow, a BWL energy analyst, and colleagues:
Those are only the newest BWL incentives. They build on these longstanding programs:
BWL offers several other incentives for residential customers and several offerings for commercial, industrial and nonprofit customers (www.lbwl.com/energysavers). For instance, BWL has invested generously in the Allen Neighborhood Center to serve as a demonstration site for solar and electrification projects. As part of this effort, BWL recently installed electric vehicle charging stations and solar carports in the back lot of Allen Place. In addition, the 21-unit Allen Place apartment building that opened in late 2021 is all electric. This initially presented challenges such as training our tenants to program heat pumps, which I expect to become more common as another way to meet clean energy goals.
Incentives, rebates, demonstration sites, charging stations, etc., result from the BWL prioritizing reducing greenhouse gas emissions and becoming carbon neutral by 2040. These ambitious and important goals will require significantly increasing wind and solar energy megawatts over the next couple of decades. If the BWL can engage enough large and small energy users, we can move toward these goals more reliably.
We are clearly in transition, locally and globally, and this complicated shift toward clean energy is taking longer than many would like. For instance, some local citizens want less reliance on natural gas, while the BWL tries to balance clean energy goals with affordability and reliability challenges.
I’m heartened by BWL’s efforts — as well as Consumers Energy, which also offers rebates and incentives — to continue creating opportunities for individuals to participate in the solution. I encourage you to check out the BWL options available to you to save money and support clean energy. It may not be the most impactful thing you can do to address climate change, but it is something.
(Joan Nelson is the retired founding executive director of the Allen Neighborhood Center. Her column appears monthly.)
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