St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Ameren to restart efficiency program
Months after the popular incentives ended, Ameren Missouri will again offer rebates to help customers upgrade power-hungry appliances and buildings.
State utility regulators approved the new suite of programs Wednesday, more than three months after unanimously rejecting an Ameren-backed proposal that led to the lapse of the three-year-old utility-sponsored efficiency program.
Ameren hopes to reinstate the programs by this spring, which will include cheaper LED lights at area retailers and rebates for smart thermostats, new air conditioners and other efficient home appliances. Ameren also plans to provide energy use reports to customers that will compare their usage to their neighbors, a tactic that has been found to influence consumer energy use.
A suite of business incentives will also return to help subsidize commercial building efficiency measures. One new measure will give multi-tenant building owners access to the whole structure’s energy usage so they can better target building upgrades.
In addition, Ameren plans to expand apartment retrofits for low-income renters, a group that sees big benefits from lower utility bills but struggles to afford the upfront cost of efficiency measures.
The Missouri Public Service Commission said the new program, endorsed by opponents of Ameren’s prior plan, included the auditing and revenue adjustments necessary to make sure customers weren’t overpaying for it.
Commissioners and the Office of Public Counsel, which represents ratepayers in front of the PSC, said they believed Ameren overcharged customers during the first three-year phase of the program. They sought protections to adjust utility collections based on audits of energy savings and costs.
The first phase “was probably too rich, candidly, and too lopsided in favor of the utility,” Public Counsel Dustin Allison told the Post-Dispatch. “So we were able to, I think, rein that in and make sure we are in fact doing energy efficiency efforts … as cost effectively as possible for the ratepayers.”
Commissioners also said it would benefit all Ameren customers, even those who don’t use the rebates to buy new air conditioners and other appliances. Experts say energy efficiency is cheaper than building new power plants, and Ameren said the new campaign would help offset the need to build a new 600 megawatt combined cycle natural gas plant in the early 2020s.
