‘Energize Green Bay’ program aims to help homes, businesses learn about clean energy incentives

The city of Green Bay launched an outreach effort in December aimed at helping residents and local businesses save money on clean energy or energy efficiency upgrades.

The “Energize Green Bay” campaign is a mix of in-person and online outreach that includes community events, meetings with neighborhood associations and posts on social media. The program is funded by a federal grant through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“What we’re trying to do is just make sure that people are aware of all of the excellent state and federal incentives that are available to help them upgrade their homes and make them ready for clean energy,” said Alex Galt, the city’s clean energy connector.

The campaign also includes the launch of a new website. It allows users to search for information on rebates, tax credits and other incentives based on their specific circumstance, like whether they’re a home or business owner, and the clean energy or energy efficiency upgrade they’re interested in. 

“Rather than presenting the information in just one giant pile, we’ve elected to create pathways to help people visualize themselves going through a process,” Galt said. “But then we also have a table of all of the incentives for the people who just want to see everything that’s available.”

The city launched the new initiative about a year after releasing a clean energy plan with incremental goals aimed at helping the city become carbon neutral by 2050. The Green Bay City Council set that goal in 2021.

“The question then becomes, ‘How can we help make that happen?’” Galt said. “And a lot of these federal programs … and all of the tax credits are much more powerful tools than anything that we can set up here as a city.”

Beyond outreach, the city purchased two electric vehicles for the police department, plans to purchase an electric bus in 2025 and has money budgeted to put solar panels on public works garages next year, according to the city.

Galt said the city is also working to streamline the permitting and inspections process for installing solar on homes and businesses.

“We want to make sure that there are as few barriers as possible to make it as easy as possible,” he said.

The Energize Green Bay initiative follows similar efforts in the city of Milwaukee and Dane County, both of which also adopted goals of being carbon neutral by 2050. 

Allison Carlson is the executive director of the Wisconsin Local Government Climate Coalition, which has members from 23 communities across the state. She said local governments are “well positioned” to provide information to their residents about clean energy incentives.

“Promoting information on their social media, having different handouts, going to different community outreach events and just providing that information to the public, I think, is a great role for local governments to have,” she said.

She also said setting climate goals at the local level also helps “build momentum” around the clean energy transition. 

“These things kind of build from the ground up, so having local goals in place can really drive momentum in the community,” she said.