Funding Incentive Programs

For years, water agencies were not sure whether they could access their capital dollars for consumer incentive programs. This meant that funding for consumer rebates and other financial incentives were constrained by the competing needs of utility operating budgets. Click here to see the results of WaterNow’s 2019 survey of local elected officials and water managers, asking: Is the ability to pay for or finance consumer rebate programs a limiting factor in your community? To date, this constraint has kept these programs at only a small fraction of overall budgets.

But as a result of a 2-year WaterNow campaign, in May 2018 the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) issued new guidance making it clear that municipal bond proceeds can be used to fund localized water infrastructure.

WaterNow's Go Green primer explores why the new GASB guidance is a game changer, and how to redeploy your capital dollars to distributed solutions.  Looking for a quick explanation of this policy change? Watch this short explanatory video with Ed Harrington on what GASB 62 is and how it works. 

In sum, utilities can either fund consumer incentive programs out of their operating or capital budgets, and utility rates and fees play an important role in generating the revenue required to pay for these program.