The City of San José continues to provide and promote efforts that help local companies reinvigorate their business, save money and support community-wide conservation efforts, including those located in low-income community census tracts. Below are opportunities available to local commercial building owners and business owners of all sizes.

PG&E’s Market Access Program Incentive

The PG&E Market Access Program (MAP) offers up to $60 Million in incentives for commercial building energy retrofits that reduce peak demand and offer benefits to grid reliability.

Unlike other incentive programs, MAP offers aggressive incentives based on the Total System Benefit of the project and the useful life of the measure. The program applies to a broad profile of commercial buildings including local government facilities, schools, and select multi-unit residential and mixed-use building upgrades.

Projects can include a wide array of efficiency measures, calculated on the total benefit of the project, meaning it measures savings and pays incentives based on actualized grid impacts from projects. The Program Implementers, professionals verifying first-year savings from the project, use NMEC (Normalized Metered Energy Consumption) data and savings models to calculate the incentive. The incentive is then paid to the Aggregator, anyone delivering the project (service provider, installer, consultant, building owner, etc.).

PG&E's pool of $60M in incentives is available through August 2023 and targets projects with long-term impact that can be installed by August 2023, including: 

• Building automation system (BAS) Upgrade
• Wireless HVAC Controls
• Demand Control Ventilation
• Steam Trap Replacement 
• Chiller Upgrade
• Lighting Retrofits

For more information about the program, please contact ProspectSV at marketaccess@prospectsv.org or visit their program page.

Funding Available for Business Owners to Add Electric Vehicle Chargers

There are currently several opportunities to acquire funding to significantly reduce the cost of adding electric vehicle (EV) chargers to your business or place of employment for your fleet, employees, or customers.

• The Golden State Priority Project (aka CALeVIP 2.0) launched this past January provides rebates for purchasing and installing eligible direct current fast chargers (DCFC), with a total of $30 million in available incentive funds. Funding is only available for sites located in disadvantaged community (DAC) or low-income community (LIC) census tracts. This is not a first-come, first-served program, and applicants will need to submit some or all of the following: site plans; designs; proof of start of permitting process and/or PG&E service planning process. Learn more about CALeVIP 2.0.
  
  
• The Air District’s Charge! 2023 program provides grant funding - up to $35,000 per port for DCFC - to offset a portion of the cost to purchase and install new publicly accessible chargers for light-duty EVs at workplaces, destinations, transit parking locations, along transportation corridors, and at multi-family housing facilities. Charge! 2023 is now open for applications with a total of $5 million in grant funding available. Apply by March 3, 2023. 
  
  
• The 2023 Inflation Reduction Act will soon provide a new tax credit for businesses that install EV chargers that meet certain labor and construction requirements. Businesses will benefit from a tax incentive of up to 30% of the total cost of equipment and installation. Previously, the credit was limited to $30,000, but projects completed after 2022 will be eligible for a tax credit of up to $100,000 per EV charger. Details will be shared soon!