Low-income Kingston residents to receive discounted energy via solar power

Jasmine Graham was quoted in the Daily Freeman.

KINGSTON, N.Y. — City residents living in low-income census tracts will be eligible to receive rebates on 15% of the cost of their energy bill beginning next year, Mayor Steve Noble announced at a press conference outside the Andy Murphy Neighborhood Center on Wednesday.

Noble said that some 6,000 people were eligible for the rebates and the next three months would be spent raising awareness with information sessions and mailer campaigns to get people to sign up. Five hundred spots are available initially, he added.

“Our goal is to ensure that every resident has access to affordable, sustainable energy,” Noble said.

The city’s upcoming community solar energy program will use power sourced from a 3,750-kilowatt New Windsor solar farm to offset the Central Hudson bills of ratepayers in Kingston, in partnership with non-profit Mid-Hudson Energy Transition and solar provider PowerMarket.

Jasmine Graham, executive director of Mid-Hudson Energy Transition, said they were able to negotiate up to a 15% rebate instead of a standard 10%. She said the purpose of the program was”empowering our neighbors to support clean energy and ease the burden of high-energy costs, as we all know too well.”
​
She added that the hope was Kingston would eventually run entirely on renewable energy.