HISTORY OF RECHARGE COLORADO

Recharge Colorado was developed in 2010 using funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  The Recharge Colorado website was designed to provide a centralized portal for Coloradans to find accurate information about energy efficiency and renewable energy measures, including information about financial incentives available for resource efficiency investments in the user’s geographic location.  The Recharge Colorado platform included an incentive search tool encompassing all incentives available statewide, regardless of the provider.  Through an extensive marketing campaign, the Recharge Colorado web portal became synonymous with rebates and drew significant consumer and commercial web traffic as a valuable resource to multiple stakeholder groups leveraging over $90 million in consumer spending:

         • “Recharge Colorado allows us to offer additional rebates other than the ones we are able to do
         in-house.” – Partner

         • “Recharge Colorado is partnering with us on energy rebates and having one location to send
         citizens for the entire rebate/energy savings info picture has been invaluable.”  - Partner

Recharge Colorado has averaged 34,000 visitors per month with more than 33,000 Energy Action Planner accounts and 45,000 rebates issues since April 2010.  Funding is not available to continue operating the Recharge Colorado platform as a governmental program beyond February 2012.  By spinning Recharge Colorado into an independent nonprofit, not reliant on government funding for continued operation, the investments made in Recharge Colorado’s platform infrastructure and in raising awareness of Recharge Colorado as the one-stop shop for Coloradans to find the information, incentives, and contractors required to complete resource efficiency projects can be leveraged to continue advancing the resource efficiency marketplace. Numerous ARRA funded programs nationwide will be facing similar funding constraints in the near future that will force the programs to either shut down or to find alternative means of revenue generation.