Tired of smelling like gas after using your landscaping equipment? That smell is from volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other air pollutants, that come from gas-powered landscaping equipment. These emissions impact employee health and the air quality in the populated communities the equipment serves. Using electric-powered equipment has many benefits including:

• No smell – Safer for employee health and more pleasant to work with
• Lighter -- Easy to use, haul up, and carry across distances and multiple locations
• Powerful -- Equal performance to gas in most applications
• Saves money -- No more buying gas. Save lost productivity from less maintenance and time spent in the shop as well down time from flooding.
• Safer for employees -- Reduces respiratory health impacts, lessens hearing loss, eases cord and lifting-related injuries, and reduces cuts and burns
• Battery life - Often a short charge time and battery lasts for hours

Up to $300,000 in grant funding available to switch from your old, 2-cycle gasoline to electric-powered landscaping equipment.

The maximum grant amount is $24,000. There are 50% grant funds to replace and scrap your equipment, and 30% grant funds for complementary purchases, so you can still keep your current equipment. Example equipment: pole saws, string or hedge trimmers, leaf and backpack blowers, lawn mowers, and chain saws.

Eligible applicants include all Minnesota-based businesses under 500 employees, governmental agencies, educational institutions, non-profits, or trade groups/associations. Special consideration given for targeted applicants in environmental justice and highly urbanized areas.

The easy, 2-page application has a calculator to help you figure out emissions -- all you need to know is the horsepower, hours used annually, and estimated remaining life left on your gas engine. The calculator does the rest!

Apply now! Deadline: December 5, 2018.

Projects of all sizes encouraged to apply! Find grant materials on the MPCA grants to improve air webpage. For general questions, contact kari.cantarero@state.mn.us or 651-757-2875.

Over $15,000 has already been awarded to organizations switching to battery-powered landscaping equipment. These purchases reduced VOCs by 11.3 tons, NOx by 0.04 tons, and PM by 0.33 tons per year.

The estimated 20 million small engines sold each year in the U.S. are the largest single contributor to non-road emissions. The average gasoline push mower creates nearly 15 pounds of air pollution an hour – the same amount of pollution as driving your car for 200 miles. Landscaping equipment emissions are not regulated and a large contributor to bad air quality, which is why the MPCA is relying on voluntary efforts to reduce these emissions in populated areas.