STATEMENT: Dallas creates $750,000 rebate program for electric lawn equipment

DALLAS — The Dallas city council will vote Wednesday on a final budget for FY 2023-2024, which includes a new line item establishing a $750,000 rebate program to help residents purchase electric lawn equipment. 

In response, Environment Texas Executive Director Luke Metzger released the following statement:  

“Gasoline-powered lawn and garden equipment — lawnmowers, leaf-blowers and the like — is loud and spews a lot of pollution. These machines often use inefficient two-stroke engines. Operating a commercial, gasoline-powered leaf blower for one hour produces the same amount of ozone-forming emissions as driving more than 1,000 miles in a car. These small engines are responsible for a significant share of air pollution in Dallas. 

“Fortunately, gasoline-powered lawn equipment is no longer necessary to get work done quickly, without an abundance of  manual labor. A new generation of electric-powered lawn and garden equipment now on the market can do everything that had once been done by gas-powered equipment. Quieter, cleaner and cheaper to operate, electric lawn equipment is becoming increasingly common among both homeowners and commercial landscapers. 

“The Dallas rebate program, the first of its kind in Texas, will help get more of this clean and quiet equipment into the hands of Dallas residents, reducing pollution and noise in neighborhoods. In addition to this incentive program for residents, the city of Dallas is considering a plan to convert all of its lawn equipment — used in city parks, on streets and in other facilities — to electric by 2026, including 20% of equipment by the end of this year. As of March 2023, just 4% of city owned lawn equipment was electric.”