Metro Lighting — with a large Brentwood location — has saved Missouri residents and businesses more than 20,000,000 kWh annually through the ActOnEnergy program, Nick Frisella, the company’s energy efficiency program manager and director of sustainability (also a Maplewood resident and Maplewood Sustainability Commissioner) says in a blog on energy conservation.

He says that’s equivalent to powering approximately 1,900 Missouri homes per year — saving Metro Lighting customers more than 1.2 million dollars a year.

But that’s now in danger, Frisella says.

The Missouri Public Service Commission unanimously rejected Ameren’s energy-efficiency program extending for another three years a program that has put more than $100 million toward energy efficiency and saved some 1 million megawatt hours of power.

“This is the ActOnEnergy program for both residential and business incentives for energy efficient upgrades. The decision directly affects Metro Lighting and also EFS Energy. It also affects ALL Missouri residents and businesses,” Frisella said in an email. “We are hopeful Ameren Missouri and the Missouri Public Service Commission can reach an agreement quickly!”

Metro Lighting performed about 64 LED lighting retrofits for commercial customers last quarter, Frisella told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and without the incentive they maybe would have done 10.

Losing the Ameren incentives will make LED systems a “tough sale” because of the extra time it will take customers to recover their investment, Frisella told the Post-Dispatch. The rebates have helped Metro Lighting build a strong efficiency business over the last few years, he said.

Read the full post in the Post-Dispatch.