State officials are still digging out from the avalanche of comments triggered by Snyder’s seven public forums about Michigan’s energy future, which wrapped up three weeks ago.
Articles by Jim Dulzo
Mandates Drive Efficiency Industry
As community leaders in towns like Holland, Ann Arbor, and Traverse City ponder different ways to accelerate efficiency investments by homeowners and businesses, energy services companies-or ESCOs-are emerging as a most effective way to help not only large public buildings save energy, but also private firms with smaller buildings.
In Search of Energy Efficiency Financing–For Everyone
Major home energy efficiency upgrades could become a common sight in Traverse City, once leaders find a very inexpensive, long-term way to finance them.
Efficiency Work Keeps Contractors Busy
For close to two years, more than a dozen home energy assessors, contractors, and workers from three local companies have made the city-sponsored pilot home-efficiency program tick. They’ve made more than 500 Traverse City homes-a remarkable 20 percent of the town’s owner-occupied residences-more comfortable and affordable. The success stories-and the jobs and savings they produce-could multiply dramatically if some Traverse City civic, business, and elected leaders find a way to expand TCSaves into a permanent, communitywide program.
TCSaves homeowners cheer cozier homes, lower heating bills
The two-year TCSaves program was-and is-good news for Traverse City: It kept local contractors and building supply wholesalers busy. Now it’s saving energy dollars for homeowners and keeping some of those dollars in town, rather than sending them to distant coalfields. Lessons learned from TCSaves will help the community as it moves forward with a long-term energy efficiency project for Traverse City.
Public-Private Partnerships Power Business Efficiency
You’d never know it driving by, but tucked into a nondescript warehouse district just south of town is an office and production space so airy and dazzling that it would turn heads in the hippest urban enclaves. The comfortable digs and lighting at Britten, Inc., are the result of several recent, major energy efficiency projects. They are making Britten’s workers happy, but the firm’s accountants are smiling, too.