Chicago Magazine’s Deal Estate blog covered Energy Impact Illinois and their MyHomeEQ tool today.
Planning an energy-saving retrofit of an existing home is vastly simpler thanks to a new program that pulls together data on installation costs, savings on utility bills, potential tax breaks, and expert contractors…The goal over the next 20 months is to have 6,000 Chicago- and Rockford-area homeowners make improvements that cut their energy use by 15 percent or more, says Randy Blankenhorn, executive director of the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, a key partner in Energy Impact Illinois.
Type in a home’s address at MyHomeEQ, and up pops a profile of its annual energy spending and a menu of home improvements that would cut its energy use; there’s also information about the cost of those improvements and how much they would cut energy bills annually…Perhaps the most important part of the site is the financing page, where there are details on available rebates, incentives, and loans. This expedites balancing the upfront costs of energy-saving upgrades against long-term financial savings.
The author, Dennis Rodkin, plugged into MyHomeEQ to check on his own home. And he recapped what he learned during WBEZ’s 848 show this morning. Worth a listen!
