Center for Neighborhood Technology

Eco-Friendly Landlords Make ‘Going Green’ More Than a Habit

You’ve gotten rid of your car, shop the local farmer’s market with your cloth bag, and purchased green tags to offset your vacation. And still not quite satisfied you are doing all you can to reduce your carbon footprint. Adapting your way of life is important so you want to feel like you’ve made strides that impact both the environment and your wallet.

You literally do not need to leave home to make the biggest impact because your home is one of the best possible sources to green in reducing your greenhouse gas emissions output. Residential buildings use enormous amounts of energy that come from carbon-emitting sources. And since Illinois only gets about 3% of its energy from non-polluting sources, in addition to demanding clean energy sources, we should also take steps to reduce our overall demand, no matter what the source.

So you buy CFL lightbulbs, Energy Star appliances, and planted native plants in your garden for shade. Now what? How about painting your roof a light, reflective color so your building reflects heat in the summer, lowering your air conditioning bill? Or adding insulation to help seal the walls and reduce the amount it takes to heat and cool indoors? Though these may not be the most “sexy”, cutting-edge green building practices, they are the hard-hitting steps to reducing your building’s energy consumption. Focusing on the building ’seal’ will save you money by reducing your energy consumption, while also reducing your dependence on polluting energy sources.

You can do all these initiatives on your own, or you can move to a building that does it already! The recent issue of Time Out Chicago featured eco-minded landlords and real estate properties. Check out the profile of CNT CEO, Kathy Tholin, and what she is doing to keep her building (and rent) sustainable.

Photo courtesy of Time Out Chicago: CNT CEO Kathy Tholin sitting atop her building’s solar panels

Leaders Unite to Preserve the Chicago Region’s Affordable Rental Housing

Affordable housing, especially in the Chicago region, is increasingly difficult to acquire and is a threat to the economic future of the region. Today, area leaders in government, non-profit and the business sectors unveiled a program to reverse these dramatic losses in the affordable rental housing stock. Created in 2005, The Preservation Compact is a project of the Urban Land Institute and is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The program is the nation’s most comprehensive approach to a problem that challenges communities everywhere—turning around the significant loss of rental housing that is affordable to moderate and low wage workers. A series of initiatives to save at least 75,000 existing homes in Cook County by the year 2020 is planned.

At the center of the program is a new Preservation Fund, an umbrella for a suite of financial products. The fund will provide acquisition and bridge financing to nonprofit and for-profit developers, making it possible for them to obtain as much as a half a million dollars to support the long-term preservation of rental housing in Cook County.

Equally important are a series of partnerships between local organizations, each charged with responsibility for solving a different aspect of the affordable rental housing problem.

CNT is partnering with other organizations to work in the area of reducing operating costs in multifamily rental properties. The organizations have created Cook County Energy Savers, a one-stop energy efficiency program that will provide technical assistance and loans for energy-efficiency improvements.

More information on the Cook County Energy Savers program and CNT’s participation here. You can also read more about the strategy to preserve affordable housing in Cook County at the Urban Land Institute’s site here.

CNT’s Energy Cooperative in The New York Times

Monday’s front page of The New York Times (01/08/07) covered CNT’s Community Energy Cooperative and its role in today’s energy market. Read here about the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan and how consumers are paying for their electricity by the hour.

It’s really a natural extension in our information-driven life right now, so it makes sense that consumers should have access to their electricity prices. Instead of paying per month from an averaged-out sum of each day’s peaks and valleys, consumers have the right to know and make decisions based on real-time prices by the hour.

And now that consumers are becoming aware of this option, they are demanding it and as the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan shows, their decisions are saving them money.

This isn’t a new idea either, as The New York Times article points out. Cell phone customers wait to make phone calls when they are free on nights and weekends. Personal accountability really plays out in these situations: if you give people the right tools and information, they will make decisions to better their lives. In the real-time pricing situation, this means saving consumers money, as well as bettering the lives of others by relieving stress on the grid as a whole and, in turn, reducing air pollution.

This is an excitingly progressive reform in the energy market and will be interesting to follow in the next few months.

Read more about this topic below:

ABC 7 Chicago
“Pilot Program Gives Consumers More Control Over Electric Bill”

Fox News Chicago
“ComEd Customers Save 10%+”

Chicago Sun Times
“New Way to Cut Electric Bills Kicks in Today”

CNBC video
“Taking Control of Your Electric Bill”

The Innovative Mind behind Energy-Smart Pricing

At the Chicago Sun-Times Innovations Awards ceremony in October, where the Community Energy Cooperative’s Energy-Smart Pricing Plan was recognized for saving consumers money while reducing stress on the electricity grid, to the delight of everyone from the Coop, Maurie Gamze was in attendance.

CNT’s CEO, Kathy Tholin, in receiving the Innovations Award, recognized Maurie from the podium as the real innovator behind the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan.

Maurie Gamze is a visionary engineer, who served on the Board at CNT and recently retired from a staff position at the Community Energy Cooperative. While working with the Cooperative, Gamze applied his decades of energy management experience to develop the framework of the ground-breaking electricity pricing program.

Today the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan has demonstrated that hourly pricing can save customers money, encourage energy efficiency, and reduce strain on the electricity infrastructure during hours when demand is highest. We were happy that Mr. Gamze was in attendance to take part in the honor of this innovation.

Customers who are interested in receiving more information about how they can enroll in the new, expanded program can fill out an interest form at www.energycooperative.org.

Energy Smart-Pricing Plan Wins Chicago Innovation Award

We just got word that the Community Energy Cooperative’s Energy Smart-Pricing Plan is a recipient of a 2006 Chicago Innovation Award. The awards were given to ten groups that over the last year have displayed outstanding innovation in products and services that not only inspire and educate others, but solve unmet consumer needs. The ESPP was selected amongst over 225 applicants.

For the past three years, the Energy Smart-Pricing Plan has helped save consumers money on their energy bills, reduce their power, and cut stress on the system as a whole. The voluntary pilot program has also paved way for a new law signed by Governor Blagojevich which in 2007 will give consumers the option of buying their electricity at hourly, market-based rates.

The Energy Smart-Pricing Plan is also proving to be a very timely program, now that we are confronted with ComEd’s energy rates in Illinois that are expected to go up by 22% next year. Through demonstration, ESPP has proven how giving consumers a choice about their energy rates can save them money while encouraging energy efficiency.

To read the article in the Sun-Times about the Energy Smart-Pricing Plan receiving a 2006 Chicago Innovation Award, go here.

Energy-Smart Pricing Plan Attracts Attention

Changes are in the works for Illinois electricity markets, as deregulation will produce higher rates in 2007. CNT’s Community Energy Cooperative is promoting new options that will benefit local residents, and the Cooperative’s Energy-Smart Pricing Plan is attracting attention.

An auction now in progress will set the price that households will pay for electricity starting in January 2007. But consumers will have another rate option next year as well—people will also be able to choose an electricity rate that uses hourly prices that vary based on wholesale market prices.

Households participating in the Cooperative’s pilot Energy-Smart Pricing Plan (ESPP) have been trying out this type of hourly rate. Since the program launched in 2003, it has been successful in helping people to save money, improve energy efficiency, and take greater control over energy expenses. And local media outlets are taking note.

On September 7th, the Chicago Sun Times featured a story about the Energy-Smart Pricing Plan on the cover of the business section. The article noted that ESPP participants can save money because they have access to cheap power most hours of most days. When market prices rise, the Cooperative notifies participants so that they can manage their electricity use and keep expenses in check. “For instance, during a heat wave, when afternoon prices inevitably spike, a customer might delay running the dryer,” wrote Reporter Mary Wisniewski

This week, ESPP also attracted the attention of the Chicago Journal. A September 7th article about the program quoted ESPP participant Jim Derico of the South Loop, who has saved around $100 on his electricity bills since enrolling in ESPP. “I think what’s really nice about [the program] is it educates you about how it works—how you’re charged for energy as a commodity,” Derico said.

Read the Sun Times article and the Chicago Journal article for more information.