Oak Park trustees approved new guidelines for the energy-efficiency grant program, upping the maximum dollar amount residents can receive to reduce home energy consumption.
Trustees were able to increase those grant dollars because last November they added $500,000 from the fund balance to the sustainability fund for fiscal year 2025. Trustee Susan Buchanan, who proposed adding additional dollars to this fund, said she’d like to use it for the energy-efficiency grant program that primarily helps low- and moderate-income households.
Interested homeowners should apply through the Neighborhood Services Department.
The funds will be distributed to recipients based on the Chicago metropolitan area median income, at about $80,000, in a three-tier system. Homeowners can apply for reimbursement or direct payment to a contractor.
Eligible uses for the money include home energy audits, weatherization measures, energy-efficient window replacement, energy-efficient lighting, electric heating or cooling upgrades, replacing gas water heaters with electric ones and other renewable energy systems.
With the additional $500,000 trustees allocated for this grant fund, along with $250,000 approved before that and $100,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funding for this program, Chief Sustainability Officer Lindsey Roland Nieratka estimates Oak Park can help a minimum of 182 households in 2025. That’s assuming every household uses the full amount granted.
Households below 80% of the area median income can receive a grant up to $10,000 that cannot exceed the total cost of the desired improvement. And grant recipients in this tier must use CDBG dollars first, while funding is available.
Those with an income between 80% and 120% of area median income can receive a grant up to $5,000 that cannot exceed half the cost of improvement.
And households with an income of 121% or more are eligible for grants up to $1,000 that cannot exceed half the cost of improvement.
Some board members, including Trustees Cory Wesley and Lucia Robinson, said they would be in favor of increasing the $1,000 limit to $2,500 for the third tier.
“[$1,000] is better than nothing but I think $2,500 is not a whole lot [more] and still does serve as a bigger incentive,” Wesley said.
But Nieratka said increasing that tier’s grant amount could lower the number of households served. And Trustee Brian Straw added that residents making 121% or more of the area median income are not viewing these grant dollars as funding a massive portion of the project, rather as an incentive to move forward with a project sooner than later while dollars are available. Trustee Chibuike Enyia agreed.
Trustees ultimately decided to keep the guidelines at $1,000 and review that grant size up later if residents aren’t participating.
Wesley also wondered if it would be prudent to allow residents to use this grant program to replace an old or broken gas furnace with a high efficiency gas furnace rather than a solely electric one. Electric heat pumps can be expensive, he pointed out, and some change in the right direction is better than none.
“[At the] 80% AMI tiering level, you’re going to have more people who are replacing something that’s broken versus who are looking at this as a roadmap to then enhance the efficiency of their home,” he said.
But Nieratka said she believes the grant dollars are enough to help residents switch from gas to electric, depending on the house.
Straw said an electric heat pump can sometimes be cheaper than a gas furnace, so he wants to continue to incentivize the more environmentally friendly option. He said the total cost to install a heat pump at a building he owns was about $14,000, including a top-of-the-line pump and duct work.
Buchanan also disagreed with Wesley, saying this grant should not be used for gas furnaces even if they’re more efficient than before. Trustee Ravi Parakkat agreed that he’d rather incentivize the electric option.
“The energy-efficiency grants are a major way that we are touching those residential emissions,” Nieratka said. Residential and commercial emissions make up about 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Oak Park, according to her report.
To help reduce commercial building emissions, the board adopted an electrification ordinance that requires all new buildings to be fully electric.