Oak Park is working to recruit residents to take advantage of a new program aimed at saving Oak Parkers both money and energy.
The village recently “hard-launched” it’s Oak Park Energy Navigator program. “OPEN” was developed via a village partnership with Elevate, a Chicagoland energy efficiency nonprofit, and offers residents free in-home energy assessments so residents can receive professional instruction on what improvements they can make for their homes to be more energy efficient, how they can get the work done and how they can get help paying for the upgrades.
Residents can request assessments through the village website. Assessments can be requested by both property owners, and tenants, according to the village.
Oak Park’s village board voted unanimously to commit an additional $500,000 to launching OPEN in February after the program moved through a successful pilot phase. Elevate expects the cost to the village to average around $6,275 per property served.
Oak Park Sustainability Chief Lindsey Roland Nieratka said the program has demonstrated value for residents in both single-family and multifamily homes.
“It’s pretty comprehensive, it frames everything for the property owner in terms of a journey,” she said. “We’ve had a really strong response. A good mix of applicants and building types. We’re pleased to see that initial mix.”
While the assessments can point residents toward the variety of energy efficiency grant and loan programs offered by the village’s sustainability office, the reports will also provide information on accessing energy incentive programs offered by ComEd, Cook County and other institutions.
Program analysts are aiming to complete energy assessments at six to eight properties each month with a focus on helping low-income households, households struggling to keep up with their energy expenses and elderly and disabled residents, according to Elevate’s Mark Milby
Oak Park is one of only a few cities in the country offering this type of service, said Milby, who serves as Elevate’s senior director of programs.
“Oak Park’s definitely a leader in this sense,” he said. “A program like this can act as an accelerator.”
The program rose from the village’s Climate Ready Oak Park Plan, which hopes to cut Oak Park’s carbon emissions by 60% before 2030 in a bid for net-zero emissions by 2050. About 70% of Oak Park’s emissions come from commercial and residential properties, according to the village.
The program is a sort of an evolution from a community volunteer group the Oak Park Climate Action Network’s climate coaching program, a grassroots effort where volunteers helped advising neighbors on making their homes more efficient. Elevate will still likely refer “100% of navigator clients” to volunteer OPCAN climate coaches, the consultants told the village board in February.
Mike Nickels runs Energy Matters, a local HVAC contracting company serving Oak Park and River Forest. He also owns a six-unit multifamily rental property in Oak Park.
Nickels’ building was one of the property’s assessed during OPEN’s pilot phase. He said that even though he’s a home energy industry professional familiar with Elevate’s work, his assessment still pointed him towards programs and savings he didn’t know existed before.
“They have a bunch of different tools and metrics that their engineers use to do a site assessment,” Nickels said. “I’m a professional in the industry, but they introduced even more context. So, for a regular homeowner, they’re going give you a lot of resources, and then they are also there to really help bridge the gap between a homeowner and the contractor.”