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Workshop to offer tips on energy savings
Free save energy info March 21
Energy Impact Illinois is running a workshop for Oak Park residents to share new educational tools and financial resources available to Northern Illinois homeowners to help them save energy and money. It’s free and will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, March 21, at Oak Park Village Hall, in the Council Chambers, 123 Madison St., Oak Park.
Energy Impact Illinois is an alliance of local and federal organizations, utility companies and not-for-profit groups dedicated to helping communities change their energy usage habits by offering access to a broad array of programs and solutions. To learn more, visit www.energyimpactillinois.org.
Updated: March 29, 2012 4:15PM
Are you an Oak Parker who’d like save some bucks on your energy bills? If so, check out this free upcoming workshop.
The event, which is for Oak Park residents only, is sponsored by Energy Impact Illinois (EI2), a public-private partnership working to help Northern Illinois residents become more energy efficient. It’s the be held from 7 to 9 p.m. March 21, at the Oak Park Council Chambers, 123 Madison St.
Participants will learn easy steps to reduce energy consumption, as well as new educational and financial tools available to help improve the energy efficiency of their homes. An Oak Park homeowner who has participated in the EI2 program will also be speaking.
There are three key barriers to energy efficiency that the governmental agency is trying to tackle, said Dan Olson, senior energy efficiency planner for Energy Impact Illinois. Those are: access to information; access to finance, to afford activities; and not being able to find a qualified contractor to do the work.
“People hear green and energy and we’re trying to make that less daunting,” said Olson. “In this day and age, right now people are looking for ways to save money. This is an easy thing to do. It helps give ideas.”
Why should you make your home energy efficient? Here are a few good reasons, courtesy of EI2: It will help you save money; do your part to protect the environment; provide a boost to the economy. (Spending less on energy bills = more to spend elsewhere); and improve energy security.
The EI2 program is being led by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), in a partnership with Chicago, Rockford, gas and electric utilities and other stakeholders. Key funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
For more info, go to energyimpactillinois.org. The Web site also has a cool feature, My Home EQ, which gives people a starting point to see how their house rates efficiency-wise.
You go RE/MAX!
There were 2,064 listed homes sold in the West Towns market area in 2011, compared to 2,124 in 2010, and RE/MAX led the market listing 18.9 percent of homes sold and being No. 1 in buyer representation at 15.6 percent. West Towns markets include Oak Park, River Forest, Berwyn, Broadview, Brookfield, Cicero, Forest Park, Forest View, Lyons, North Riverside, Riverside, Stickney and Westchester.
And RE/MAX in the Village’s Roz Byrne has a brand new monthly report, “Inside Scoop,” and the inaugural issue says so far, it seems like it’ll be an active spring in the Oak Park/Near West suburban real estate market. “There are lots of buyers out there and the homes that are priced right will sell,” said Byrne. She said there are currently 12 months of inventory of Oak Park homes, 30 months in condos and the surprise — and “ouch” as Byrne put it — is the 34 months of inventory in River Forest homes.
