The county has invested into solar panels for county buildings – making them more sustainable. They didn’t, however, create a low-interest loan program for homeowners to make improvements to their homes making them more energy efficient.
Kim Carson is a Summit County council member.
“We need to stick to what we’ve said as goals," Carson said. "It was a 15 percent reduction over 15 years and I believe we’re making progress. We really need to provide a way for homes to be able to go in and do the audits. I still want to come with a loan program or work with state and federal agencies to make it an easier process to access those loans."
While Park City has funded a grant program for historic building owners to make needed improvements, the county doesn’t have something similar for home owners to make weatherization improvements to their homes, which can make a huge dent in saving energy. County council member Roger Armstrong said everything is being looked at.
“I think we need to look and see what works," Armstrong said. "Summit County Power works, Lisa Yoder and Mary Christa Smith have been doing remarkable work in that regard. Whether or not we win the Georgetown Prize that’s motivation for getting it done but it’s still great work regardless.”
A program called Community Choice is in several communities of California that allows a county to form a power authority and enter into contracts to buy renewable energy within or out of the state. Armstrong said it can’t be done in Utah but they are interested in it.
“We have a feasibility study underway – we’ll have the results of that study in Nov.," Armstrong said. "In response to that, Rocky Mountain Power has been making some great changes. They made the solar subscriber program available in response to our interest in the CCA and I think we can probably work with Rocky Mountain Power to provide more renewable energy resources for our residents.”
Though there are no hard and fast answers but the county has approved a pilot project for homeowners. County sustainability coordinator Lisa Yoder said the program uses some of the funds from the existing sustainability budget. It will provide a home energy assessor to visit 100 eligible homes to educate them on energy use and how to make their homes more energy efficient.
“It educates the homeowner on the use of energy in their home and then it provides them with recommendations to make to their home to make it more efficient and some expected cost savings.
The energy assessors will follow up with the homeowners to see if they’ve made the improvements and analyze the gains the homeowner received as a result of the recommended improvements
“The notice will come out with the tax bill to all property owners," Yoder said. "And at that time we’ll have it available county-wide to all residents.”
Yoder said you must meet the qualifications before you can participate in the program which will be first come, first serve and will be available only for a limited time.