Sparked by strong initial success, Traverse City’s residential efficiency program, TCSaves, is again offering city residents a path to a more comfortable home that uses less energy. The communitywide effort, dormant since last spring, has a new goal, a new partner, and special borrowing options.
MLUI’s special report, “The Power of Energy Efficiency,” introduces some of the people already making Traverse City and northwest Michigan “efficiency-ready”: homeowners, business people, contractors, officials, and experts with first-hand knowledge of just how well energy efficiency works.
Energy efficiency puts our contractors to work; boosts local retail sales; keeps more of residents’ hard-earned dollars in town; increases property values; makes the community more attractive; and by lowering overall energy demand, slows the rise of everyone’s energy costs.
TCSaves showed that a well done, public-private, residential energy efficiency program can reach many homeowners, make them more comfortable and lower their utility bills, produce good-paying jobs, keep more cash in the local economy, increase home values, and make financial sense.
Major home energy efficiency upgrades could become a common sight in Traverse City, once leaders find a very inexpensive, long-term way to finance them.
The two-year TCSaves program was-and is-good news for Traverse City: It kept local contractors and building supply wholesalers busy. Now it’s saving energy dollars for homeowners and keeping some of those dollars in town, rather than sending them to distant coalfields. Lessons learned from TCSaves will help the community as it moves forward with a long-term energy efficiency project for Traverse City.