March 28, 2024

Hometown Rewards program comes to an end

Hometown Rewards, a program that has worked to promote energy efficiency and conservation in the community, is coming to an end this month. The Alliant Energy and Black Hills Energy grant-funded program has completed its two years working with the city and in that time has accomplished several energy goals.

The program is run by a committee of community members, lead by Community Coordinator Jackie Boat, who set up various objectives to achieve energy conservation on a community wide basis. The objectives included engaging at least 20 percent of Newton’s population in the program, reducing residential energy consumption by at least 2 percent per year, doubling that amount for government buildings and operations and to engage 25 percent of commercial and industrial customers through energy assessments and rebates.

“It has been pretty spectacular,” Boat said. “We did more than we set out to do with a lot of our goals to a tremendous extent. The most impressive statistic was we increased non-residential rebate savings by 140 percent. I would never have anticipated that.”

In the past 24 months, the program has been a part of many events, spreading the word about energy efficiency and conservation. An Energy Fair was held featuring weatherization demonstrations, elementary student energy saving projects, crank generators, fuel cell demonstrations, mini wind turbines and more. The program was also present at Newton Fest, the downtown trick-or-treat event and gave presentations for local groups including Rotary and Kiwanis.

Several give-aways took place to promote energy efficiency including a $500 LED lighting replacement, a Honeywell Wi-Fi touch screen thermostat and a Samsung Smart Things Home monitoring system. The largest physical contribution from the program is the solar pergola at the Newton Arboretum. In cooperation with Project AWAKE, Alliant Energy gave $30,000 toward the project which contributes to energy savings at the popular attraction.

Additional tools used to educate citizens were weatherization drives in the fall, electronic recycling days and free home energy evaluations.

While the first two years of the program are complete, the city is currently looking at a way to keep the progress going in the future. City administrator Matt Muckler said he is currently in talks with Alliant Energy and Black Hills Energy.

“They have proposed a community energy manager position that would be similar to what the sustainability coordinator did,” Muckler said. “It would have less of a structure around it. Hometown Rewards was very structured in what they provided.”

He said the goal is to keep the position grant funded. The initial contribution for the two-year program from the companies was $100,000.

“There have been a lot of benefits with the program, they have done great work,” Muckler said. “We certainly appreciate the contributions that have come out of the program.”

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com