Home, Business & Municipal Energy Resources

Making choices that save energy -- in your home, business or community -- can have a positive impact on the environment while also saving you money.  In this section of our website, CCE-Tompkins has compiled resources that can help you learn about ways you can reduce energy consumption and use energy resources more efficiently.

For Your Home

Free "Save Energy, Save Dollars" workshops that cover ways to reduce your home energy use are offered regularly at our Education Center in Ithaca and other locations. 

Our interactive "Energy Saving House" illustrates the energy systems in a typical home, and walks you through a checklist of ways you can make energy-saving changes, whether you rent or own your home. Find fact sheets, videos and more on low-cost, no-cost and do-it-yourself options for your situation in the "Home Energy Savings" section of this site.

Green building technologies and products, biomass, and alternative energy systems are explained and explored here, and on our Envronment pages.  An annual Green Buildings Open House tour on the first weekend of October each year, and a Green Building Seminar Series each winter are coodinated by CCE-Tompkins in partnership with the Ithaca Green Building Alliance.

For The Community

Individuals and organizations can improve energy efficiency and promote greater use of renewable energy resources in their communities, and this section shows how that can be done as well as provides examples of how organizations and individuals are already doing that around New York and the US. We include details on processes and tools to help organizations and individuals get involved in energy efficiency improvements in their communities. For example, there is a comprehensive section on leadership education in energy efficiency and descriptions of how benchmarking of residential energy use is being used in Tompkins County and elsewhere to foster community-wide energy efficiency efforts.  Need some inspiration? Watch Unlimited: Renewable Energy in the 21st Century, a short yet powerful video about climate change and renewable energy featuring youth.

We also detail CCE-Tompkins' work under contract to NYSERDA in the New York $mart Communities program. In this program CCE-Tompkins works with local governments, economic development agencies and a host of other organizations to increase awareness and access to NYSERDA's programs and resources to improve energy efficiency and convert to renewable energy sources.  

Municipal Energy Use

Towns, villages, school districts, and counties face increasing energy costs.  This section of our site provides tools and resources for local government and school district officials to save energy and dollars in their own operations, including how to get started. It also contains a wealth of information on ways that local governments and school districts can promote better energy efficiency with their communities and constituencies.  Visit this section for examples of how local governments and school districts are reducing their own costs of operation and helping the residents of their communities save energy and money.