By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- City officials are ready to begin moving forward with an effort, partly funded by the federal economic stimulus bill, to improve the energy efficiency of 700-some Durham homes.

The City Council is scheduled to launch the program later this month by approving a $314,700 contract with a nonprofit called Clean Energy Durham to manage it.

The firm among other things will enroll homes, train and supervise volunteers, create brochures and other educational materials, and doing follow-up checks in the neighborhoods targeted after the efficiency retrofits are done.

"They'll be with us through the whole three-year process of the program," Tobin Fried, city/county sustainability manager, told City Council members Thursday.

Fried added that the idea is to target 10 to 12 neighborhoods, within them going after single-story houses that are less than 50 years old and have less than 2,000 square feet of floor space.

In those yet-to-be-chosen neighborhoods, contractors should be able to identify houses that, because of the way they were built, likely need insulation, crack-sealing and other repairs that once complete can shave up to 20 percent off their owners' energy bills, Fried said.

Clean Energy Durham is headed by Judy Kincaid, a one-time Triangle J Council of Governments official who's administered large grants before and is already working on energy-efficiency projects in North-East Central Durham and other parts of the city.

Officials are devoting to the project about half a $2.2 million economic-stimulus grant the city received earlier year to finance energy-efficiency work. Fried said they've also landed a second grant, unrelated to the stimulus bill, that enabled them to double the size of the initiative.

The plan also calls for hiring a second group to help train workers to actually do the repair work, and then farm out the repairs to four to five companies, Fried said.

Officials should pick the target neighborhoods by March, and have the actual repair work going by mid-summer. They hope to keep costs down to about $1,800 per home, Fried said.

A request for proposals for companies willing to do the actual repairs should go out in January or February, Fried said.

The neighborhoods targeted will have come forward with a certain number of volunteers to go door to door, helping spread the word about the effort and about things residents can do on their own to save energy, Fried said.

Council members seemed to like what they heard, but stressed that they want to be kept informed as the program unfolds.

"I want this followed closely by the council," Mayor Bill Bell said.

Fried noted that the stimulus bill requires officials to send follow-up reports to the federal government.

Between that and oversight from the city's Community Development Department, "we will have a lot of opportunity to make sure this stays on track," she said.