5 Lakes Energy developed a free online Toolkit to help Michigan communities, property owners and others evaluate prospective investments in the energy performance of buildings. Via a web-based interface, users enter basic information about one or more buildings and select from an array of potential clean-energy measures to deploy at the properties (from improving insulation to replacing fossil-fuel powered HVAC equipment, installing solar panels, and more). Based on user inputs, the Toolkit deploys a wide array of industry-standard datasets and calculations to estimate the costs and benefits of the selected clean-energy measures, including changes to utility bills, Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, public health outcomes and more.
