Senate Passes Legislation to Help Homeowners With "Green" Upgrades

For a while, the state has been helping homeowners make "green" improvements by offering low interest loans.

But now, a new bill makes it easier to pay the money back and one local contractor thinks this will open up the door for a lot more people to make upgrades. Damian Hodkinson owns True Energy Solutions. We caught up with his crew last December when they were making energy upgrades to a home in Rochester.

With this new program, qualified homeowners will be able to make the same types of upgrades, but they'll be able to pay back the money right on their utility bills. He expects his business to pick up and will likely add 25% more employees to help keep up with demand.

"We just see this as a really eloquent, innovative solution for homeowner to be able to come up with that up front capitol required to make conservation measures in their home and it just makes sense from every perspective," says Hodkinson. He also says the payback amount will never be higher than the savings on those utility bills, so the amount homeowners are paying after the upgrades will not be higher than what it is now. The bill has been passed in the legislature, now the governor needs to sign it before it becomes law.