Last winter, it cost nearly $5,600 to pay the natural gas heating bills for the Douglas County Courthouse during January and February.

While there is no reason to think this year’s heating bills will be cheaper, county leaders hope there will be some relief by winter 2009.

County commissioners earlier this week agreed to enter a state-approved program that could lead to an energy audit and installation of equipment designed to save energy and reduce costs.

Getting to that point will, in itself, cost money. The county will have the option, however, of not taking further action before it has to pull out its checkbook.

“We, on staff, have looked at this enough : that we are reasonably confident that this will pay for itself,” County Administrator Craig Weinaug said of the program.

The program, called facilities conservation improvement, was developed in 2003 by the Kansas Corporation Commission, said Jenny Hesseltine, a Kansas University graduate intern working in Weinaug’s office. Hesseltine looked at options the county could explore for saving energy costs.

The KCC has a list of 10 pre-approved private energy service companies (ESCOs) that identify and evaluate energy-saving opportunities and recommend improvements, which are paid through the savings. The firms also develop the engineering for those improvements and oversee contractors who install new equipment.

The first step is to conduct a feasibility study by examining the buildings and information about them to see whether there are options for conserving energy. That step is free.

“We can walk away at that point, and we owe them nothing,” Hesseltine said.

The next step is an energy audit that will recommend steps to take and equipment to install to conserve energy. That will cost $19,000. If the county decides to proceed, there would be additional costs to implement those recommendations.

The ESCO, however, will specify how much the county can save and will guarantee that savings meet or exceed annual payments to cover all project costs once its recommendations have been implemented. If savings don’t materialize, the firm pays the difference and the county will not be responsible for the costs.

“The state is holding the companies accountable for the costs that we incur,” Hesseltine said.

County administrators recommended using the Overland Park firm Custom Energy Inc., one of the ESCOs. That recommendation is based on research into the firm’s experience and people-oriented service, Hesseltine said.

Commissioners agreed to go ahead with the first step and decide later whether it wants to get into the money-spending phases.

“It seems to me, unless we were obligated to carry it forward, we ought to just do it,” Commissioner Bob Johnson said.

Commissioner Charles Jones said he also favored allowing the first phase, but Commissioner Jere McElhaney went along with it reluctantly and expressed skepticism. McElhaney said the county’s own building and grounds staff headed by Bill Bell are knowledgeable about energy-saving measures that can be taken.

“They have done that in the past,” McElhaney said later. “We have taken energy matters into account the entire time I’ve been on the commission.”

McElhaney also voiced reservations about being tied in with the ESCO through the project.

“We need to start analyzing things and reading between the lines and not getting so excited about possibly saving energy and being green when you are going to be spending a lot of green with a firm to do this,” McElhaney said.