Ask Mr. Answer Person: "Which other (commercial) buildings in Winneshiek County are Energy Star rated?"

Our news story about Oneota Co-op winning "Energy Star" certification—one of just three such commercial buildings in the county to win the certification—brought this question from Elyse, a sharp-eyed decorahnews.com reader: "Which other buildings in Winneshiek County are Energy Star rated?"

Mr. Answer Person turned to Andy Johnson, the director of the Winneshiek Energy District, who knew Decorah Bank and Trust and JC Penney are the other two businesses whose buildings have received Energy Star certification.

Adds Andy, "At this point on the Energy Star web site (http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=labeled_buildings.locator) you can search for the cities/counties with the largest numbers of Energy Star certified buildings, but not the highest *proportion* of buildings per capita.  I brought this up with the national Energy Star folks and they said they'd look into it, it really shouldn't be hard, maybe if they won't do it we can somehow make it happen ourselves, just a simple script taking the total tallies by community/county and dividing by census population.  THEN one of our goals will be to work towards becoming a community with the highest ES buildings per capita anywhere in the US, which our new Commercial Energy Challenge program should help with."