Source: Bigstock

A plan to force building owners in Evanston to report energy usage under a city proposal might want to heed the results of an Illinois REALTOR® survey.

Under the Evanston proposal, buildings which are larger than 20,000 square feet would have to begin reporting. That’s more stringent than a similar policy in nearby Chicago which sets a threshold of 50,000 square feet before reporting is triggered.

The results are here.

The Illinois REALTOR® poll of 400 people found:

• Many people in the city aren’t familiar with benchmarking. Eighty percent said they hadn’t heard of benchmarking.
• Of those who responded, 57 percent said they weren’t in favor of having Evanston adopting the benchmarking rules.
• More than half of respondents (53 percent) said they thought private property owners already scrutinized their buildings’ energy consumption and the policy would just burden property owners.

An additional question found 65 percent of those polled said property taxes were too high in the city.

More details are in the Evanstonnow.com article on the poll, which conducted by We Ask America Polls on Nov. 18 and 20.