Non-profit helping Coloradans cover rise in energy bills as cold weather rolls through

We're hitting the winter months and woke up to brutal cold Wednesday morning. Many people are now worried about watching those heating bills climb, and wondering what they can do to get them paid.

Denver7 spoke with Jennifer Gremmert, CEO of Energy Outreach Colorado, about ways the non-profit is helping relieve some of that financial burden on the community.

"We really want people to know about the programs that we have to help people not only pay their energy bill if they get behind, but also energy efficiency programs that they can use to improve the health and safety of their home, reduce their energy bill, take advantage of some rebates that we have in connection with Xcel Energy," Gremmert said.

LEAP is one of the state-run programs that helps qualifying households with heating costs, equipment repair and even replacement.

"So each household for LEAP and for energy outreach Colorado is up to $1,000 a year, one time a year," Gremmert said.

There's also a weatherization assistance program, which offers free energy efficiency services to income qualified residents.

And there's a hotline (1-866-HEAT-HELP) for heating emergencies or help with energy needs.

"We have over 20,000 individual donors. So we act collectively with a budget of about $80 million a year to provide energy assistance energy efficiency. We do renewable energy subscriptions. We do advocacy work on behalf of households. And so our Energy Assistance Program this year will be about $24 million which we're really proud of, but it's never enough to meet the need," Gremmert added.

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