By Anne W. Semmes
Greenwich’s Frank Cortese, at age 50, sits on the edge of energy change and family tradition. His family business on West Putnam is newly renamed New England Total Energy (NETE) from New England Oil, to embrace alternative energy sources. “We’ve diversified as much as we can,” he says, “to be able to take that next step into our future.”
Cortese explains, “We do 85-percent of our business in heating oil, but we do natural gas conversions, we do propane fuel. We’ve become a full HVAC company. We do everything from oil tanks to boilers to air conditioning to propane tanks to furnaces to plumbing.”
Cortese’s offices display prize-winning plaques, and trophies for “Family-Owned Business Award Winners” from their 60-years of solid customer service given across Greenwich and neighboring towns.
It’s the impressive educational energy outreach that Cortese and a good number of his 45 employees are engaged in that intrigues. “We’ve diversified into energy auditing. We go into our customers’ homes and do audits for them. We’re teaching our customers how to conserve energy, even though it’s going to lower our gallons being delivered, it’s the right thing to do for our business, it’s the right thing to do for our customers.”
Cortese and company took this step six or seven years ago he says when NETE became a certified energy auditor for Eversource. “There’s about 40 companies in the state of Connecticut that do this.” He says, “and we’re one of them.”
“We do Eversource’s audits for them and for a lot of solar companies as well,” he notes. And yes, Cortese reports a majority of customers respond positively to that audit request.
He opens the door to their energy auditing, introducing his Energy Auditing Manager Paul Scicchitano: “We do about 400-plus energy audits a year. Mainly, we make homes more energy efficient by providing LED lightbulbs, and insulation, and weatherization services.
“There’s a complete walk through for safety. We explain things that customers didn’t even know before – how their equipment works.”
“Paul does an excellent job of explaining to the customer exactly what the audit entails,” adds Yolanda Cortese, the just arriving president of NETE and mother of Vice President Cortese. As the widow of Frank Sr., the business founder who took over from his father Vincenzo Cortese, “She’s the boss,” her son notes.
“When we do the audit,” Cortese continues, “We’re going around the house and sealing any air penetrations. For example, today it’s cold outside. So, when that cold air comes inside it makes your heating equipment work harder. We try to help a customer understand their home, and their heating systems, cooling systems, windows, walls, and doors.”
Customers receive a post-audit report, says Scicchitano, “that’s certified through the Department of Energy– it will show what their total annual energy costs were before the visit, and how much it’ll be now on their total utility bills.”
The “Visit Summary” report lists, “Facts About Your Home, Estimated Annual Energy Cost, Where Did You Save, and What Did We Do.” Above Scicchitano’s desk are displayed Century Club Award plaques from the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the last five years.
“The whole purpose of this audit program, says Cortese, “is to try to shrink the carbon footprint.”
Cortese has literally been leaving his own footprints on the family’s West Putnam business site his whole life. “When I was little I used to wax and paint the trucks with my cousin,” he tells. “I used to cut the grass around the properties.” As a high schooler he was helping to remove and install fuel tanks. In college summers he was working “inside the office, trying to learn the lingo. And here I am,” he says, “15 years later.”
There’s no question Cortese is proud to be managing a “mom and pop” business that has served customers for three generations. “We’re a small company business,” he says. And, “Just like other small family businesses in this town, if someone puts food on our table we always try to put food on their tables.
That’s very important to me, to us. That’s how I’ve been raised from when I was little kid. I’ve always believed that instead of going to the box stores, we try to go to the small mom and pop places to make sure that they stay in business. That’s what we want for ourselves.”
Cortese has surely been forward thinking with his company’s diversification but he’s also concerned with what effect the millennial generation will have on his energy business. “The millennials are renting – they’re not buying homes,” he says, and, “They have kids later.” He sees also with iPhones, his customers wanting “more control of how much oil they have in their tank. There’s so much competition with technology – we have to adjust our business to that too.”
“We try to be the best we can for our customer base and our customers,” is Cortese’s mantra. But there’s an added challenge he and surely other energy companies are facing, the scarcity of finding technicians. “Nationwide, people are not getting into the trades. Everyone wants to sit behind a desk. The trade schools are dying. Pretty soon, there’s not going to be any technicians. Right now we’re looking for young guys who will come in and become an apprentice – we’ll train them ourselves.”
For as long as Cortese has been on the NETE payroll he has served as president of the Chickahominy Reunion Association that just might one day bring that technician support. “We give scholarships to high school students born and raised in Chickahominy,” he says. He suggests, “After high school they can just go straight to a trade school, and we actually pay for that too.”
