Free Trees!

Entergy Corp. has joined with the Arbor Day Foundation to provide free trees to residential customers in Louisiana, aiming to conserve energy through "strategic tree planting," to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Customers are required to care for the trees and plant them in spots expected to reduce their energy consumption. Customers can determine the most strategic planting locations using a tool that allows them to map a house, select a tree with energy saving potential, view the best energy saving locations to plant and recieve an estimate of the expected annual savings.

To Sign up, go to: www.Entergy.com/arborday

Sierra Club to Mark Katrina Anniversary with Report: “New Orleans Green Building Assessment”

New Orleans – Approaching the 4^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, the Sierra Club will release a new report analyzing the green rebuilding efforts under way in New Orleans. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has provided the city of New Orleans with a unique opportunity to develop a national model for rebuilding green.

This “New Orleans Green Building Assessment” examines the current and former green building efforts in New Orleans, noting partnerships and potential strategies for improvement throughout. This assessment documents and merges the disparate green building efforts into one central location and successfully fulfilled its stated goals. Moving forward, this document provides a foundation for the city to develop a “best practices” model for rebuilding green, focusing on the city’s existing and emerging partnerships.

Contact: Darryl Malek-Wiley, Sierra Club
504-861-4836 (O)
504-427-1885 (C)

New Orleans: Going Green in the Big Easy

Going green in New Orleans is featured in the latest issue of:

The Latest Environmental Buzz

which is one of the Sierra Club's online newsletters. Read the rest of the story here:
http://sierra.convio.net/site/MessageViewer?em_id=44141.0

Historic Green is one of the groups behind the post-K "greening" of New Orleans.

Brad Pitt is OK in our book

Say what you will about narcissistic, vain and selfish celebrities, but don't you dare say that about Mr. Brad Pitt. No you can't say that about him because he is putting his money where his mouth is. He says that he loves New Orleans and he is proving it, he and his partner Angelina Jolie, have not only bought a home here, he has also initiated a project to help others obtain new homes after theirs were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

Pitt has created the Make It Right (MIR) project to build "green affordable housing on a large scale to help victims of Hurricane Katrina." What a great thing to do for the people of New Orleans. We love the whole concept but we especially love the "green" part.

For more information on the Make It Right project go to their Web site:
The Make It Right (MIR) project site

Some of the positive press the story has received:
Times-Picayune story here
CNN story here
USA Today story here

As one commenter on the TP's nola.com site said, "Brad Pitt for Mayor!" We could do worse. Oh right, we already did.

Thanks Brad.

Holy Cross homes tour helps mark Earth Day

Even the orange school bus that transported people on the Holy Cross tour was powered by biodiesel fuel made from discarded vegetable oil that once fried local oysters and beignets.

Read more>>

Green Light New Orleans

The Alliance for Affordable Energy, New Orleans Group of the Sierra Club, and the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association are partnering with the New Orleans nonprofit organization Green Light New Orleans to change out incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, which use about 1/4 the energy. This will save homeowners 75% of their lighting costs on their utility bills and will reduce pollution by the same amount! Green Light New Orleans provided the bulbs for free! (Thank you Green Light New Orleans and its director Andi Hoffmann!)

Background:

This is part of a larger initiative to create 10 sites to serve as models of clean energy for our city. Nine homes and the NENA Center in the Holy Cross Neighborhood and Lower 9th Ward, which recently received 1.5 kW solar electric systems donated by Sharp Solar International to the Alliance for Affordable Energy, will be featured in quarterly "Clean Energy Homes Tours". We will hold our first "Clean Energy Homes Tour" on Earthday, April 22nd. Interested folks can attend for free to learn how to make their homes more energy efficient and how to go solar.

More on Green Light New Orleans - Lowering New Orleans' energy usage one light bulb at a time - http://www.greenlightneworleans.org/

Green Light New Orleans - helping out with free CFL light bulbs
Global warming is the most significant environmental challenge of the day, and New Orleans is one of the most at risk cities. Wasteful energy consumption is perhaps the largest contributor to Global Warming. One of the easiest effective steps to reduce energy consumption is to change the lighting in your home from old style incandescent bulbs to modern compact fluorescent lighting. If every household in the United States replaced one light bulb with a compact fluorescent light (CFL), it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road. In addition to the environmental benefits, a CFL uses 75% less energy than an incandescent bulb, thereby saving money on a home’s energy bills. Each CFL will save the user more than $40 over the life of the bulb.

Green Light New Orleans is a proactive environmental organization committed to switching the entire city of New Orleans from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lights, one house at a time. We provide low- and middle-income families and individuals with enough free CFLs to change out all of their incandescents bulbs, and we actually go to peoples homes and install them.

Goal
The city of New Orleans faces a strong increase in energy cost, an unstable power system plagued by frequent blackouts and serious consequences of global warming through stronger and more frequent hurricanes. Our goal is to switch the entire city from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL), one house at a time.

Green Light New Orleans helps people to lower their energy bills AND gives you an opportunity to actively fight global warming.

Micah Walker Parkin
Program Director
Alliance for Affordable Energy
www.all4energy.org
(504) 258-1247 (mobile)