New Study Shows 17.5% Electricity Savings From Neighborhood Workshops

A newly-released study from the UNC Environmental Finance Center revealed that households that attended an energy-savings Clean Energy Durham’s Hands-On Workshop (HOW) used 17.5% less electricity following the workshops compared to households that did not attend workshops.

For the first time, utility data has been made available for assessing the impact of Clean Energy Durham’s neighborhood workshops.  The UNC Environmental Finance Center examined electricity bills of Halifax Electric Membership Corporation customers in Warren County, comparing the winter peak electricity use of workshop attendees with the winter peak electricity use of all Halifax EMC customers.

The UNC Environmental Finance Center, located at the School of Government in Chapel Hill, provides technical assistance aimed at enhancing the fairness, effectiveness, and financial sustainability of government environmental-related programs.  A copy of the study is available from the Center’s website at www.efc.unc.edu.

Clean Energy Durham Partners with Haliwa-Saponi Tribe in Warren County

The Haliwa-Saponi Tribe has been a helping hand to Halifax Electric Membership Corporation and Clean Energy Durham in Warren County.  The tribe has welcomed the energy-saving pilot program to its members and the community, who have benefited by learning how to save energy and money.

Energy Volunteer Lori Silver, who is a member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe, helped facilitate a partnership with the tribe.  She took the 18-hour Clean Energy Durham training in how to teach Hands-On Workshops in no-cost and low-cost ways to save energy in the home.  After she taught the first workshop for the tribe, interest in this topic really took off.  Clean Energy Durham’s partnership with the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe has been a success—tribal members are excited about saving energy and money!

Rebecca

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Meet Shaneese Little

Shaneese is one of our new community outreach Fellows.  She is a public health education associate at North Carolina Central University, and her Fellowship at Clean Energy Durham is funded by the State Energy Office. She has been part of the team since March 5^th and has shared wonderful ideas on how to recruit participants for the Clean Energy Durham Hands-On Workshops held in Warren County.

Shaneese is originally from Oxon Hill, MD and she said of her work in Warren County, “Being a city girl, Warren County was a new experience for me because I am used to seeing houses close and compact and it was different working in an environment where houses are about a mile apart.”  Understanding how people operate in rural areas was a new challenge for her, and she immediately became interested in wanting to bring information to the residents in this area.

For the past 3 weeks she and the community outreach team have made numerous trips to Warren County to attend different events.  At a recent event, residents recognized her and greeted her with welcome arms.  “Warren County residents seem to be leery of outsiders at first,” she says, “but my goal is to make an impact big enough to encourage some alterations.”

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