Earlier this month, the Environmental Outreach and Stewardship Alliance, backed by the Mayor's office, introduced one of the newest initiatives in Seattle to help improve energy efficiency of local homes, one block at a time.
Through Green Blocks, local homeowners on selected city blocks will initially receive free home energy audits. To bring each house up to date and make it as efficient as possible, improvements such as weather-stripping, insulating hot water tanks, and installing low-flow shower heads, CFLs and programmable thermostats will also be made for each home that requires them.
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| A Green Block location in Wallingford, with a 73% participation rate. |
To complete these inspections, EOS is partnering with the Seattle Youth Employment Program and providing first hand work experience to local area youth, arming them with both knowledge and skills that our not-so-distant green collar economy will require in the future.
“It’s great to see EOS Alliance putting young people to work through our Seattle Youth Employment Program,” says Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels in support of the Green Blocks Project. “I am pleased that these young people are getting practical job skills, learning about the new clean economy and taking the important message of energy conservation to our residents.”
“We’re rewriting the script for how this gets done,” says Erick McWayne, Executive Director of EOS. “We’re exploring innovative ways to recruit, train and deploy a green-collar workforce that understands how to conduct home efficiency assessments and make appropriate recommendations for conservation upgrades. There is a new demand for this type of workforce, and the economic and environmental benefits could be transformational.”
There are many great aspects of Green Blocks - people benefit by having access to professionals, homeowners benefit from more efficient houses, and our environment benefits by having these "Green Blocks" reduce and conserve energy requirements. My favorite aspect, perhaps, is how this program specifically works with local area youth in the field of energy efficiency. Through this work, they will not only understand the importance of conserving energy but also how it can be done. Additionally, the knowledge and experience these youth will take away from this program will be essential within the coming years -- a cornerstone for helping to build a bright green, sustainable Seattle.
Top page photo credit: Flickr/Kirtaph, Creative Commons License.
