2009 Energy Town Hall Meeting in Atlanta

Posted by Sonja Ebron

With a collapsing economy and stable gasoline prices, you wouldn’t expect Atlanta activists to come out strong for a discussion on energy. But like most places, Atlanta had a rough year energy-wise, and people want to know what happened last year, what’s happening now, and how to avoid the next crisis. On some level, most of us understand the link between energy and the economy, as well as the huge potential of green jobs. So all ears were open for blackEnergy’s first Energy Town Hall Meeting of 2009 on March 9th.

Concerned Black Clergy (CBC) invited us to speak with nearly 300 community leaders about energy efficiency, electric and natural gas utilities, weatherization and bill-paying assistance, and other topics. As always, we lined up a fantastic panel of experts, including Sydney Roberts of the Southface Institute, Wendy Bailey-Hooks with the Energy Assistance Program at Georgia’s Department of Human Resources (DHR), Theresa Worthy of the Heating Energy Assistance Team, Deryl Sessoms with the Atlanta Regional Commission’s RideSmart program, and Seandra Rawls of the Georgia Sierra Club.

As moderator, I asked the presenters to spend just five minutes on their comments so we could spend most of our time on questions from the audience. Sydney Roberts spoke at length about Southface grants for homeowners to make efficiency improvements on their houses, as well as training and certification programs offered by Southface. Wendy Bailey-Hooks and Theresa Worthy reported on the huge increase in requests for utility bill assistance and the rising availability of public and private funds to help people facing disconnections. Deryl Sessoms explained the process for getting into a carpool and described the new “free ride home” service offered to carpoolers who’ve missed their rides. Seandra Rawls discussed the Sierra Club’s efforts to stop construction of new coal power plants in Georgia, as well as Georgia Power’s (so far) successful efforts to force ratepayers to pay upfront for a nuclear facility that’s not even under construction.

We got great questions on all these issues, and I was pleased to see the audience so engaged. Here’s just a sampling: How can we find training for green jobs? How do you arrange for an energy audit of your home? What can be done about the way natural gas marketers treat customers? How can Blacks get involved in renewable energy? How can small Black businesses get involved in energy efficient service offerings and get the stimulus money directed to weatherization? Are historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) doing research on new energy technologies?

I closed by making the point that now is the time to prepare for the next energy crisis. It’s just a matter of time, and we don’t want to get caught out the way we were last year. Especially in light of the economy, everyone should be looking at ways to reduce their energy use, as well as finding new ways to provide for our needs in case the recovery takes longer than we think.