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History
Responding to Community Need
Project Warm was founded in 1982
to provide free weatherization services for low-income people who could no
longer afford their high utility bills. The escalating energy prices of the
1970s, approximately a 600% increase in the cost of heating gas, created a
crisis for many fixed-income households as well as the families of many workers
who were laid off from industries that were shutting down or down-sizing their
workforces. Project Warm and Community WinterHelp were created by a group of
community-minded individuals that included Dolores Delahanty, then Director of
Jefferson County Department for Human Services, Mark Isaacs, architect, Jim
Davis, then Director of Accept, Jim Walsh, energy activist, David Ross-Stevens,
environmental writer for the Courier-Journal, and Chuck Thurman of LG&E.
Leader in Volunteerism
Trained volunteers carried out energy audits and installed weatherization
materials. Low-income volunteers learned weatherization skills and earned free
materials for themselves by helping to weatherize the homes of the elderly and
disabled. LG&E, the City of Louisville and Jefferson County government provided
initial funding and
have remained supporters for the past 20 years.
Additional support in the early years came from the Bingham Foundation and
Cumberland Bank. More recently, Project Warm funding support has come from the
Gheens Foundation, the William E. Barth Foundation, the LG&E Energy Foundation,
United Hunger Relief, the Honey Locust Foundation, Bank One, Fifth Third Bank,
venture grants from Metro United Way and hundreds of individual donors.
Each November since 1991 Project Warm has organized the
Project Warm Energy-Saving Blitz, in which hundreds of volunteers plug air leaks
and install plastic interior window covers in homes of seniors and disabled
individuals throughout Jefferson County.
Leader in Energy Innovation
In 1984 the U.
S. Department of Energy recognized Project Warm for its success in "energy
innovation". In the early 1980s Project Warm operated an
owner-builder school, providing training for people who wanted to learn how to
design and build their own energy efficient home. Project Warm used students in
these classes to build several model energy homes that used principles of energy
efficient design to create homes with extremely low energy bills.
In the mid-1980s Project Warm participated in the
Summer Youth Employment Program, teaching hundreds of high school age youth the
principles of energy conservation and weatherization techniques; and in the
process, we weatherized hundreds of homes of people in our community who were
low-income seniors or disabled.
In the late 1980s Project Warm began operating with
full-time highly trained staff that worked to augment the Weatherization
Assistance Programs operated by local government. Materials for this service
were provided free of charge by LG&E. In 1990 Project Warm became the first weatherization
organization in the state of Kentucky to implement the use of the "blower-door"
into its daily work practices. The blower-door is a sophisticated tool for
measuring the air infiltration rate of a building.
Leader in Demand-Side Management
In 1990 Project Warm helped bring
together a group of organizations and individuals who worked with LG&E to bring
about the first Demand-side Management energy conservation programs in the state
of Kentucky. Project Warm collaborated with this group to design and operate the
Energy Partners Program from 1994-1998. During those years Project Warm provided
services including energy education, advanced air-sealing and attic insulation
to over 2,000 low-income households in the Greater Louisville area.
Leader in Energy Education
The operating
principal for Project Warm has from the beginning included the human element in
the home energy dynamic. We adhere to the belief that if you give someone a
fish, you feed him or her for a day, but if you teach them to fish, you feed
them for a lifetime. From the very beginning we have stressed energy education
as an important component of our work. In the early 1990s Project Warm became
recognized as a national leader in the field of energy education. Project Warm
Education Director, Frank Schwartz served on the board of directors of the
Professional Association of Energy Educators from 1993-2001.
Since 1990, Project Warm has been conducting Energy Management Workshops, which
provide free weatherization materials and installation instruction for
low-income families.
Continuing Energy Innovation
In 1999 we created the Project
Warm Full Service Program, grounded in the results of an independent evaluation
of our Demand-Side Management program. We marketed the program to low-income
households with especially high utility bills. Initial funding for this program
was provided by United Hunger Relief, Affordable Energy Corporation, and the
Metro United Way Community Investment Team for Economically Stable Families. The
results show that this is indeed a problem for which a solution does exist.
Analyzing before and after energy use (corrected for fluctuations in weather) in
homes that were weatherized prior to last winter’s heating season, we have seen
an average 35% reduction in heating gas consumption.
Recently, Project Warm in partnership with the Louisville and Jefferson
County Community Action Partnership (CAP), designed an experimental project to
reduce the utility bills of households in our community with the greatest need.
We marketed the new program called the "Energy Challenge" to homeowners who
required assistance from the CAP to pay especially high utility bills. In order
to attack the victim-rescuer dynamic that tends to perpetuate dependence on
social services, participating households performed "sweat equity" to help
complete the weatherization work on their homes.
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Success Stories
The following
stories are of two actual homes that were weatherized through the Project Warm
Full Service Program that incorporates our advanced air-sealing and insulation
techniques along with the Project Warm in-home energy education. The homes were
weatherized prior to the heating season, therefore we are able to make a
weather-corrected before and after comparison.
One home saw a whopping 55%
reduction in heating gas usage over the previous heating season. We wanted to
make sure that this reduction was a result of Project Warm intervention and not
some other changes in the household dynamics. Sure enough, everything else was
pretty much the same. The head of household is an elderly female who shares the
home with two sons and four grandchildren. They reported that the house, a large
one Hale Ave., is so much warmer that they never turned on the gas space heater
in their upstairs. She also reported that her EMPP went from over $200/month to
just over $130/month! Think about that. That means
over $800 per year in
savings.
And remember, that is not a one-time benefit, that is a benefit that
will continue for the life of that home - more than $16,000 over the next 20
years even if gas prices stay the same!
The other home was a shotgun house in the
Portland neighborhood inhabited by a family with disabilities. Our
weather-corrected calculation for this household
showed a 96% reduction in
heating gas usage!!
We have never before seen savings of this magnitude so we assumed that there
must be something wrong with this picture. We discussed this case with the crew
who worked on the home before we made our visit. They were not at all surprised
to see that kind of reduction and commented that prior to the weatherization
work there were so many heat leaks in the house that "they were trying to heat
all of Portland."
Before Project Warm worked on the home a contractor had
installed new windows in parts of the house, but left huge gaps around the
window frames. The family was trying to heat the home with a couple of old space
heaters that were cracked and emitting carbon monoxide. The mother reported that
her chronic headaches went away after the Project Warm contractor installed a
new furnace. She also told me that she is so intent on being frugal that she
often turns the heat off altogether at night. We saw an incredible 96% drop in heating costs for this family. Their EMPP has dropped so much that they now have
an $833 credit on their utility
bill.
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Funding
Louisville Gas & Electric and the Metro Louisville government
provided initial funding and have remained supporters for more than 20 years.
Additional support in the early years came from the Bingham Foundation and
Cumberland Bank.
Project Warm funding support has also come from the Gheens Foundation, the
William E. Barth Foundation, the LG&E Energy Foundation,
United Hunger Relief, the Honey Locust Foundation, Bank One,
Fifth Third
Bank, E.ON U.S.,
Rudd Equipment Company, Clark & Riggs Printing Company, Stock
Building Supply, Kentucky Select Properties, Commonwealth Bank & Trust Company,
United Mail, Ollie Green & Company, CPAs and Republic Bank.
Over the years, we have also received continuous funding support from
churches, foundations and hundreds of individual donors.
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Mission
The mission of Project Warm is to provide energy
conservation services and education, and to promote energy saving practices in
the community.
Staff Leadership
Walter Lay
Executive Director
Frank Schwartz
Education Director & Volunteer Coordinator
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