Posted: April 14, 2008 Post Expires: October 14, 2008
New Orleans Green Power Program
This letter comes to you as part of my follow-up duties associated with the New Orleans' City Council's Utility Committee, Facilitated Meeting, March 17-18, 2008. My assignment is to seek marketplace viability of the distributed generation aspect of the New Orleans Green Power Program (GPP) (www.theregengroup.com/images/NolaSolar-NOCX-GreenTariff-Proposal.PDF) that was presented to the Utility Committee during the February 28th meeting - sufficient that the City could initiate an RFP for an administrator of a demand-side utility program.
The GPP is very similar to the proposed Delaware's Sustainable Energy Utility Model (SEU) (http://www.seu-de.org/), which "regulates" and "facilitates" very cost-effective reductions on the demand-side of energy consumption. The SEU empowers consumers to meet their own energy needs using conservation, efficiency and renewable generation as well as regulatory access to the local energy distribution systems via net-metering, displaced generation and other similar mechanisms.
Our vision of GPP calls for the creation of a 1000-person Apollo-Alliance style workforce (http://www.apolloalliance.org/about.php). These "green" jobs can reach deep into the neighborhoods - offering training, middle-class wages and healing self-respect - eventually empowering residents to collectively meet much of the City's energy needs while Entergy New Orleans (ENO) is incentivised to service and encourage the development of a robust distributed generation network.
With $175M, GPP plans to invest in 5000 New Orleans homes during the last half of 2008. Of that investment over 61% (roughly $110M) is subsidized via Federal & State Tax Credits as well as Carbon Credits. Each home will receive ~ $33.5K in energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades sufficient to give 5000 families the opportunity to live without escalating energy costs for decades to come.
We are specifically seeking suppliers of advanced energy-efficiency and renewable energy system components such as solar cells, solar thermal components, wind turbines, inverters, disconnects, mounting racks, energy recovery ventilators, ductless split air conditioning systems and instrumentation to be shipped to New Orleans as components; local integrators would package these components into renewable energy kits, initially meeting local needs, but eventually marketing them as, "Made in the USA", throughout the upper Mississippi River Valley, as well as throughout Central and South America.
We would also like the suppliers to deeply discount the first 5000 renewable energy kit components ($132M Wholesale) and/or to also finance the shortfall between incentives and retail value ($65M).
During the last twelve months, New Orleans' city government has worked with the New Orleans Energy Policy Task Force to help fashion a Sustainable Energy Future for the many and diverse peoples of New Orleans. While the GPP only affects a little more than 4% of the City's residences, I believe the impact of announcing that New Orleans is going to "Go Sustainable" would have global implications.
My assigned task by the City is to "...refine the demand-side utility proposal... and the stated need for an indication of interest from Wall Street in order to move forward"; if anyone knows someone who could help in this endeavor, I have some financial data that I can share.
Contact Information:
Christophor Faust
Managing Partner
New Orleans Carbon Exchange
720 Julia Street
4150 St Peters Street
New Orleans, LA 70130
USA
504-582-5089
