Post-Katrina, Global Green Gives New Orleans An Eco-Facelift

Before Hurricane Katrina struck, New Orleans was far from a model of environmental sustainability. The centuries-old houses with 10-foot ceilings that lend the city its charm were horribly energy inefficient, nearly every building in the city was vulnerable to heavy flooding, and the city had no LEED-certified buildings or an energy code before the storm.

Soon after Katrina and the inadequate government response to the disaster, environmental non-profit Global Green capitalized on the opportunity to rebuild the city as an international example of sustainability. Through green affordable housing projects, education initiatives to teach residents about global warming and sustainability, and efforts to green local schools, Global Green hopes to achieve the greatest impact possible on New Orleans while inspiring national and international governments to follow suit.

"The response has been pretty phenomenal," said Matt Petersen, President and CEO of Global Green. "We came here with this vision for New Orleans to have another thing it's known for, besides great food, music, culture. We wanted architects and contractors to get educated on how to do green buildings, and we want firms there to be able to compete for jobs in other places with their green expertise. And I feel really good about what we've been able to accomplish in five years."

Today, Global Green's impact can be felt all over New Orleans. Following a high-profile collaboration with Brad Pitt, there are now more green single-family affordable housing units being built in New Orleans than in any other U.S. city. Louisiana currently has the most progressive solar tax credit in the country, hundreds of green building products are now available there that weren't before, and tons of green building projects are underway in New Orleans--including 73 LEED projects and an estimated 500 LEED-certified homes. (http://tinyurl.com/2dt67q5).

Petersen says the organization's greatest success has been the greening of schools in the area, which had significantly reduced energy costs and provided cleaner air and a healthier overall environment for New Orleans students.

"The highest-impact, although the least known of our successes has been our schools project," Petersen told HuffPost. "We have impacted six schools directly and created a policy to impact eight more. We've created some curriculum for environmental education programs, gotten parents more involved in fundraising, helped the district negotiate with FEMA to get full cost reimbursement, and updated energy efficiency for four schools, saving a total of $25,000 per school."

Shannon Jones, the executive director of Tulane University's Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives, said Global Green's impact on the quality of New Orleans schools has been immeasurable.

"Before Katrina, schools in this area required about a billion dollars in maintenance," she said. "Now we're building schools that also are more environmentally sound, and it's saving them a lot of money on electricity."

Global Green has also had a number of policy successes: They influenced the state government to offer a 50 percent solar tax credit and to consider green criteria in allocating low-income housing tax credits, the staff co-chaired Mayor Landrieu's new transition team on sustainable energy and the environment, and they have been invited to submit a bid to run the city's weatherization program for the next three years.

Despite New Orleans' progress in becoming a greener city, Petersen said the recent Gulf oil spill was a sobering reminder of the need for stronger environmental initiatives and policies across the world.

"With global warming, flooding is going to be part of New Orleans' future, whether by levee break or sea water rise," he said, "but in light of the Gulf Oil Spill, we realize that rebuilding a more energy-efficient New Orleans isn't enough. We must invest in a green energy future for the Gulf and the nation. We must embark on a national campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Because the reality is that if we don't do something about global warming, New Orleans is going to be lost."

Comments

[EndSeparateness]

11:33 AM on 10/10/2010

The largest waste of energy is home and business energy use. Europe is way ahead with a new building code that reduces energy consumption by 50-90%. Imagine the jobs created by remodeling existing structures to meet these new codes? And, not to mention immediately passing sweeping legislation for new home construction. This is true Conservatism!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/business/energy-environment/26smart.html?pagewanted=2&sq=vermont%20green%20home&st=cse&scp=8

[r krebs]

03:59 PM on 09/01/2010

Laura Bassett makes some good points! Post Katrina New Orleans is confirming a smart choice for green building materials. Some of these Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) houses built by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right are meant to float if flooded again! Bound by anchored poles, those houses can stay AND rise with the water. What a brilliant use of materials: The plastic walls are delivered factory-uniform, easily assembled on-site (volunteers), use polystyrene foam insulation similar to your picnic ice chest (so they can float), SIPs seal the building envelope so effectively DOE homeowners may choose to bypass the blower door test for Energy Star applications http://bit.ly/b9ef8y ! National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has done a study on why plastic foam walls like these can perform better than traditional stud and batt insulation: http://bit.ly/ct4xth . When a wall is solid, no convective air currents in the wall’s cavity reduce the thermal performance. A better performing wall = saves energy and emissions.

[WarmGingerTea]

05:27 PM on 09/28/2010

I didn't realize the houses would float. Years ago I saw a special on TV re/ houses being built to float in Denmark and despite all my googling after Katrina, I couldn't find any info. Same deal ... they are bounded by anchor poles. Glad to hear this design is being used in N.O.

Fanned & faved.

[acura234]

01:00 PM on 08/31/2010

I just wanted to make others aware & give credit where credit is due.

Mike Holmes of Home and Garden Television's Holmes on Homes—who has been helping Canadian homeowners plagued by fraudulent and inept builders "make it right" (as he often says on the show)—also lent a hand to the Make It Right Foundation, taking his crew down to New Orleans to build homes pro-bono. He & his team built the yellow house shown on previous
page. Along with helping out with others.

[Jim Hartman]

04:45 PM on 08/30/2010

"Cracker" houses in South Florida were very comfortable. No A/C but plenty of shade and breeze.

[Jeanpierre Prieur]

12:28 PM on 08/27/2010

Shannon Jones, the executive director of Tulane University's Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives, said Global Green's impact on the quality of New Orleans schools has been immeasurable.

"Before Katrina, schools in this area required about a billion dollars in maintenance," she said. "Now we're building schools that also are more environmentally sound, and it's saving them a lot of money on electricity."
Global Green has also had a number of policy successes: They influenced the state government to offer a 50 percent solar tax credit and to consider green criteria in allocating low-income housing tax credits, the staff co-chaired Mayor Landrieu's new transition team on sustainable energy and the environment, and they have been invited to submit a bid to run the city's weatherization program for the next three years.

Despite New Orleans' progress in becoming a greener city, Petersen said the recent Gulf oil spill was a sobering reminder of the need for stronger environmental initiatives and policies across the world.

This is a great "Green News"

[wishfulslinking]

12:23 PM on 08/29/2010

We, in New Orleans, happily await Mr. Cowen's resignation.

Signed,

Newcomb Alumni

[cybersense]

09:33 AM on 08/27/2010

I moved from the older house type that was actually built very wellfor summer heat. You could actually open the windows and get across breeze that was nice. I also liked the older style radiantheat, although you do get uneven heat distrubtion, breathing waseasier and you didn't have such dry air. Now, I live in a smallsuburban salt and pepper rambler. Cross ventilation is nonexistant. In the winter, I use the older windows so I actually getsome fresh air. New windows are great, but when you want not tofeel like you are being blasted by gas forced air, having a littlefresh air (even if cold) is devine.

[sparkey]

04:52 AM on 08/27/2010

Those who read about Katrina 50 years from now, if the US is here 50 years from now,will swear that there was a wall around New Orleans and as soon as Katrina got to New Oreleans, the wall stopped it from going any farther north and certainly did not let it do any damage to Mississippi. Even now, you don't read anything about any damage to Mississippi or surrounding areas of Louisiana, just New Orleans.

[HoosierInMaryland]

06:44 AM on 08/27/2010

Maybe, sparkey, because it wasn't the hurricane that tried to destroy New Orleans, but the stupidity of the Army Corps of Engineers that allowed for the flooding of the city.

And did you forget that Alabama also received damage from Katrina? And that there was damage from the storm that went north into Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, and into Ontario? Not damage from hurricane force winds and storm surge, but from the heavy rains that caused flooding in those areas.

[wishfulslinking]

12:21 PM on 08/29/2010

Hoosier, Yankee, or whatever,

The Eye of Katrina directly hit and obliterated our beloved Waveland, Biloxi, and Gulfport, MS.

The great beautiful ante-bellum Victorian houses are ALL gone, the slabs were gone, only lawns were left. They were NEVER found, nothing. it was though the stor in OZ whisked the small towns away, leaving no trace, and a clean lawn.

The reason for the lack of news coverage wasn't the COE. It was sensationalism, as always. The people of MS evacuated, maintained dignity, did NOT loot, their lands also did not flood or sit in standing water for 6 weeks.

However, thier community was washed away as though by a Tsunami, in New Orleans, that ONLY happened in one small neighborhood in the 9th ward when a flood wall broke.

Speak of what you know, while NOT disparaging a beautiful community lost forever.

Signed,

A New Orleans Neighbor

[ghostpigeon]

02:47 AM on 08/27/2010

From the comments below, I'm glad I'm not the voice of a lone "prophet of doom" on a city street corner. I don't mean to totally diss what organizations (and let's call them what they are: businesses) like Global Green are trying to do, but they are doing in this article what BP is doing with dispersants to hide the oil, by obfuscating both the long term effects of "green gentrification" post-Katrina (the dispersal of the African American community out of New Orleans after the disaster) and the ongoing destruction of the environment by corporate America.

Yes, we all need to reign our resource use; I agree with that wholeheartedly, but the damage we do is dwarfed by companies like BP, Louisiana Pacific, Anaconda Copper, and every other resource extraction company across American industry. Pile on the wars we fight so such companies can plunder the world under the guise of a national "crisis" like the so-called war on terror and it dwarfs both what we as consumer can do for "sustainability" by recycling, solar water heating, etc. Most of us can't afford it anyway and don't even own houses, nor can we afford them.

We do need a quantum change in our lifestyles, but need an attendant revamping of capitalism itself if we ever are to find a long term solution to sustainability. It's long overdue to think in terms of what "we" can do and go beyond what "I" can do achieve a real revolution.

[Senseid]

02:02 AM on 08/27/2010

Why do we continue to talk as if Katrina is history - something for the history books and never to be repeated again? With the gulf warming as it is, hurricanes are only going to become more frequent and more violent over time. This is Mother Nature we are talking about!

[HoosierInMaryland]

06:39 AM on 08/27/2010

Maybe because it wasn't the hurricane itself that brought the flooding, but the stupid 'build it cheap' mentality of the Army Corps of Engineers?

[prudd]

01:34 AM on 08/27/2010

Interesting article. There is a lot of misinformation about sustainability out there, and it sounds like Global Green and Brad Pitt are perpetuating it. People who are serious about sustainability are beginning to reject LEED; they see it as a means to sell new green products and not a substantial means of changing our consumption patterns. Hate to say it, but density is the only substantial solution. Read David Owen's Green Metropolis - by far the best thing written on green to date. He says, "concentrating dwellings and businesses ... is the only way to achieve deep reductions in per capita energy use." Meaning solar and more insulation etc. has minimal effect when we're still building sprawl.

See betacity - http://betacity.wordpress.com/posters/cities/
and Chakrabarti - http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/07/a-country-of-cities/

[lrobb]

04:37 AM on 08/27/2010

While density certainly is far more sustainable than the suburbian model, it fails to take human nature into account. Given a choice, most humans will opt for a home where they do not live cheek-by-jowl with their neighbors and have a back yard suitable for vigorous, and private, play by children and dogs.

Some of us are neither congenial or neighborly, and all the sustainable neighborhoods in the world aren't going to fix that. I am among that number. I also have three large, friendly dogs who need space. Anyone who tells me to give up my canine companions for the good of the collective has a huge fight on their hands.

This would be why I have on my drawing board the plans for a "new" old house sited on 5 acres to encompass an organic market garden, workshop and a 3,500 sf 4 over 4 center hall construction reproduction of an 1820's Greek Revival house constructed of rammed earth. This construction method is at least as old as the Chinese Wall and can be documented in South Carolina in the 1820's. It is also probably the most green construction method going.

The plans also call for a natural swimming pool--yes, you can have nice clean water to swim in without either chemicals or an electrical pump. They have them all over Europe. Just google "natural swimming pool."

We are also looking into methods of electrical generation which will take us completely off the grid.

[cybersense]

09:22 AM on 08/27/2010

Sounds pretty neat. And, I agree about slamming everyone so closetogether. It's nice to have a little space, and community gardensif you don't have the room, there are other ways to still keep somespace, but help make living and working situations workable. Idon't like that "living on top of each other" idea for the mostpart, because I know about disease and how quickly it spreads intoo cramped area's. I do like the older style buildings. I knowthat when I see these old buildings, why there were built that way.I lived in older style building with radiant heat, and have to tellyou breathing was a lot nicer. When we tighten up buildings, thereis more potential for other problems, so we do need to be carefulhow far we go, without considering other factors. But, I do likehow these buildings are being built for future flooding in mind.Why ignore that? Why slab and stick? Gardening is also an importantelement. It doesn't just feed people, it helps take up the extranitrogen as well.

[creole-girl]

01:10 AM on 08/27/2010

Jerome Healy Commented 45 minutes ago
"Creole-girl, I want to thank you and other New Orleanians for
the spirited defense you make on these pages. I have been gone
over 20 years and my heart breaks over what you people have had
to endure from the storm and now the idi0ts that tro// the
Huff-Post."


Cant imagine why they removed your comment Jerome, while leaving some of the more aggregious comments here. Thanks for the support. we appreciate it.

[hottie2]

12:16 AM on 08/27/2010

If the money was donated to MIR by the people to build homes for the people that lost theirs
then please explain to me why they are being sold. The normal family doesn't have 30%
per cent of their income to buy one. Wasn't the 9th district one of the poorest in NO? Some
one with social security, welfare, or disability will never be able to replace their home. It's
just like the way the money from the government was given out, to the people that had
money. I aprove of building green but the houses they have built are really ugly. It takes
away from the charm of NO. At the very least it wouldn't hurt to build a green house that
looks normal. There isn't one picture of them that I would even want to see, much less
spend a lot of money for.

[Bari Landry Vaz]

07:13 AM on 08/27/2010

MIR is using the same (or a very similar) model to what is used by Habitat for Humanity. HH houses are sold to the owners for a "reasonable" mortgage. The reasoning is that a person or family will invest themselves more fully in maintaining a house if they actually "invest" in it (monetarily and with "sweat equity").

Of course, what HH does not like to publcize is that nearly 90% of people who seek a home from HH are turned down because they cannot AFFORD the "reasonable" mortgage.

[Phxgwen]

09:40 AM on 08/27/2010

Because the cost of the home being built with green materials, the architects, the solar panels etc..cost more then the price the homes are being sold for.

In addition homeowners are offered special mortgages through MIR that is specially designed for their budget and forgivable.. some are automatically being written off with the promise that the homeowners will live in the house for 10 years.

In addition homeowners see utility bills that are dramatically lowered or non existent.. some have the opportunity to sell excess electricity back to the utility company.

And they have the peace of mind that the materials are safe to their families (trailer debacle) and that they are specially designed to withstand another Katrina/flooding.

[av10]

11:56 PM on 08/26/2010

Thankfully, the feds are also looking into Katrina threats and killings- committed by reich-wing extremists:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/us/27racial.html?_r=1&hpw

[doctorj2u]

11:48 PM on 08/26/2010

Is anyone listening out there??
http://www.wwltv.com/eyewitness-morning-news/Vince-Vances-I-Am-New-Orleans-101166954.html

[lazercat2008]

10:28 PM on 08/26/2010

But they just keep building in a flood zone.

[MyIrishEyes]

10:32 PM on 08/26/2010

Sacramento is built in a flood zone. What's your point?

[doctorj2u]

10:46 PM on 08/26/2010

Miami, NYC, and Tampa, along with other American cities are at more risk than New Orleans. Again, what is your point? How many American cities are you willing to write off?