Clean Energy Durham Expands Program to Greensboro

Clean Energy Durham's new program, Pete Street, has expanded again and will now be used by the Greensboro Housing Coalition.

Pete Street helps residents and neighborhoods to save money and energy in their homes and daily lives. The program's simple and effective approach is to: learn, do, and teach.  Neighbors attend a workshop together to learn energy-saving behaviors and techniques.  They are encouraged to go home and do some of the techniques they learned, then teach other neighbors and track their savings.

“Pete” refers to that guy or gal down the block who knows how to install a programmable thermostat, recently had the attic insulated, is on a time-of-use utility plan, or has other energy-saving knowledge to share.  The goal is to have Petes on every street.

Communities using this program now include Durham, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Siler City, Wilson, and Warren County.  As in these places, Pete Street supports the multiple goals of reducing energy consumption, limiting carbon emissions, saving residents’ money and making homes more comfortable – while providing access to energy education for every resident, regardless of walk of life, home ownership status or income.

Philip Azar, Executive Director of Clean Energy Durham, the non-profit organization that created and distributes the Pete Street program, said, “It is important to engage the whole community in addressing these challenges."

About Pete Street™
Pete Street is a powerful community-based program that creates volunteer neighborhood networks engaged in saving energy and money. It includes everything needed for a community to fund, organize, implement and evaluate a successful community-building, energy-savings program. Pete Street was developed by Clean Energy Durham, a nonprofit organization that helps create and support organizations of neighbors helping neighbors save energy. To learn more about the Pete Street Program, please go to www.petestreet.org, or contact info@petestreet.org.

Durham Insider Leads Neighborhood Crawl

Durhamite’s affection for their home is pretty well-known. To be clear – there was a mass ceremony for people to “marry” the city last month. So, events like the upcoming Neighborhood Hike are a pretty obvious outcome of such affection.

The April 9th hike begins in the South Ellerbe Creek Nature Area at Ninth and Green Streets at 9 AM and continues through an old mill village. See an old liquor house, a parsonage ordered from a Sears catalogue and a quiet urban garden in Old West Durham before continuing up Oakland, past Oval Park, in the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood and past the old Watts Hospital.

Next is a hidden alley and the site where a famous songwriter was born followed by Walltown and some insight into Duke's original plans to build here. The hike will go past Richard Nixon's house in Trinity Heights and continue past the homes of Duke's famous faculty and coaches on Buchanan (including Cap Card, the father of Duke Basketball - and Wallace Wade, whose bowl games paid for Cameron Indoor Stadium).

Finally, the hike continues down Watts Street, past Trinity Park park, to the site where Kevin Costner was filmed in his boxers then head across East Campus to Ninth Street, past Erwin Cotton Mills and back to where the starting location.

Local history lover John Schelp will narrate along the way. No need to register. Parking is available on streets near Ninth and Green. Get more history here and see some images from last year’s hike here. The hike is co-sponsored by Sierra Club, GoTriangle, Clean Energy Durham and the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association and occurs rain or shine.