Co-op Power Metro East

Co-op Power Metro East (Metro East) will reduce our communities' over reliance on fossil fuels and work for environmental justice by promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy in low income communities and communities of color in the greater Boston area.

Metro East exists to get people involved in a multi-class, multi-racial movement to build a sustainable and just energy future. Metro East will get people involved as residents – looking at ways we can reduce our energy use, energy costs, green house gas emissions, and reliance on fossil fuels. We will get people involved as workers growing new jobs in a community-based green economy. We will get people involved as human beings – connecting with each other, with their communities, learning together about the key energy and economic challenges before us today, and raising up our voices to have a say in how our communities and local economies work.

Metro East is a part of Co-op Power, a consumer-owned sustainable energy cooperative serving New England and New York. Co-op Power is a multi-racial, multi-class movement for a just and sustainable energy future. It is organized as a decentralized network of energy groups, Metro East being one of them. Groups in Co-op Power develop programs together like this weatherization barn raising program, the solar hot water barn raising program, group energy purchasing programs, and support for community owned green jobs and green energy businesses. Co-op Power operates on a not-for-profit basis. Co-op Power member equity support these projects.

Community Leaders launched Metro East to help Co-op Power members and residents of the Boston area address the high cost of energy. The first step was to support the development of community-owned green jobs and green energy. Co-op Power has partnered with ACE over the last year to support the business planning and business development for five new community-owned businesses, including a community-owned Energy Services Company and Sun King Solar. (We are planning to use CHEET as a launching pad for this Energy Services Company – to identify potential worker-owners and train them through these weatherization programs.)

Next, Metro East helped reduce the purchase price of home heating oil through the initiation of a home heating oil buying group to purchase oil at a reduced cost for residents in the Four Corners area of Boston. Next, Metro East will be working with HEET, a volunteer group of residents in Cambridge Port which holds weatherization barn raisings for people in their Cambridge neighborhood. Together, HEET and Metro East will reach out to a larger community to address energy consumption and inefficiency in many of the most challenged communities in the Boston area. These communities are saturated with turn-of- the century housing most of which heat with oil and many are terribly energy inefficient.

The objective of establishing and conducting CHEET inspections and upgrades is to promote energy conservation awareness in communities that experience a high rate of energy use often in an inefficient manner and where the access to education and awareness is limited. The first step in this education of participants is to provide a concrete example of how taking appropriate steps to conserve energy can save them money and provide long term energy benefits for their homes. Following this initial introduction, Metro East plans to continue educating all interested residents to achieve the goals listed below:

• create more energy efficient homes by addressing weatherization and insulation problems

• reduce energy use and energy costs further through conservation

• increase use of renewable energy sources where appropriate

• increase community ownership of sustainable energy