North Springs United Methodist Church in Atlanta was the first to receive a Power Wise Energy Audit from Georgia Interfaith Power & Light. Photo by Alison AmyxSince 2003, Georgia Interfaith Power & Light (GIPL) has engaged communities of faith in stewardship of God’s Creation as a direct reflection of our faithfulness through worship, education and the sustainable generation and efficient use of energy.  Thanks to recent federal and state funding, GIPL now has even greater tools and resources to help congregations in Georgia protect Creation by saving energy. GIPL’s program—Power Wise—offers low-cost Energy Audits to faith communities across the state.

No other organization in the country is offering congregations of every faith a detailed road map like this to systematically assess and reduce their energy use, and demand for this Power Wise has been unprecedented.  Congregations from Savannah to Athens and Augusta to Macon have signed up to receive Power Wise Energy Audits. 

In addition to Energy Audits, Power Wise congregations are eligible to apply for up to $25,000 in Energy Improvement Matching Grants. This program is designed to help congregations institute changes that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive, such as improving insulation, upgrading lighting and windows, and installing energy efficient heating and air conditioning units.

Power Wise helps congregations become better stewards of their financial resources and of God’s Creation. Money saved through energy efficiency improvements can be used to support your congregation’s mission and programming.

 To sign up for Power Wise, please visit Georgia Interfaith Power & Light’s website. Our Power Wise Program Director will contact you to get your congregation started on the path to energy savings.





• In Georgia, the libraries have free Kill-A-Watt machines for check out.  The Kill-a-Watt will help you see how much electricity various appliances in your house use.  These are a great way to prioritize which appliances you could replace with more energy efficient ones and save money!
• Google and Microsoft have both developed energy tracking programs to help you monitor and track your electricity usage.  Both of these systems are automated if your electricity provider is partnered with them...Unfortunately, to date, no energy providers in Georgia are partnering to make electricity monitoring automated.  BUT you can manually enter in the data from your bill in these programs to learn more.
• If you really want to automate your energy tracking now, you can purchase a TED 5000 which works with Google PowerMeter and will allow you to bypass having to work with your electricity provider to get this information.  The TED can be purchased for around $200 and runs off of solar or wind to keep from using more electricity off the grid!

If you are using any of these tools, we would love to hear how they are working for you.  Pleaase post a comment below or send me an email.

 Seafood: What is Safe, Sustainable and Rich in Omega 3s

Visit the LiveStrong website to learn how to make wise choices in choosing your seafood AND sign the pledge to reduce your electricity use to keep mercury from coal plants out of our fish and off our family's dinner tables.

Read the article at the Gainesville Times.

I'll kick off the conversation, but we want hear from you.  What have YOU done that's worked to save energy and money?

Last year, we did a small addition to our house.  We took the opportunity to do some weatherization on our house, simple stuff like:

• Weather-stripping around all of the doors
• Added some insulation to the exterior walls of the addition
• Sealed the duct work for our HVAC unit
• Replaced our old hot water heater (heating water can account for up to 30% of your electricity bill!)

We knew that we had increased the amount of heated/cooled space in our house, and that we needed balance this out with some better changes.

Doug and I are gadget freaks.  We love the newest, greatest techno thing ever.  While that's fun for us, this type of consumerism has also been blamed for the increasing demand in electricity.  So we had to balance our love of stuff with our desire to reduce our electricity usage:

• We put our TV and cable box on spike bars that we turn off every night.
• We're converting our lighting to compact flourescent bulbs (these need to be handled carefully and recycled since they have mercury in them) and are looking into LED.
• We shifted to laptops that are Energy Star laptops. 
• We got rid of our coffee pot!  Instead we have delicious french press coffee in the morning.  We boil our water with an electric tea kettle and brew fresh coffee in our french press.  The only electricity we use is the short amount of time that it takes to boil the water.

All of these things helped us save $75/month on our electric bill.  Wow!  Keeping mercury out of the river and keeping money in our wallets.  Fantastic!

Want to get more tips and share what's worked for you?  Take the pledge to save electricity today!