Louisville / Kentucky / United States
Project Warm was founded in 1982 to provide free weatherization services for low-income people who could no longer afford their high utility bills. The escalating energy prices of the 1970s, approximately a 600% increase in the cost of heating gas, created a crisis for many fixed-income households as well as the families of many workers who were laid off from industries that were shutting down or down-sizing their workforces. Project Warm and Community WinterHelp were created by a group of community-minded individuals that included Dolores Delahanty, then Director of Jefferson County Department for Human Services, Mark Isaacs, architect, Jim Davis, then Director of Accept, Jim Walsh, energy activist, David Ross-Stevens, environmental writer for the Courier-Journal, and Chuck Thurman of LG&E. Trained volunteers carried out energy audits and installed weatherization materials. Low-income volunteers learned weatherization skills and earned free materials for themselves by helping to weatherize the homes of the elderly and disabled. LG&E, the City of Louisville and Jefferson County government provided initial funding and have remained supporters for the past 20 years. Additional support in the early years came from the Bingham Foundation and Cumberland Bank. More recently, Project Warm funding support has come from the Gheens Foundation, the William E. Barth Foundation, the LG&E Energy Foundation, United Hunger Relief, the Honey Locust Foundation, Bank One, Fifth Third Bank, venture grants from Metro United Way and hundreds of individual donors. Each November since 1991 Project Warm has organized the Project Warm Energy-Saving Blitz, in which hundreds of volunteers plug air leaks and install plastic interior window covers in homes of seniors and disabled individuals throughout Jefferson County. In 1984 the U. S. Department of Energy recognized Project Warm for its success in "energy innovation". In the early 1980s Project Warm operated an owner-builder school, providing training for people who wanted to learn how to design and build their own energy efficient home. Project Warm used students in these classes to build several model energy homes that used principles of energy efficient design to create homes with extremely low energy bills. In the mid-1980s Project Warm participated in the Summer Youth Employment Program, teaching hundreds of high school age youth the principles of energy conservation and weatherization techniques ; and in the process, we weatherized hundreds of homes of people in our community who were low-income seniors or disabled. In the late 1980s Project Warm began operating with full-time highly trained staff that worked to augment the Weatherization Assistance Programs operated by local government. Materials for this service were provided free of charge by LG&E. In 1990 Project Warm became the first weatherization organization in the state of Kentucky to implement the use of the "blower-door" into its daily work practices. The blower-door is a sophisticated tool for measuring the air infiltration rate of a building. In 1990 Project Warm helped bring together a group of organizations and individuals who worked with LG&E to bring about the first Demand-side Management energy conservation programs in the state of Kentucky. Project Warm collaborated with this group to design and operate the Energy Partners Program from 1994-1998. During those years Project Warm provided services including energy education, advanced air-sealing and attic insulation to over 2, 000 low-income households in the Greater Louisville area.
