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Recently SLOE, in partnership with Sandy Hill and Old Ottawa South, launched the Neighbour-to-Neighbour (N2N) Project. This is a low-key but effective approach to engaging friends and neighbours in home electricity audits that identify major sources of electricity demand and opportunities to reduce it.

The goals are to identify simple ways for people to save electricity without spending money; to encourage people to find additional savings; and to get them to refer us to other neighbours for broader impact. The target is to audit 150 homes by the end of 2009 and cover 10% of the homes in the neighbourhood by the end of 2010. We hope to be able to find 20% savings for an average home.

The project will engage people through free home audits as well as a seminar in conjunction with Seventh Generation Community Projects that will identify major consumers of electricity and opportunities to reduce them.

We will follow up 2 months and 1 year after the audit to see how the electricity usage compares to before the audit. We will also compare the results for people who had the home audit to those who only attended the seminar.

For more information please .

With the new Ontario Green Energy Act and the new photovoltaic feed-in tariffs, SLOE is also beginning to explore how we can support a 10kV project in Old Ottawa East, and also how we can stimulate more uptake of domestic solar hot water systems in our community.

There are many other ways to reduce energy use and shift our power sources in our homes and commercial and institutional spaces. And the more we do in this regard, the more credibility we have to argue for significant steps in new development in Ottawa East. This is important because our community will almost certainly be experiencing significant new development in the near future. It is important that new buildings meet leading standards of efficiency. Moreover, especially in the likely event of significant new residential development on the Oblate lands, we would like to see alternative energy opportunities pursued. Some of these ideas will be reflected in the Old Ottawa East Community Design Plan, but we are seeking other ways to promote their implementation.