The market condition
Louisiana has the highest per capita residential sector electricity consumption in the nation (U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2023). Almost 7 in 10 Louisiana households rely on electric heating and nearly all households have air conditioning. Additionally, Louisiana has the second highest poverty rate in the nation and has a higher level of children living in poverty than any other state. As such, the work to save energy and money for energy consumers is a high priority for the utilities who serve the region.
However, there has been an access issue in proportionately engaging the many kinds of Louisianans that stand to participate in the many energy efficiency programs available to them. Connecting with residential families through its network of schools has remained a challenge. School kit programs have been helpful in years past, but the effectiveness of traditional school energy efficiency programs has diminished due to the reliance on classroom teachers doing the heavy lifting of spearheading the educational programming and organizing the incentives. Teachers are still feeling the effects of the pandemic years, contributing to reduced retention rates and a large teacher shortage in Louisiana. In fact, in 2023, 9% of all Louisiana teachers were uncertified and 12% were in their first or second year of teaching, leading to significant engagement barriers. The outreach to enroll participants has typically relied on digital communications and available prep time of educators. Prep time is no longer the norm and teachers are experiencing digital burnout, leading to further disengagement.
Understanding the need
Informed by the program partners and utilities offering the energy efficiency programs, NTC took a rigorous approach to understanding and reaching out to the identified communities. Consistently, we could see that the energy efficiency program opportunity itself wasn’t the problem with achieving pipeline enrollment goals; reaching the eligible parties to make them aware, interested, then invested in taking the opportunity was. Folks could not participate in something that they did not know about.
With a specific focus on nurturing relationships across customer personas, NTC expanded our approach to connect beyond call center or digital marketing campaigns. To reach outside public elementary schools and school year parameters, choices were made to extend the market into community-based organizations, Girl Scout troops, STEM summer camps, and charter schools, effectively fostering programming into year-round outreach and also into untapped community hubs.
Goals were established to enroll schools and camps within each defined district of Louisiana, to project and fulfill a pipeline of 15,400 kits to at least 80 sites. To prepare the outreach approach, NTC utilized evaluation intel from past educator participants as well as our own Professional Educator Network, a group of over 7,000 educators across the country who have opted into giving regular feedback and insight to all NTC programming. The Louisiana programming was designed to be consistent and kit measures were the same across each marketing persona, but the outreach was tailored to find ambassadors at the community level.
Program execution
NTC’s Outreach Department began by specifying the target personas and developing unique outreach plans to connect with each one. Some examples include:
The specificity, flexibility and rigor of outreach required to meaningfully connect with stakeholders is how it became possible for students to lower the energy use within their homes - whether they be owned, rented, multi-family, rural, suburban or urban.
Results
The results include claimable 2,481,784.28 kWh savings and a 257.71 kw reduction across the state of Louisiana, purely through the activation of young people – verified annually by a reputable third-party evaluator. 16,412 students and 89 education sites were served by the programs and 26,258 residential community members were impacted by it. 53% of the schools’ sites served are classified as “over-burdened and under-served” (verified by CEQ tool developed for Justice40 Initiative, Executive Order 14008). Educators scored the educational value of the program at 6.72 out of 7 possible with 100% of them wanting to participate in the program again and recommending it to their colleagues, which allows for growth and sustainability of future programming
Qualitative results include strong relationships built on behalf of the utilities running the energy efficiency programs. Some quotes from our participating educators include:
The reputation of the available energy efficiency programs has grown exponentially and connected these homes and schools to NTC’s utility partners as a result of breaking through the outreach haze to make real connections through the school communities of Louisiana.
We would like to thank our utility partners Entergy New Orleans and Entergy Solutions for creating this opportunity for their communities, as well as our partners Aptim and Greenlite USA for their steadfast support.
