Jacque sees the light
Councilwoman goes door to door offering free energy-efficient light bulbs
By Joe Piasecki 01/29/2009
Supported by teams of volunteers from the John Muir High School nonprofit Mustangs on the Move, Outward Bound Los Angeles and Neighborhoods Acting Together to Help All, Robinson hopes to sign up hundreds of her District 1 constituents for the city’s Power of 10 Challenge — an effort to get all Pasadena homes to swap at least 10 incandescent light bulbs for energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs.
To get the job done, Pasadena Water and Power is offering $75 worth of compact fluorescents for free to any household that registers. The only catch: Saturday’s the deadline to sign up.
“Not everyone can put solar panels on their house, so this is a practical way for everybody to go green,” said Robinson, who will be on the streets from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and invites additional volunteers to join the effort by meeting her before the event at Perry’s Joint, 2051 Lincoln Ave., Pasadena.
As of last week, said PWP Public Benefit Program Administrator John Hoffman, 12,944 PWP households — slightly under a quarter of the 52,800 that are eligible for the free bulbs — had signed up for the program, which was announced last summer when PWP sent one free compact fluorescent bulb to all its residential customers.
If every Pasadena household were to replace just 10 incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents ($75 worth covers as many as 16 bulbs of 15 different sizes and varieties), said Hoffman, carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 10,000 tons each year.
Power of 10 Challenge light bulb giveaways are funded by the public benefit charge that appears on monthly power bills — at .005 cents per kilowatt hour, it costs the average household about $3.50 per month.
So why hasn’t everyone signed up?
“It’s one of those things where people see that $75 and they think there’s strings attached,” said PWP Communications Director Erica Roluffs. “But nope, it’s for real. We’re serious, and we hope as many people as possible take advantage.”
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