2025 Clean Buildings, Healthy Communities convening in New Orleans June 20, 2025

This month, PSR joined organizers, activists and advocates from around the country in New Orleans for three days of inspiring conversations on the work the building electrification movement is doing to make people’s homes and communities safer and healthier. The first day of the convening also included site visits to see the important work being done locally to build the city’s resilience to climate-fueled extreme weather. Our first stop of the day was at a local community-based organization, Healthy Community Services’ Oasis Project, a community rain garden that makes up one of the neighborhood’s green infrastructure projects that together have the ability to capture 8,800 gallons of rain per storm, dramatically reducing local flooding. We also visited Broadmoor Community Church, which is part of an expanding network of Community Lighthouses, solar and storage resilience hubs that can provide neighbors with a safe, air-conditioned place to charge phones and get essential resources during power outages. 

In addition to these inspiring local visits, the convening also featured speakers from amazing organizations around the country working to improve their communities health through building electrification initiatives. It was great to hear more about the work our colleague at PSR-LA, Edgar Barraza is doing in coalitions like the Building Energy, Equity and Power (BEEP) coalition to advance equitable building decarbonization in California through holistic whole home retrofit programming. At a time when it feels like climate action at the national level is stagnant (at best), it was inspiring and refreshing to learn about all the important work being done in communities to improve people’s health by getting gas out of buildings.