Vulnerable City Plans for Future
John Hargrove is President and CEO of the Association of Energy Services Professionals.
New Orleans, with its historic mansions, soulful jazz, culinary delights and spirited French Quarter, continually earns its special place in the heart of America. The city is also a demonstration of resilience and strength. As the Association of Energy Services Professionals learned during our 2018 National Conference in the Big Easy, New Orleans is becoming a model city for setting energy efficiency goals and designing and implementing measures to meet them.
Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and New Orleans simply has no choice but to invent and innovate. The city recently spelled out its challenges and plans to meet them in a report, Climate Action for a Resilient New Orleans.
According to the report, New Orleans, located where the Mississippi Delta meets the Gulf of Mexico, is arguably more affected by climate change than any other U.S. city.
"According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Louisiana has lost nearly nineteen hundred square miles (forty-nine hundred square kilometers) of land since 1932. That is an area as large as the state of Delaware.
More than eighteen hundred additional square miles (forty-six hundred square kilometers) could disappear by 2060 if the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan is not implemented in full.