With a start-up grant from The Century Fund in hand, the Alliance has been moving ahead with its Sustainable Energy Center Project, a coordinated regional approach that we believe will help the Greater Lehigh Valley address the ecological crises pressing down upon us all.

As this Directory was going to press, we were beginning Phase 2 in earnest:orming a stakeholder council and focus groups to get the Sustainable Energy Center up and running. Staffing these with stakeholder volunteers will be ongoing. If you are interested in working on this project, contact us.

What's at stake? The more we know about the deepening climate instability crisis and the more we see what's happening to the environment and to society, the scarier it gets. Understandings about feedback loops, tipping points, trillions of tons of methane crystals within just a very few degrees of melting to fuel the runaway greenhouse, mass extinctions underway, all show how precarious our situation has become. These facts force us to look at extremely stark realities.

Energy, in all its forms, drives our culture and our society. We use more of it per capita than any other country. Many Kyoto Treaty countries have been working on solutions for decades. The euro leaping ahead in value as the dollar fails to find the floor, is an indication that taking deep ecological action is very positive for the economy as it reduces the dangers of the climate instability tsunami.

Despite the international scale of the climate crisis, action at the local level is needed. More and more communities are realizing that they cannot afford to wait for federal action and are implementing effective local actions themselves. We are determined to do what is needed. We think that the Sustainable Energy Center can be an effective means for mobilizing community efforts throughout the Greater Lehigh Valley. We invite you to be part of this effort.

What exactly is the Sustainable Energy Center? As we envision it, the Sustainable Energy Center will demonstrate and provide information about green principles: sus-tainable energy sources, food production, green building, land & water management, transportation, waste, education, healthall wholistically integrated and managed by community stakeholders.

Stakeholders! That is, people representing the Lehigh Valley's activist organizations, community groups, local governments, businesses, labor groups, farmers, unaffiliated community advocates, faith communities. People representing an array of focus groups that we plan on setting up, each organized to address a particular component of the overall project.

While the specific form of the Center, at the time this Directory was going to press, was still to be decided, we believed that coordinated, regional efforts would probably best be served by a central facility with satellite projects in municipalities throughout the Greater Lehigh Valley (see the E.House essay for an example).

Whatever the form, the Sustainable Energy Center Project would build public aware-ness, enthusiasm, and action in many ways. Providing comprehensive information, models, and examples of available options. Demonstrating and incubating sustainable practices. Providing training. Coordinating actions. Working in concert with the many organizations and individuals heading us toward sustainability.

Given the unprecedented threats we face, unprecedented actions are required. The ways out of this conundrum demand cooperative action, hope, training, practice, vision and the use of all our abilities and faculties. Intuition, high and low tech energy systems, an intense desire to regenerate the natural world, greening our structures, and a carbon neutral footprint must be among the central organizing principles of our society. But act we must.

There's more info about the Sustainable Energy Center Center in the In-Depth section of this website. We think the Sustainable Energy Center Project can take us where we need to go. But it needs the involvement, the experience, the knowledge, the drive, the combined efforts of a whole host of individuals—exactly like the ones in the Alliance sustainability network, readers of this Directory, and organizations that promote sustainable communities—exactly like the ones listed in the Directory.

Please contact the Alliance Energy Group by email or call the Alliance Office at 484-851-3910, if you'd like to get involved. We look forward to hearing from you.