Resilience New Orleans: What Entergy's Resilience Campaign Means for You!

Hurricanes are an unfortunate reality for New Orleanians, but our city is lucky to have a forward-thinking City Council that prioritizes protecting residents from the ravages of climate change. In the coming months, the City Council will consider a 10-year plan from Entergy, costing $1 billion dollars, to make our electrical grid more resilient to severe weather. Implementing this resilience plan means recovering quicker from storms and fewer power losses throughout the year.

In 2023, Resilience New Orleans commissioned a study to ensure the resiliency plan would benefit the entire community, by examining how a resiliency plan would help improve the lives of New Orleans' vulnerable populations, like those who are low-income, lack access to nutrition or are unhealthy. The study found that vulnerable communities are the primary beneficiaries of a resilience plan.

Use the map below to learn what grid hardening investments will be made in your community, and how the resiliency plan will benefit the community's vulnerable residents.
Or click here to learn about our study's key findings.

Note: The study uses only publicly available data to ensure the report was free from bias and the public could verify our results.

Key Findings

Resilience New Orleans, a 501(c)(4) organization in New Orleans, led by energy expert and consumer advocate Casey DeMoss, engaged HedgeRow Analysis, LLC to quantify the investments in grid resilience in communities experiencing energy vulnerability and estimate the benefits these communities should receive as a result. Below is a set of key findings, that looks at how Entergy New Orleans's proposed, 10-year, $1 billion dollar, impacts vulnerable communities in New Orleans.

• Preliminary analysis of the $1.0 billion investment level indicates that disadvantaged communities within the City of New Orleans will reap approximately $1.25 billion in benefits from approximately $453 million in investments in those areas (Table 1).
• Additional benefits will be realized from decreased response times after outages, and decreased frequency and duration of outages. Vulnerable areas make up 38% of communities but will receive nearly 44% of the resilience investments.
• ENO's resilience investments will have positive impacts on residents that experience food insecurity, those that have chronic or acute illnesses or injury, and for hourly wage earners. Reduction in food losses from less frequent and shorter duration outages could save $10.8 million to $141 million per year. 63% of SNAP authorized grocery retailers are located within 50 meters of a proposed line upgrade, and 73 of those grocery stores are located within food deserts.
• While the proportion of medical facilities impacted by resilience investments varies among City Council Districts, 11 of 23 urgent care facilities, 12 of 19 dialysis centers, and 7 of 12 nursing homes examined will benefit. For every treatment day these 12 dialysis centers remain open saves residents from $350 to $900 thousand. Likewise, if the 11 urgent care centers near upgraded lines remain operational after a storm event, it would save $1.3 to $1.8 million per day.
• Nearly 86,000 employees work in areas that will have some level of resilience upgrade, including 20,500 lower wage positions earning > $1,250 per month.
• Full implementation of ENO's resiliency plan will decrease the chances that the 4,362 New Orleans residents that are reliant on electricity-dependent DME [such as ventilators, oxygen concentrators, power wheelchairs, intravenous or feeding equipment] can avoid costly emergency department visits, avoid evacuation during storm events, and reduce anxiety and mental strain during storm related outages.

Estimated investment and benefits in vulnerable and less vulnerable areas

$1.0B plan

$750M plan

Vulnerable communities were defined using the Centers for Disease Control Social Vulnerability Index (CDC/ATSDR 2023) to select census tracts ranked in the top third most vulnerable statewide. 70 out of the 179 tracts [in New Orleans] considered in this analysis were selected as vulnerable for this preliminary analysis. The CDC/ATSDR SVI uses 16 U.S. census variables, in 4 themes (socioeconomic, household, racial and ethnic minority status, and housing type/transportation) and is designed to help local officials identify communities that may need support before, during, or after disasters. The other vulnerability indexes related to climate and income, electricity-dependent medical equipment, food availability, transportation and energy stress.

Vulnerability of New Orleans communities based on 6 common metrics/indices