Tonight ( just like the second Wednesday of every month), Norfolk Green Drinks will be meeting once again to bring together Norfolk’s’ finest forward thinking pro-environmental citizens.

Each month Green Drinks tries to bring you a speaker that will give a quick overview of his/her expertise in our highlighted environmental aspect. Tonight we are lucky to have Christy Morton, who is the Energy Conservation Specialist at Virginia Natural Gas. She does Community Education and Outreach for the energySMART conservation program and enjoys working in the community to educate customers and citizens about the importance of energy conservation and ways to increase their energy efficiency.

Before joining Virginia Natural Gas in March of last year, Christy was a consultant with a Government and Public Relations firm in Richmond for seven years. She received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science with a Minor in Economics from Christopher Newport University in 2001 and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts Degree in Political Science from Virginia Tech with Certificates in Public Policy Analysis and Environmental Politics and Policy.

I had the opportunity to ask Christy a couple of questions to highlight what she will be speaking about this evening.

What do you think our local Green Drinkers will most be interested in?

· The energySMART program is very exciting because it helps customers save energy and decrease their carbon footprint and I know Green Drinkers will be very interested in that.

What is something you think that they will learn that they may not already know?

· Green Drinkers are pretty savvy, but I find that many people in the community are surprised by some of the simple and inexpensive items that can be purchased at the local hardware store to weatherize their home and increase their efficiency, saving energy and money.

What are you the most proud of your company for doing to help the environment? What do you think is making the biggest impact?

· energySMART was the first conservation program of its kind implemented in Virginia, and I’m very proud of the company for taking that step. I think the offers that we have, free programmable thermostats, rebates for high efficiency natural gas equipment, etc. encourage our customers to make more energy efficient choices, which in turn have a positive impact on their carbon footprint and the environment.

As you can see, Christy has a lot of important and interesting information that could help each of us, help the environment.

Please join us @ the Boot on 21^st Street, tonight, at 5:30 to learn more about what Virginia Natural Gas is doing to help the environment.