Sabina Asante, left, and Brown University senior Yasmine Yu in the kitchen below some of the compact fluorescent bulbs installed in Asante’s house in Providence. Below, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, left, chats with Asante and Brown students Erik Duhaime, Yu and Libby Kimzey about the energy-saving project.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

PROVIDENCE — Eighteen months ago, Brown University student Yasmine Yu led a team that replaced 28 incandescent light bulbs in Sabina Asante’s neat, Cape Cod-style house off Reservoir Avenue with energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. It was the first house the students worked on, and Asante thanked them with English tea and biscuits.

On Friday, Yu and her team returned to celebrate the near completion of the $250,000 program. About 100 Brown students installed nearly 66,000 energy-saving bulbs in nearly 5,000 homes of low- and moderate-income residents in Providence.

Brown’s Project 20/20 will save the homeowners at least $2 million in electric bills over the life of the bulbs, and help lower the local carbon footprint by reducing the need to generate electricity.

The program has legs, said Steven Hamburg, a Brown professor who raised half of its costs from Brown and the other half from Wal-Mart. At least one other university is looking into replicating the effort.

The students invited U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse to join them, and took the opportunity to voice support for climate-change legislation before Congress. Whitehouse said he’s already on board, but encouraged people to lobby other senators who don’t support efforts to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Also speaking at the event were members of Rhode Island Interfaith Power & Light, a religious coalition working to deal with climate change.

“We all share the same principles,” said Rabbi Amy Levin. “We are here on earth to protect it and to help care for each other.”

The Rev. Donald C. Anderson, executive minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, added that climate change is a “deeply moral issue.”

He said: “From a theological standpoint, we share this planet with over 6 billion people and what we do here affects everybody on the planet.”

Karina Lutz of People’s Power & Light said that electric- and gas-efficiency programs operated by local utilities cost $19.4 million annually and save more than three times as much for consumers in energy costs.

Hamburg, who is on leave from Brown to serve as chief science adviser for the Environmental Defense Fund, said the savings of energy conservation financially and in reducing impacts on the climate are “an incredibly important story that’s not getting the kind of play we think it should. There are enormous opportunities here that people don’t realize.”

Libby Kimzey, one of the student organizers, said the Brown group is also working on other conservation efforts, such as installing several hundred programmable thermostats in homes, working with students at the Sophia Academy, a private school in Providence, and checking tire pressure on motorists’ cars.

Asante said she saves $8 to $10 a month on her electric bill because of the new bulbs. And none has burned out. Also, she said, the program affected her daughter. Just before she left for college, she urged her mother to stop using bottled water.

That wasn’t surprising, Hamburg said. A survey of 100 people who got the new bulbs showed that it prompted many of them to start conserving in other ways.

The group still has several thousand bulbs to install for low- and moderate-income families. To request the bulbs, call 863-7976 or go to proj2020.org.

plord@projo.com