Clean Energy Springfield

First off, I've been negligent in not welcoming Kevin to the blog. Kevin's been with CES from the start, and was active doing what we're trying to do even before that. As you can see from his first two posts, he's extremely knowledgeable about some of the nitty-gritty of moving to a more sustainable world, and so should be an invaluable member of the Springfield blogging community.

Secondly, I guess now is as good a time as any to note that in the next month or so, I'll be leaving Springfield for Austin, TX, due to my wife getting transferred. It's been great living in Springfield, and CES has been a huge part of that. But Austin is booming and weird, so the sadness is mixed with excitement. I'll still be around for a little while, though, so you're not rid of me yet.

One of the things I've been remiss in not mentioning is CWLP's enhanced energy efficiency rebates. You may recall that as part of the Sierra Club agreement, CWLP is increasing its spending on energy efficiency programs from $40,000 per year to $400,000 per year. They're going to be conducting a study to see how best to use that money; in the interim, however, they're supercharging their existing insulation rebate program, offering to cover 30% of the cost, up to $500. Insulation is always the place the start when you're looking at your home energy use.

And if you're not sure where to begin, consider either getting a home energy audit, where someone will come out and go through your house with you, helping you to prioritize what you can do to lower your energy use, or attending a low cost/no cost workshop, which gives you insight and experience in plugging all the little gaps in your home.

I'd like to build on Greg’s recent post, which highlights CWLP’s efforts to “super-charge” its Insulation Rebate Program. I bet you’ve heard the commercials on the radio or seen the advertisements in the SJR about this enhanced program. It’s good to see that CWLP is making a concerted effort to market the program and hopefully more residents will take advantage of the rebate.

Let's focus on the energy rebate concept for a minute. Rebates for energy efficienct products are usually designed to encourage the purchase and accelerate the market penetration of specific products. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, most rebate programs target appliances and equipment meeting Energy Star® standards, which are typically 10%-30% more efficient than most products. Rebates of $50 and $75 per unit for new energy- and water-saving clothes washers and dryers have been especially popular.

I decided to a check around and find out if other utilities provide rebates for energy efficient products. Below is a sampling of rebate programs that are offered in other parts of the country, courtesy of the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency web site.

 The Long Island Power Authority offers residents a rebate of $2 for the purchase of LED lights, with a limit of ten packages of lights per customer.
 The Fort Collins Utilities offers a $50 cash rebate for Energy Star clothes washers.
 Aquila, a Kansas City-based electric and natural gas distribution company, offers a $2/watt DC rebate for the installation of on-site photovoltaic systems (up to 10 kW).
 The Cedar Falls Utilities offers a $200 rebate for central air conditioners (14 SEER or higher).
 The Ozark Border Electric Cooperative (MO) offers $150/ton rebates (up to $900) for geothermal heat pumps.
 The Osage Municipal Utilities (IA) has offered rebates for air conditioner and furnace tune-ups.

As you can see, there are significant opportunities for CWLP to grow its energy rebate program. Let’s hope the utility is planning to roll out rebates for other energy efficienct products in the near future. They've proved to be effective in helping customers save energy and money.

A commenter on Kevin's post about recycling asks if we've seen the PBS show on global dimming. I haven't, but I'm aware of the gist of it--that all of our other pollution has so far masked much global warming, by bouncing some solar energy out into space. That, along with other occasional news stories about everything happening faster than expected, leads our commenter to plaintively ask:

I'm not sure how to sleep at night and I never felt so powerless or depressed. Is there ANY hope at all to stop or reverse global warming?

It's not an uncommon sentiment, but it's one that I don't share, much. Global warming isn't one thing or the other. For example, we have already warmed some and (for example) species are already going extinct--and we have more warming already locked in. So, in one sense, global warming is here. The key thing, though, is that there is still much preventable warming, which we can choose to not let happen.

And that choosing is crucial. There is plenty that we can do to stop global warming, but we have to make it happen. We have to choose it, over and over again.

Our commenter asks if there's any hope at all to stop global warming. I say yes. I see it everywhere. I see action on just about every possible front. Is it enough? I don't know. Could it be more? Sure. And that's where the choices we make today are crucial.

It may not show yet, but Springfield is alive with sustainability and anti-global warming action. There are at least four groups with major commitments to slowing warming: this group, Clean Energy Springfield; the local Sierra Club (the big dog, really); Sustainable Springfield, Inc., and the other CES, Community Energy Systems, which works outside of Springfield, but in our area. That's not even counting the many various allied groups, that focus more closely on other aspects of the problem, such as the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, the UIS student group SAGE, faith-based groups like Pax Christi, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Springfield Bicycle Club, as well as some of the public health groups that promoted the smoking ban.

All of that is to say: We are alive with opportunity. Worried about global warming: get involved. Contact your aldermen and representative. Get an energy audit. Attend one of CWLP's community energy meetings.

Despair makes us look around and see problems. Hope lets us look around and see opportunities. And they are plentiful--maybe too plentiful, sure. Getting started is tough, but once you're started, it gets easier and easier. None of the groups above care if all you do is attend a meeting--come find out what we're about. Find out what we're doing. Attend enough, and pretty soon something will jump out at you that you can do. It may take an hour. It may be a Saturday clean-up or a writing a letter. But you can build on it. And we can be great together.

This isn't strictly a climate change or energy issue, but it's all one thing, really, so: the SJR reports this morning on the steep drop in numbers of common birds--whippoorwills are the prime example. This harkens back to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring--the woods are growing quieter. At the end of the day, I am not a real outdoors kind of guy--blogging is probably evidence enough of that. But I have memories of camping in South Carolina, where I grew up, and sitting alone near a pond and listening to the whippoorwills. I don't want to see opportunities for my children to do the same to ... disappear.

The articles points out some of the things that people are doing to bring birds back--the problem appears to mostly be habitat loss. Much of this will be things for farmers, but a lot of it can be done by us. I have a tiny plot in the west side, but we've pulled up some of our front lawn for perennials, and put down even more in the backyard. This weekend, my wife was marveling at how many butterflies we had. Some of our plants come from the Native Plant Society's annual plant sales. And, while I haven't seen anything conclusively making this point, I can't help but imagine that green roofs, like the one coming to UIS, are going to be a big part of the solution as well.

In a different vein, I feel like I've seen a lot of letters to the editor recently asking for special events downtown to be greened up. And, indeed, while I was working the Fair this year at Conservation World, one complaint that came up was--why doesn't Conservation World have recycling bins? (For the record, there were some there, but the EPA was hogging them all, those bastards.) Well, here's what one city picked completely at random is doing: the Austin City Limits second annual music fest is greening itself up, using the concert-throwing-agency used by Lollapolooza.

Go read Carolyn Oxtoby's letter "Lots of things 'snag' downtown rehab." There's a lot there for a short letter.

U.S. EPA recently updated its Top 25 Green Power Purchasers list, which highlights organizations buying energy produced from renewable resources like wind, solar and biomass. The top five purchasers are PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and Company, Whole Foods Market, the Pepsi Bottling Group and the U.S. Air Force.

The Top 25 list accounts for more than 6 billion kilowatt-hours per year of green power purchasing. This is equivalent to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to those of more than 700,000 vehicles.

Now that CWLP is purchasing wind energy, it should consider joining this program to receive national recognition for its efforts to support green power.

One of the problems with green building, and with renovations and rehabs in general, is that you produce a lot of waste, and you have to be dedicated to extracting the re-usable bits to do anything with it. (The horrible pile of crap left over from the American Legion demolition is an example.)

Of course, if you build it for deconstruction, it gets a lot easier. That's what companies like Herman Miller do--their "Design for environment" commitment includes disassembly as a major part of the process. We tend to think of buildings a little different, though. We tend to think about building to last, even though we know it won't--at some point, everything will get replaced or built over. That's not go-go capitalist creative destruction, that's how buildings learn.

And so it tickles me pink to find the answer to your drywalling needs: how to install drywall in a way that it can be removed later for reuse. (Drywall is a weird thing, in that technically, it's basically just gypsum, which is calcium, which is a good soil additive, so you can break it up and compost it, except that if it's painted or wallpapered, you probably can't separate it out to use without keeping all that toxic stuff on it. Dunno if something like milk paint overcomes this problem.)

The solution is called Green Zip Tape. For a normal drywall installation, you screw the drywall to studs, then plaster over it with joint compound, usually two or three layers. This tape, though, serves as the first layer--it goes over the screws at seams, and then you put the joint compound over it. You leave a tab exposed at the top or bottom (covered by trimwork, of course). When the house is being renovated or demolished, you can pull the tab of tape left over--that pulls up the tape, as well as the top layers of joint compound, leaving you easy access to the screws underneath. Unscrew it, and presto--you have a basically intact sheet of drywall, ready for its next use.

As an aside, one of the things I like about this is that it seems very classic in its trickery, through the use of trim to cover up the seems. My own uninformed sense is that a lot of fashion (in clothes) was historically about hiding seams and joins--flys are designed to cover buttons or zippers, ties and vests cover buttons on shirts, that sort of thing. This seems to fit into that tradition well by using trim not as decoration, but as a tool for layered concealment.

The downside, of course, is that it doesn't seem to be commercially available yet.

Up to now, the fight to slow global climate change has focused primarily on such things as increasing fuel economy for cars and trucks, boosting renewable energy technologies like wind and solar, making our buildings greener and cleaning up power plants. A major national report issued last week by the Urban Land Institute, Smart Growth America and other organizations indicates that if there is any hope of reducing heat-trapping carbon dioxide gases, we will also have to curb sprawling development patterns that fuel growth in driving.

Since 1980, the number of vehicles miles traveled in the United States has increased at three times the rate of the population, according to the report, primarily because of the vehicle-dependent way communities and commercial areas are designed and built. The report projects that even with expected increases in miles per gallon produced by more efficient engines, vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide in 2030 will be 41 percent higher than they are today.

The report, “Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change,” recommends adoption of growth and transportation strategies that reduce our miles behind the wheel. This includes compact development, which mixes housing and businesses in denser patterns, with walkable and bike-friendly neighborhoods. The report estimates that a compact development strategy would reduce vehicle miles traveled by 12 percent to 18 percent by 2050, and reduce carbon emissions from mobile sources 7 percent to 10 percent.

My fellow CES blog contributor, Greg, will be moving to the City of Austin next month. Not only will we miss his thoughtful commentaries on this blog, but he has been responsible for spearheading Clean Energy Springfield’s efforts to promote better clean energy policies in Springfield.

The good news for Greg is that he will be living in one of the world’s most eco-friendly cities. The Chicago Tribune has a front-page feature story today on Austin’s efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions with greater reliance on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. The article also highlights the city’s efforts to incorporate green features into building design, help its residents purchase water-saving devices like rain barrels, and create incentives for building owners to install photovoltaic panels on their rooftops.

Austin has created a portal on its web site that lists a number of other impressive sustainability projects. It could serve as a great role model for Springfield government officials and others to learn about ways to green our city.