An Inconvenient Opportunity For Change

A few years ago our family watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, Al Gore’s movie about climate change.  Although skeptical in the past, we were pretty much convinced by the movie of the reality and importance of climate change.  It seems that environmentalism is becoming more than a ‘soft’ aesthetic or spiritual issue, but a matter of life and death, poverty or survival for millions of people.

Our eight year old son was particularly affected.  Ever since our viewing, he has been intently concerned about green issues.  He wonders when we drive past a low lying area if it will be under water when he grows up; he gets mad at gas guzzling cars; he makes sure our lights are turned off when they’re not in use.  We all agreed we needed to do something in our own lives to help make a difference.

More lately we attended the West Coast Green Building convention, and got fired up once again to do something in our own lives to help fight global warning, environmental degradation, and – who knows – maybe American foreign policy disasters in the pursuit of energy resources.  With our office in our home and being (mostly) residential architects, we naturally think first about our own house and the neighborhood it shares (Westwood Park on the southwest side of San Francisco). Think globally, act locally, as the old saying goes. One of the nice things about global warning, we tell our kids, is that every single person, acting in their own private lives, can affect the outcome.  Indeed, it may well be said that nothing except individuals making individual choices and changing individual behavior will be able to reverse climate change. 

That being said, we can also work on a neighborhood or community basis. 

Thirteen changes to think about for your property and your neighborhood:

1. Install compact fluorescent lamps or other high efficiency lighting at every opportunity.
2. Turn off computers when not in use and minimize energy ‘vampires’ – devices that passively draw power all of the time.
3. Install a solar water heating system.  This should pay for itself in reduced energy bills is 7-10 years and save the equivalent amount of carbon emissions as taking a car off of the road.Install a grid-tied photo-voltaic electric generating system on your house.  Sell power to PG&E!.
4. Insulate your house. Many of our homes, thirty five years after the first energy crisis, have little or no insulation.  Do the attic at least, and the floor over the garage; do the walls if you can. Install air infiltration gaskets on the electric outlets at exterior walls.
5. Replace (at least) the more dilapidated of your old windows with  double pane, wood or fiberglass framed windows. (Don’t throw away serviceable or beautiful custom windows, however)
6. Buy Energy Star appliances when you need new equipment.  Read the labels and compare. Old furnaces, refrigerators and dryers can be tremendous energy hogs.
7. Sign up for PG&E’s ‘Climate Smart’ program or buy power from a ‘green’ energy producer to help mitigate the carbon load of your power use for a small additional charge.
8. Consider the possibility of drying clothes on a line.  It worked in 1920, why not today?
9. Plant a street tree.  Trees suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and help regulate the local temperature.
10. Build a ‘graywater’ system to use wastewater from your lavatories, showers and laundry to irrigate your garden.  It’s legal and practical.

In your neighbood:

1. Make use of whatever bits of public land are available in your neighborhood for a community gardens. How about a neighborhood composting facility?
2. Start a neighborhood carpool program.
3. Organize a system to solicit neighborhood group pricing for goods or services? Many solar vendors have group pricing, for instance.

Comments

[Dave Room]

Re Item 3 "Install a grid-tied photo-voltaic electric generating system on your house. Sell power to PG&E!"

As a PG&E Ratepayer, you only get credit for electricity produced up the amount that you use. Under current net metering laws, if you consume 4,000 kwhs in a year, but you produce more than that, PG&E is entitled to any excess beyond 4,000 kwhs for free.

This leads building owners to undersize their systems so that they are not investing in excess electricity that will be given to PG&E for free. This is a huge problem for large industrial buildings with minor electricity needs such as warehouses which are prevalent in Oakland and Hayward. Even though such buildings have great potential for solar, it makes no financial sense for the owners to install a solar array since PG&E would get the excess electricity for free.

This is an archaic model. In Germany and Denmark, building owners and investors in energy cooperatives receive a stable, guaranteed rate of return for energy that they sell back to the grid - often called feed-in tariffs. This arrangement has been hugely successful in increasing renewable energy and creating renewable energy jobs in the countries that implemented it.

Many people would like to see this change so that people in California can make a small profit for excess energy they supply to the grid. The way to change this (other than public power) is at the state level through the California Public Utilities Commission or the State Legislature.

With a novel program called Community Choice Energy, cities and counties contract with a licensed energy service provider to purchase energy in bulk, build renewable energy generating facilities, and
implement energy efficiency programs. This efficient public/private partnership makes it possible to get the greenest energy at the best rates. A community Choice program could apply to the CPUC to change the tariffs such that net energy producers could be compensated for their excess.

[Anon]

RE: Start a neighborhood carpool program

What about public transportation? It seems like public transportation is often the "inconvenient" part of the "inconvenient truth".

[Christine Boles]

You are absolutely right! Our particular neighborhood has a muni line just a block away and BART 1/4 mile away, and we often take it for granted that it is well used by the community.

Tomorrow, Wednesday October 8 is "International Walk to School Day" http://www.iwalktoschool.org/ We encourage you to try walking and/or public transportation to school and/or work to give it a try and see if it really is "inconvenient". Think of all that CO2 that will be saved!

[SchmidtEmma]

People in the world take the loan from various creditors, just because that's simple.