Staunton Green 2020

On Thursday May 6, the House of Representatives passed the Home Star bill dubbed “Cash for Caulkers” because homeowners could collect thousands of dollars in rebates for renovating their homes with better insulation and energy-saving windows and doors. Caulking, adding attic insulation, installing energy star appliances are great ways to cut energy costs, reduce carbon emissions and save money. But without incentives it is tough to take these kind of actions.

Ready to make changes in your home? Keep an eye out this fall for Staunton Green 2020 re-skilling workshops on all sorts of topics that will help you green your fall and save you money this winter.

The bill (H.R. 5019) now goes to the Senate for consideration.

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• House Passes $6 Billion Cash for Caulkers Bill (dailyfinance.com)
• Insulating an Attic is Among the Best Green Investments (saving-energy.suite101.com)
• Small Contractors Await ‘Cash for Caulkers’ (businessweek.com)
• How the proposed Cash for Caulkers program works (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

By Reid Oechslin

This winter I tried some ideas I’ve had for saving energy in my home. They may be a little odd, and they certainly wouldn’t apply to everybody. They’re things I’ve thought about as I was falling asleep or waking up. Ideas that come to me that way can either be great or terrible. I will spare you the terrible ones, and try to pass along the keepers. It’ll take me several articles to do it.

My family lives in a split-level house built in 1972. It was an amazing time. America could fund the arts, send men to the moon, fight the Vietnam War and build the interstate highway system. People were regularly predicting that energy would soon be “too cheap to meter.” Our 3000 square-foot house has a 600 amp electrical service–that’s three times the size of the power panel in new homes–because it has an electrically-heated driveway! (Or it HAD an electrically-heated driveway–I turned it on once after we bought the house and I heard sparking noises coming from the grass around it. I decided to take pity on the neighborhood dogs and turned it off permanently.)

Along with our interesting driveway feature was another convenience: no matter which hot-water faucet you turned on in the house, you’d have hot water within a few seconds. Remember, it’s a split-level, and it’s a long, narrow house, so the gas water heater is really far from the bathrooms that serve the bedrooms. How’d they do that? I did some checking and found that instead of two pipes connected to my hot water heater, I had three: one for the cold water to go in, one for the hot water to go out, and another for the cooler hot water that flowed in a loop past all the faucets to go back into the hot water heater. Hot water was slowly circulating through the pipes in my house all the time, so hot water was only a few feet away from any faucet. The really hot water would flow out of the top of the heater, through the hot water loop, and, since it was cooling off as it made its way through my basement and the uninsulated ceiling of my cold garage, it would be slightly heavier than the newly-heated water when it returned to the bottom of the water heater. No pumps, just convection. Brilliant–no wasted water going down the drain, and no wasted time waiting for hot water to arrive. Except–my hot water heater, with its nice blanket of insulation, was not the only repository of my hot water. It was as if the uninsulated hot water pipes were little radiators heating the basement and the garage. That’s really not where I wanted to put my heating dollars, so I closed the valve where the cooler water went back into the water heater. (If you’re curious about what orifice the cooler water uses to go back into the heater, it goes back in through the valve at the bottom that you use to drain the tank.)

Almost immediately I got negative feedback from my wife: “We don’t have any hot water!” After I explained what I had done and why, she still didn’t like the idea of the wait, and the idea of wasting the water that comes out as you wait. (She is from the Caribbean, where rainwater is collected in cisterns, and there is no other water supply. If you run out, you call the water truck to make a delivery, which is expensive. It’s a system that stresses personal responsibility.) I did feel guilty about the water that was wasted, and decided to measure how much water was going down the drain during the warmup. It turned out to be, at most, two gallons. What to do about that?

I decided that if the pipes were insulated, the water in them would stay hot longer. I couldn’t reach everything to insulate it, but was lucky that the ceilings in part of the downstairs areas and the garage were suspended tiles–I suppose to make maintenance and  repairs easier. I found that the cheaper, stiffer kind of foam pipe insulation worked better, because after you snap it around the pipe, you can push it along the pipe with another piece of insulation, even into areas that you can see but can’t get to. And the insulation did turn out to work somewhat– if you open a faucet up to two hours later, what comes out is at least warmer than it would have been, and the new hot water coming up the pipe isn’t trying to warm up every foot of that pipe from, say, 50 degrees. It certainly doesn’t work for the first shower of the day, though.

I did some rationalizing–the waste of water is not as bad as the waste of energy and the greenhouse gas emissions from the water heater. My best guess was that the insulation and the circulation change saves 15 percent off the gas bill. At my house, that’s 30 bucks a month, at least during the winter months.  It will probably be less of a difference in the summer, when the basement and garage are warmer and robbing less heat from the pipes. Still, well worth doing. What could be easier than closing a valve?

You probably don’t live in a house that has recirculated hot water, and you probably don’t have as much access to the pipes as I do, but you do probably live in a house that has bare copper pipes sticking out of the top of the water heater. Even insulating the first few feet of that pipe–that is constantly radiating heat away from the hot water tank–will make a difference. Most likely, you don’t spend a lot of time  next to your water heater, basking in the heat it is radiating.

Note that if you have a gas water heater like mine, the gas flue chimney is very close to the cold and hot water pipes that come out of the heater. Don’t use plastic foam pipe insulation next to that flue, because of the risk of fire. Instead, use fiberglass that won’t burn. The cheap fiberglass solution is just a band of the fuzzy insulation itself, with no backing, that you wrap around the pipe. It works, but for a little more swank factor, you can buy tubes of pre-formed fiberglass that fits around the pipe like a clamshell (buy the right size to fit around the pipe, usually 3/4″). It has a white outside coating, and even a self-adhesive flap that makes it neat. In this area, Home Depot and Hajoca carry it; Lowe’s does not. Next time I’ll tell you about my 1972 furnace and what I did to it.

Copyright 2010 Reid Oechslin

Reid is a SG2020 steering committee member and owner of Sound Light Image, LLC.

A big thanks to our panel – and all the attendees – for coming out to the SG2020 event, “Switching to Grass in Staunton and Augusta County” last night.

Please comment here if you have questions you’d like to pass along to our panel of experts, and, what you thought.

We’re planning more events that capture the Staunton Green 2020 mission to build community partnerships that through education, research and collaboration:

~ Reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions

~ Increase renewable energy

~ Generate Green jobs

~ Preserve green space

~ Facilitate sustainable community development

Also, thanks to Mary Baldwin College for hosting. See you at our next event:

Dirt, The Movie
Thur. Mar. 18 @ 7pm

• Mockingbird Restaurant – Downtown Staunton (doors open at 5:30pm for delicious dinner)
• A free, fast-paced film about the threatened life sustaining soil on which we depend
• Co-sponsored by Transition Staunton Augusta & Valley Conservation Council

Our neighbors to the east are exploring an innovative way to help homeowners make energy-saving improvements to their homes and save money at the same time.

Here’s an excerpt from Charlottesville Tomorrow:

“LEAP would make loans to homeowners to help them cover the cost of energy-saving improvements. In the long-run, the program would be sustained in part by charging interest on those loans. Homeowners would pay for the loans in part by using the savings that come with lower energy bills. The grant application claims that between 915 and 1,271 jobs would be created as much as 69,685 metric tons of carbon emissions would be eliminated in the first seven years.”

Wouldn’t it be great to do something similar in Staunton? Check out the website to read more and/or listen to a podcast on the topic.

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• McKinsey report: U.S. energy conservation could save $1.2 trillion (dailyfinance.com)
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As non-partisan citizen action group we feel it’s important to be transparent and share our mission, goals, and objectives with you.

Please review. We invite you to join us. 

Staunton Green 2020

Mission, Goals and Objectives

June 5, 2009  

Vision

Bringing the Green economy and sustainable living to every Queen City resident. 

Mission

We assist the city of Staunton and its residents in reducing carbon emissions by 20% and increasing renewable energy sources by 20% by 2020.  

Goals

1. Work with the city to employ carbon reduction strategies that create economic opportunities and reduce taxpayer obligations (e.g. “weatherization for all campaign” that employs the unemployed; energy conservation programs).
2. Develop education efforts that provide city residents information and action steps to work in a coordinated fashion toward carbon neutrality.
3. Support individual, commercial, non-profit and city efforts that are socially responsible and lead to increased use of renewable energy and decreased use of fossil fuels.

 Initial Objective

Support the City Council in creating a Green Economy Commission that will accomplish the following:  

1. Join ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability (www.icleiusa.org) to get the tools, support and strategies for reducing our carbon footprint.
2. Plan and conduct a source inventory of Staunton’s greenhouse gas emissions within six months of establishing the Commission.
3. Recommend and propose a 20% reduction in carbon emissions from 2008 levels for the year 2020 within one year of establishing the Commission.
4. Recommend and propose methods for generating local renewable energy (e.g. switch grass, water turbines, geothermal, solar, etc.).
5. Investigate the development of a Clean Energy Financing Program to make affordable, and create incentives, for homeowners and businesses to install energy efficient appliances and clean energy generators.
6. Promote Green entrepreneurship and seek ways to create sustainable Green jobs within the city as well as reduce municipal, residential and commercial energy bills.

The Commission will consist of a diverse group of residents committed to timely accomplishment of these goals and objectives.  

Secondary Objectives:

1. Create Staunton Green 2020 subcommittees that promote:

• Municipal, commercial and residential solutions
• Incentives that lead to the adoption of practices
• Funding support through grants, relief through taxpayer savings and economic benefits

The subcommittees will address the following: 
 
Education and Outreach Bruce and Gena

• Public awareness
• School involvement
• Action learning
• programs

Energy Conservation 

• Energy audits
• Rain barrels
• Green retrofit
• LEED/Earthcraft

 Waste Reduction Brian and Gena

• Recycling
• Composting
• Plastic reduction
• Improved “to go” containers
• Styrofoam reduction

Green Business Entrepreneurship Brian, Chris & Katie  

Clean Energy generation

• Geothermal
• Solar
• Water turbines
• Switch grass

Local Food & Agricultural Outreach Brian and Katie

• Farmer’s Market
• Garden programs
• Community Supported Agriculture
• Restaurants
• Grocery Stores

 
Sustainable Land Use and Redevelopment Chris & Bruce

• Alternative transportation
• Comprehensive plan and urban development
• Storm water run-off
• Reforestation
• Native grasses and flowers

 
 

1. Collaborate with governmental entities, non-governmental organizations, and businesses, such as the following, to accomplish these goals:

• Augusta Farm Co-op
• Belle Grae Growing Center
• Blue Ridge Community College
• Central Shenandoah Valley Bicycle Pedestrian Committee
• Greater Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce
• Historic Staunton Foundation
• Lewis Creek Watershed Advisory Committee
• Mary Baldwin College
• Staunton Creative Community Fund
• Staunton Downtown Development Association
• Staunton Earth Day Planning Committee
• Valley Conservation Council

 
 
Definitions

Carbon Neutral:

The process of offsetting carbon-producing activities with those that either reduce or capture carbon, thus neutralizing the net amount of carbon released in the atmosphere¹. While the United States accounts for only 5% of the world’s population, it accounts for 20% of global energy usage and 20% of global CO2 emissions ². 

Carbon or Greenhouse Gas Emissions:

Direct greenhouse gas emissions can include tailpipe emissions of CO² from motor vehicles, methane from landfills, and hydrofluorocarbons from leaking refrigeration or air conditioning equipment. Indirect greenhouse gas emissions arise from coal and other fossil fuel-based energy generated to power residential, commercial, and industrial activities. Indirect emissions also arise from fossil fuel combustion used in the manufacture, transport, storage, disposal, and recycling of commodities and manufactured products³.  

The scientific consensus is that society must reduce the global emission of greenhouse gases by at least 80% by mid-century at the latest, in order to avert the worst impacts of global warming and to reestablish the more stable climatic conditions that have made human progress over the last 10,000 years possible⁴.  

Renewable Energy:

Energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides and geothermal heat—which are naturally replenished⁵.  

Sustainability:

The World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) articulated: “[to meet] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” ⁶ 
 

1. http://www.sustainabilitydictionary.com/c/climate_neutral.php
2. http://www.usmayors.org/climateprotection/documents/Green%20Jobs%20FINAL.pdf
3. http://www.sustainabilitydictionary.com/c/carbon_footprint.php
4. http://www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org/html/faq.php
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy
6. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/42/ares42-187.htm

One of the best things about Staunton is its preserved architecture. Thankfully, there is growing interest in green building and preservation. At least four small architecture and design companies around town focus on green-themed practices.

Here’s a contest worth entering if you’re a student or professional: Lifecycle Building Design Contest.

“Lifecycle building is designing buildings to facilitate disassembly and material reuse to minimize waste, energy consumption, and associated greenhouse gas emissions.”

Similarly, conversations around town are focused on sensible, sustainable growth that recognizes the unique needs of our city. Specifically, how can we revitalize the city core to prevent undesirable sprawl into our nearby rural areas?

One common complaint, for example, concerns the number of church parking lots downtown. They are only in use one or two days a week. Savannah, Georgia had a similar issue and decided to build on top of these parking lots — preserving parking, but also expanding living quarters and denser population. Our group isn’t suggesting this answer specifically. But Savannah’s creative re-use of space does demonstrate how critical green architectural design and city infrastructure will be for our city moving forward.

What Is It: A petition to create a Green Task Force for the city of Staunton, Virginia. Sign the petition online by clicking here or sign on paper at locations around the city. (Do you have a petition people can sign? Are you willing to distribute the petition? Contact us and/or add your location in the comments.)

Why It’s Vital: All cities have limited budgets and personnel. We must show Staunton city officials that we’re serious about setting and reaching specific environmental and economic goals. We need the city’s assistance to collect information necessary to determine our starting point.

How It Helps You: Our non-partisan Green Task Force will volunteer time on the Staunton City Council. We’ll research our baseline and make recommendations for specific actions that will reduce Staunton’s carbon emissions, save the city money, and bring more green jobs and federal/state money to Staunton.

How It Helps Staunton: Staunton will benefit from a dedicated team of unpaid, non-partisan volunteers that comprise the Green Task Force. These individuals will work to improve the economic development and environmental sustainability of Staunton to ensure our city becomes an even better place to live and work.

This is a simple action step, and it depends on you! Please sign our petition right now.