Have You Started YOUR Energy Plan?

By Julia Dundorf
Manager of Community Relations and Co-director of the New England Carbon Challenge,
Clean Air – Cool Planet

 

 

We hear a lot about green jobs and restarting the economy these days.  We also hear veiled and not-so-veiled dispersions about addressing energy consumption and climate change.  It’s going to kill jobs ya know! 

Despite numerous prestigious economic reports of the value and imperative of addressing climate and energy issues earlier rather than later – check out the Stern Report or the more local report out of the University of NH New Hampshire’s Green Economy and Industries: Current Employment and Future Opportunities – we’re still living in this rabbit hole of short sighted, antiquated paradigms.

In my work at Clean Air-Cool Planet as Manager of Community Relations and Co-director of the New England Carbon Challenge, I talk to people a lot about what they can do to take control of their own energy future – municipal and energy committee leaders, homeowners and renters, legislators and kids.  It all boils down to some pretty simple precepts.  I shared some of these thoughts the other day at the exceptional Housing Conference that NH Housing Finance Authority puts on every year in Concord and again to some of the Build Green NH folks at the Building NH Trade Show and Conference organized by the Home Builders and Remodelers Association of NH.

Regardless of one’s ideological framing, the way we mindlessly expend energy is senseless.  Pick your button issue – energy independence, climate change, foreign (or domestic) fossil fuel markets, environmental impacts of fossil fuel extraction or burning (think Gulf spill), green jobs, peak oil, resource conservation, rising energy costs (we can be sure they will) – they all point to the absurdity of our profligate addition to all things energy.  “Alright Dundorf, enough of the soapbox, give us specifics,” you say?  

Let’s look at heating fuels, according to the US Energy Information Administration, 82% of the nation’s fuel oil and kerosene sales are in the Northeast.

Figure 3. Residential Heating Oil Sales By Region

That’s a stunning statistic.  Now overlay this rough reference point… for every $1 spent in the region on heating fuels, only about 10 to 15 cents stay in the region, driving the local economy.  This just makes no business sense.  We’re not only letting our precious energy leak out of our aging building stock, through inefficient building techniques and business as usual practices, but we’re letting our energy dollars leak out of our region.

Simply put… this is MISSED OPPORTUNITY! 

Again whatever your ideological drivers, can’t we agree on THAT?  What could the other $.85 – $.90 for every $1 of heating fuels buy us?  More efficient schools or teachers, healthcare for all children, tax refund checks or incentives to put in the energy efficiency measure that will drive down this energy consumption?  Pick YOUR priority. They’re all important.  They’re all possible if we prioritize energy conservation, efficiency and clear, renewable energy sources. 

One more stat for you to chew on, “Every dollar invested in efficiency returns $2.60 to New Englanders” according to the recently released report from the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, “From Potential to Action:  How New England Can Save Energy, Cut Costs,  and Create a Brighter Future with Energy Efficiency”.

So what are we waiting for?  Before you pull out your cans of spray foam, learn how to build storm windows, or hire an energy auditor to assess your energy-saving opportunities, make a plan.  We seem to make plans for everything in our lives but rarely do we lay out our short and longer term plans for reducing energy consumption.  I’ve got just the tool to walk you through it and help you get those energy project done.  Visit myenergyplan.net and start planning today.

While you’re there check out the schedule of Button Up NH Workshops, free, public trainings on how your home uses energy and what you can do about it.  By the way, these tools are largely funded through RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, in this case through NH’s Public Utilities Commission’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Fund.  The RGGI program is expressly designed to stimulate and support reductions of emissions, e.g. reductions in energy consumption.  Yet in our topsy-turvy priorities, even THAT program is beleaguered.  But that’s another rant for another day.

Let’s stop the bickering and denial and take advantage of the missed opportunities happening every minute in our region. 

If not us then who?

If not now, then when?