Reducing My Family's Carbon Footprint

A big motivation for me to write this blog is my worries about climate change and what it will mean for my children's future. Climate change is already here and is already a force to be reckoned with in our daily lives. Vermont had record spring flooding and was struck by Hurricane Irene in 2011. In 2012 we faced a drought, though not as severe as in other parts of the nation. Now in 2013 we have once again had heavy rains and serious flooding. Climate change is a daunting challenge that will require unprecedented global cooperation to solve. But I choose to focus on positive actions that I can take.

One way I can feel a little better about the climate crisis is by actively working to reduce my own family's carbon (dioxide) footprint. I know that reducing my own carbon footprint doesn't really add up to anything in the grand, global scheme of CO2 emission reductions needed to avoid catastrophic climate change. Yet, I still feel that I have to try and do everything to wean myself off fossil fuels and live more lightly on the earth. I need to practice what I preach, and if I can't reduce my own carbon dioxide emissions how can I expect others to? There is great strength in collective action.

In addition to doing smaller things like trip-chaining, telecommuting when possible, or foregoing car trips all-together, recycling, composting, consuming fewer goods in general, supporting local farms, etc, there are three big actions my husband and I have done in the last 18 months to reduce our personal fossil fuel dependence:

1. Going solar *
In 2011 my husband and I debated getting a solar hot water heater like my in-laws have on their house. Building Energy from Williston, VT came to our house to assess our solar potential. They told us that solar hot water was not the most practical option for us given that our house is a two-story colonial with a walkout basement, aka three stories. The distance that the water would have to travel between the solar panels on the roof down to the basement where the boiler is was impractical. It was also impractical since all our hot water is currently provided on-demand by the boiler in our oil furnace. We determined that getting a photovoltaic (PV) system to power our electric needs made more sense. Our power company (VT Electric Cooperative) offers net metering, so buys back any excess power that our panels produce. This means that during the summer months when our panels produce more electricity than we use we earn credits on our electric bill. This credit gets eaten up during the winter months when electricity produced by our panels drops due to shorter days. Overall, our bill more-or-less zeroes out over the course of a year. The payoff time for the panels is about 15 years, but the life of the panels is more like 30 years making this a decent return on our investment. Our system was installed and activated on the last business day of December 2011, so we got all our state and federal tax incentives back almost immediately (instead of having to float 1/3 of the cost for a full year if it had been installed in January), which made it much more affordable.

This leads me to why I put an asterisk on this action. If we had gotten a solar hot water system we would have reduced our use of oil directly because all our hot water currently comes from the oil furnace. That would have been a big win. Getting a solar PV system isn't really a direct reduction in emissions in our corner of Vermont because VT Electric Cooperative buys the bulk of its power from hydroelectric sources like Hydro Quebec. Hydroelectric power (producing power from waterfalls and dams) is already a non-fossil source of energy. If I lived in an area that got its electricity primarily from coal sources this would be a huge win. I am happy that I know several other households in the islands who have gone solar too! The movement is spreading. If Vermont can go solar why not cities and towns in our nation's sunbelt?? But I digress.

Big Bro with our Solar Panels (ground mount)
 


2. Getting a Pellet Stove
Originally we explored getting geothermal heat because there is a guy up here in the Islands who specializes in geothermal installations. Geothermal can provide all your heating AND cooling needs by drawing energy from the ground or from a well. Once again the setup of our current house made geothermal impractical. It would be an expensive, retrofitting nightmare trying to install all the vents we would have needed. However, if we built a house from scratch it would be much more feasible from both a cost and installation perspective. So our best option was to install a pellet stove in our existing fireplace. The pellet stove is sort of like a lazy-woman's version of a wood stove--much easier to run and maintain, just pour in the pellets and flip the ON switch. Wood pellets are cheaper than oil, and a renewable resource. The brand of pellets we use are made right here in Vermont too. They are low ash producing. Our pellet stove doesn't heat the whole house, only the downstairs "zone." Each of the bedrooms on the top floor have their own heating zone operated by hot water baseboard heat, run of course, by that darn oil furnace. We do what we can in this 1970s Colonial. And the warmth and ambiance provided by the pellet stove....heaven on a cold, winter day.

Me toasting myself in front of the Pellet Stove



3.  Efficiency through Energy Audit and Insulation
We hired Building Energy back to do an energy audit on our house to find where all our precious heat was leaking out. We always kept our thermostat low (about 62-64 degrees) in winter because oil is expensive and we are not above putting on extra socks and sweaters, but still, the house is drafty. Poor Nini was freezing when she first moved in the apartment last fall. Building Energy came and did a blower test where they put a giant fan in your doorway, and then see where the air leaks are using infrared imaging. The audit recommended insulating our basement and eaves with spray foam and adding more cellulose insulation into the attic. The audit estimated that we will cut down on our heat energy use by a third, save us $1,200/year, and reduce our annual CO2 emissions by 7,000 pounds! The payoff on this investment is also about 10 years. It is not cheap up front, but it is worth it.

Green foam insulation in our unfinished basement

4. Replacing our 20 year old furnace (new)

This one became required in winter of 2014. We discovered that our boiler was corroding, which meant that at any time our basement could flood. Once again I would have loved to take this opportunity to completely ditch heating oil and convert to all renewable fuels, like geothermal. But for our wallet, we went with the most efficient heating oil furnace/boiler that we could. Not a very exciting investment, but a very important one. We replaced it at the end of March, so we won't see the heating oil savings until next winter. I am looking forward to reducing our heating oil bill even more than we already had by better insulating our house, and getting our pellet stove.

I just want to stress that renewable sources of energy and energy efficiency are an investment whether done on the individual or national scale. We heavily invested in fossil fuels back in the day, and now that we know better we need to seriously invest in energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy. The sooner we do it, the better, because the cost of inaction will continue to rise.

Lastly, if you've been following me and wondering--yes, our little city house was renovated to be very energy efficient. It had natural gas heat, which is its own can of worms because of fracking, water contamination, and methane leaks...but that's at topic for another day.