Confessions of a Conflicted Environmentalist

By Amanda Mascarelli

More people than ever before in the U.S. are aware of, and concerned about, climate change. Sustainability is in vogue: Designing clothes made of recycled bottle tops is hip, and more of us are shunning plastic bags at the grocery store in favor of reusable bags. Yet global greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar. It’s clear we need to radically change, but how can we as individuals make a meaningful difference, especially on a budget? It ain’t easy—but it’s possible, as Amanda Mascarelli has learned.

Twelve years ago, I turned my car eastward, leaving behind the snaking shoreline of Los Angeles and a marine biology research job to begin a graduate program in journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I’d been lured by an interdisciplinary fellowship called “Carbon, Climate and Society Initiative.” Along with 12 other graduate students I was to tackle the complexities of climate change, from energy policy to climate science and social behaviors. I felt hopeful that through both my work and my lifestyle choices, I could make changes to ensure a healthier direction for the environment. If I could just frame climate change in a way that society could better understand the global issues, people would get it, behaviors would change and our planet would be better off for it. Right?

A lot has happened in 12 years. Now, three kids later, it’s harder to be optimistic about my capacity to effect change—in others, and, admittedly, in myself. Sustainability is more widely embraced today than it was a decade ago and public awareness of the fact that humans are altering the climate has never been higher. Yet the reading on the CO2 meter is only going up. The main uncertainty with regards to the changing climate is in how severe the outcome will be, says Pieter Tans, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo. “Will it be only a few degrees, or will it be 10 degrees?” Even a 2 C increase over pre-industrial levels—a largely arbitrary limit that has been bandied about as a way to prevent runaway global warming and a quest that most climate researchers now agree is largely implausible—“is already very dangerous,” adds Tans. Containing warming to within 2 C would require that we further limit lifetime global emissions to between 370 and 540 gigatons of carbon, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. But at our current rate of emissions, which hovers around 9.5 GtC per year, we will reach 475 GtC within 50 years. “This dictates that we get serious about decreasing our footprint on Earth for the sake of future generations,” says Tans.

I’ve known for more than a decade that we were on this path of escalating emissions, but that knowledge hasn’t dramatically changed the way I live. Sure, I do some of the basics, like turn my heat way down when I leave the house, use the cold-water cycle on the wash machine and recycle. But I still feel trapped in a pattern of habits that hardly fit my own standards for a sustainable lifestyle. Being ‘sustainable’ feels out of reach, reserved for affluent people who can afford to make big up-front investments and wait 10 to 20 years for a return. Despite my best intentions, I often feel powerless. But I’ve found there is room for optimism—on any budget.

Here’s a glimpse into my life: We sold our house at a significant loss during the height of the recession. Since then, we’ve lived in two rental homes. Both were built in the 1950s with poor insulation and so drafty that I look for open windows or doors on frigid winter days. Our winter home heating bills suck the life out of me, but we have no buying power yet to invest in a well-insulated, low-energy home. The washer and dryer run day and night to keep up with our overwhelming amount of laundry. The kids (ages 2, 5 and 7) learn about recycling and composting in school and at home, but our recycling bin fills up with homework and drawings of zombies and princesses (along with the beer and wine bottles) faster than the city garbage haulers can keep up.

We have succumbed to the convenience of a minivan. Living in the heart of Denver, Colo., with its sprawling suburbs and limited public transport system, I drive plenty. School is close by but not easily walkable. Some days, the most I can do is holler at my kids to close the back door behind them on their way to the back yard. But they leave it open. Every. Single. Time. Nagging, as any parent knows, isn’t the most effective strategy for change. So what is?

Fertile Brownfields

It’s a sunny February morning in Boulder. Undulating fields of mustard-colored grasses are dotted with crunchy patches of snow. I want to find out what, if anything, people like me can do about their energy bills. I arrive at a chain-link fence rimmed with barbed wire and a bolted gate. A sign on the gate reads “Clean Energy Collective, Community-owned Solar.” I’ve come here to meet Todd Davidson, director of marketing for the Louisville, Colo.-based company, which builds community-owned solar arrays, also sometimes called ‘solar gardens.’ A community garden might conjure the image of neighbors gathering around a common plot of land to tend vegetables, but peering through the fence, this looks like any other commercial-scale solar photovoltaic plant. The term solar gardens is symbolic: Community-owned solar arrays allow people to buy solar panels at centralized facilities and reap the benefits through credits on their energy bill.

The 3.5-acre solar array that I’m visiting consists of more than 2,000 panels and generates 830,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year, enough to power about 300 average-sized homes. This translates to about 15,000 tons of avoided emissions of CO2 over the first 20 years of the panels’ lifetime. It would take 40,000 trees to absorb this much CO2 annually. (A watt represents how much energy we consumer per unit time, and utility bills are usually based on kilowatt hours of energy usage. Think of kilowatt-hours as the speed at which one is running and how much energy he or she is burning to run that fast.)

Once inside the gate, we make our way down the muddy aisles between rows of sprawling, connected panels. The array sits on the former grounds of the Rocky Flats Plant nuclear weapons factory, which was shut down in 1992 after a federal investigation and FBI raid exposed illegal dumping of nuclear waste and other pollutants. As a result, the ground we are walking on is a “brownfield site,” meaning that due to former contamination it is considered unsuitable for growing crops and raising families.

In 2010, Clean Energy Collective developed the nation’s first commercial-scale, community-owned solar array near Carbondale, Colo. Sixteen of its solar arrays now stand in Colorado, along with eight more in six other states. The company plans to construct 40 more over the next year. Through partnerships with utilities, these solar arrays allow homeowners and renters to buy solar panels and receive the same financial and environmental benefits as they would if the panels were installed on their own roofs.

Only about 20 percent of homes nationwide are suitable for rooftop solar panels, due to shade, cost, or rental property limitations. Solar panel collectives allow people to avoid those obstacles altogether. “When someone turns on their coffeepot in Boulder County, they’re pulling power from their local grid” to which the solar array is connected, says Davidson. Rather than drawing energy directly from the solar array, panel owners receive credits on their energy bill to reward them for the energy that they avoided using from, say, a coal-fired power plant hundreds of miles away.

So what does this mean for me, a renter? I could purchase five 245-watt solar panels at one of two sites in northeast Denver run by Clean Energy Collective, meeting the 1,000 watt-minimum required by Denver’s local utility, Xcel Energy. (The first solar array the company built in Denver is already sold out.) It would cost us $4,532, which we could finance just like a car, and it would offset 22 percent of my family’s energy bill—which currently depends 100 percent on fossil fuels—with clean energy. In the first year, the solar panels would save us $341. Over 20 years, they would pay us back 170 percent the cost of the purchase, or $7,698. The long-term rates take into consideration inflation and escalating energy prices. This clean energy use for our family would avoid 65,388 pounds of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of driving 74,143 fewer miles in a standard car. If we wanted to offset 100 percent of our energy use, we could buy 23 panels for $20,849. In 20 years this investment would pay back $35,410 in savings on our energy bill.

Watt’s Up?

Some North American cities are making serious strides toward cutting their energy footprint and greenhouse gases emissions, including Vancouver, B.C.; Fort Collins, Colo.; and San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif. But progress is happening faster in a few European countries, partly because they have been working toward higher efficiency for decades. In the late 1990s, scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich came up with an environmental vision, which they dubbed the “2,000-Watt Society.” The Swiss researchers calculated that everyone in the world could live on as little as 2,000 watts annually by the year 2050—without a significant loss in living standards. This includes all activities of daily living, including home energy use, food consumption and travel. For reference, 2,000 watts is equivalent to 17,520 kWh. Someone living annually on 2,000 watts could use 1,460 kWh each month.

Why 2,000 watts? That’s the average total energy use currently per person per year globally. But the range is wild: The average person in western Europe uses 6,000 watts, 12,000 in the U.S. and Canada, 1,500 watts in China, 1,000 watts in India, and less than 500 watts in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. The concept of 2,000 watts was based on the notion that “every person on Earth should have the same amount of energy,” says Dominic Notter, an environmental scientist based in Wohlen, Switzerland. “It`s a really nice idea, but we are far away” from reaching it, he notes. In a 2014 study titled “The Western Lifestyle and its Long Way to Sustainability,” Notter and his colleagues concluded that—even given the country’s impressive progress—Switzerland is still “far away from the idealized 2,000-Watt Society,” with only 2 percent of Swiss citizens living within 2,000 watts.

As a point of comparison, in my home we consume an average of 4,500 kWh per month in the winter (our home energy bill includes electrical and natural gas use). My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that in our household of five, we’re each currently burning 1,250 watts for heating, cooling, lighting and cooking, which is about two-thirds of the way to 2,000 watts (although these numbers do not represent my annual average since these are the coldest months of the year in Colorado). And this amount doesn’t include the energy we use for travel, food consumption or any other activities outside the home.

The 2,000-Watt Society scientists reckoned that by setting ambitious national targets for energy efficiency, fast-tracking new technologies and eliminating wasteful energy loss, the goal was within reach in Switzerland and for other developed countries as well. “Many people say that [striving for] 2,000 watts means we have to reduce our standard of living,” says Dieter Imboden, a retired professor of environmental physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and an early project manager for the 2,000-Watt Society program in Switzerland. On the contrary, he says, “Many of these things have nothing to do with standard of living but with the stupidity of how we waste energy.” He’s referring to energy waste from older buildings and homes with shoddy insulation and leaky doors and windows—like mine.

In 2008 Zurich became the first city in the world to adopt the 2,000-watts-by-2050 vision into its constitution, with three-quarters of its population voting in favor of the goal. One of the primary ways that Zurich and other Swiss cities are tackling these goals is by stringently regulating for high-efficiency construction of new buildings. “Housing construction is such a high-priority area because the effects are long-lasting,” says Imboden. Inefficient housing construction will alter the energy balance for 40 to 80 years because of the lifetime of homes, he notes.

The period between 2008-2014 is too short to provide strong data for Zurich’s achievements since it adopted the 2,000-Watt-Society vision. This is in part because energy use and greenhouse gas emissions fluctuate based on variables such as economic growth and slow-downs, migrations and stretches of hot or cool years, notes Notter. But Zurich had already made steep cuts in energy use through efforts that began decades ago: Between 1990-2012, the city reduced its per-person energy use from 5,000 watts to 4,200 watts and cut greenhouse gas emissions from 6.2 tons of CO2 per person annually to 5 tons over the same time period. They made these reductions through stringent regulations on energy efficiency in new construction, upgrades in public transportation and increased use of renewable energy such as hydropower. While Swiss citizens still have a long way to go on the road to 2,000 watts, their progress so far illustrates that major reductions can be made without harming a country’s economy and without major personal sacrifice.

The Next Generation

Where does this leave me, one data speck in one city, a mother of three spirited and voracious kids? How can I significantly cut my daily energy output? Initially, I was discouraged that two key areas that contribute most to one’s overall environmental impact—housing and transportation—are the ones that I have the least capacity to adjust right now. So I was relieved by the advice of an energy expert. Michelle Slovensky, energy program manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., told me that it’s important to step back and keep the whole picture in mind. “You have to decide from which side of the equation you’re going to live it,” Slovensky says. “The technology will evolve,” but what’s important to consider are “what are the choices, and how do you align those for yourself as a citizen?”

How do I align myself? The three dominant factors that figure into one’s energy footprint are housing, transportation and food (beef consumption—due to the fossil-fuel intensity of beef production—is neck and neck with travel in terms of its contribution to global warming). I already eat very little beef, but I’m going to be more intentional about cutting my family’s beef intake even lower, to no more than once a week. And Slovensky points out that consumer choices are an important area where we can make a difference. “A lot of people don’t think about the food chain,” she says. Water and electricity figure in to the sustainability of everything you buy, she notes. While those choices can sometimes feel a bit far removed to me, “They’re not [far removed]—they’re everyday choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Slovensky says. To this end, she suggests, consider the manufacturer’s environmental commitment—or lack of—when making purchases.

For now, I’m taking a closer look at the choices I make at home since the average American household has a carbon footprint of 48 tons per year. To my dismay, we can’t yet afford to invest in the community-owned solar panels. But it’s at the top of my list as soon as our youngest child is out of a costly preschool and into public school. My family decided that the first thing we would do is figure out where our energy waste is in the home, starting with the low-hanging fruit of ‘vampire power’ that we can easily control. (Vampire power, sometimes called phantom load, is the waste from devices that are technically in ‘off’ mode but are still drawing energy.)

On a snow day last week I sent my husband and kids out to Home Depot to pick up a Kill A Watt EZ power meter. This $28 device plugs directly into electrical outlets and gives a real-time read on the power consumption of household appliances. It also calculates the actual cost of the power consumed. We ran around the house plugging in various appliances—the keyboard, the space heater for the master bedroom, the DVD player, a nightlight, a desk lamp and my desktop computer. My 7-year-old son, Miles, was amazed to learn that the desk lamp, which has a compact fluorescent bulb, burned less than half the amount of energy as the small nightlight that works only with an old-school incandescent bulb. My desktop computer uses the equivalent of 61 watts (if it were to run continuously for a year) while it’s running and 34.5 watts when it’s “sleeping.” I confess that I have the egregious habit of leaving my computer in sleep mode overnight so that I can quickly jump back into work in the morning. Powering my computer off at night is the first no-brainer change I’m going to make.

After initially attempting a serious discussion about energy waste over dinner the other night, my kids weren’t bowled over by my argument for why it’s so important to our environment to close the back door every time we come in and out on cold days. But after we collected data together from the Kill A Watt meter, one thing did seem to sink in, especially for Miles, who is determined to sell anything to make a buck—including underwear that no longer fit, rocks from his collection, and his own drawings and paintings. When I converted energy waste into dollars lost, his eyes popped out. He was shocked that the energy cost of the small incandescent bulb in the nightlight is more than twice as much ($1.98 per month) if left on continuously than the more efficient bulb on the larger desk lamp (91 cents per month). So when I explained to him that leaving the back door open in the dead of winter was akin to throwing his sacred dollar bills out the window, I had a rapt audience. I’ll take this as a sign of progress.

Edited by Susan Moran

No-Brainer Energy Saving Tips (courtesy of the Natural Resources Defense Council)

“While it’s great to buy a Prius and install rooftop solar panels, there is lots you can do starting today to reduce your household carbon footprint,” says Noah Horowitz, director of the Center for Energy Efficiency Standards at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in San Francisco. “The best news is there are many things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint that are free or have little upfront cost.” Here are NRDC’s tips for how to make immediate, affordable and meaningful reductions in energy use.