Tag: Charlottesville Climate Collaborative

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“We all have a role to play”: More and more businesses take steps to go green

Firefly owner Melissa Meece, a former environmental consultant, earned her business a certification from the Green Restaurant Association by investing in making the eatery more sustainable. / Photo: Eze Amos

More and more local businesses and nonprofits are looking for ways to operate sustainably. While not everyone is familiar with the “triple bottom line” approach (gauging success by three rubrics: economic, environmental, and societal), most do see efforts to go green as beneficial beyond saving money or reducing waste. And their number includes more than the usual suspects.

“People might not necessarily think of us as among green companies,” says Tiger Fuel Company president Gordon Sutton. “But my brother and I [who took over the family-owned business when their father retired in 2017] are passionate outdoorsmen. We’re looking to the future, and we want to do the right thing.”

Sutton’s brother Taylor, who is COO, was an environmental sciences major; Gordon himself interned at a biodiesel company and always had an interest in renewable energy. Their company, which distributes home heating fuels and petroleum products and owns The Markets convenience stores, began by installing solar panels on two of its stores, the Exxon stations on Preston Avenue in Charlottesville’s Rose Hill neighborhood and in Ruckersville. Sutton saw this step as both a sound financial move–“Our stores and car washes are significant energy users”–and a way to raise awareness and contribute to the community.

He says both customers and employees have been enthusiastic and supportive. The company’s delivery fleet is diesel-powered; “we’ve looked into propane motors, but weren’t thrilled with the results,” Sutton notes. Tiger Fuel is now in the process of assessing its carbon footprint and developing a plan to set significant reduction targets.

While traditional car dealers might also seem to be on the wrong side of climate issues, Carter Myers Automotive’s vice president Peter Borches calls CMA’s Colonial Nissan the company’s “incubator test site” for ways to reduce environmental impact at its 13 dealerships in central Virginia.

Because lighting is a huge energy cost at auto dealerships, Colonial Nissan switched to LEDs and installed a 480-panel solar array designed to produce 93 percent of the facility’s electricity needs. While Borches notes the many incentives for greening the business–cost savings, tax incentives, positive public relations, and marketing benefits–his motives are personal: “My wife and I are worried about [the world] when our children are 50 years old. We need to raise this issue above the political fray, and get as many people as possible in the tent and working together.” An added benefit, in his view, is “our associates have really run with this,” contributing ideas like providing car shoppers with cup- and water-bottle filling stations instead of single-use bottled water, and recycling everything from paper to outdated computers.

Ravi Respeto, president of the United Way Thomas Jefferson Area, says that as a nonprofit, “we’re always looking to reduce costs, but there’s a community leadership aspect as well as an awareness factor” in taking action to lessen environmental impact. United Way began by replacing its building’s old HVAC units with a high-efficiency system that includes programmable thermostats.

Next year, after upgraded windows are installed, the agency is expecting a 10-15 percent savings on its electric bill–and it’s considering solar options down the line. “Climate change affects our lower-income constituencies the most,” says Respeto. Since investing in energy-savings technologies costs money up front, she notes, “there’s an equity aspect to this issue, and we are in the business of equity.”

Firefly Restaurant, as a tenant, can’t make these kinds of capital investments–but it has invested in qualifying as the city’s first Green Restaurant Association-certified eatery. Owner and general manager Melissa Meece, a former environmental consultant, has installed UV film on the restaurant’s huge windows (cutting energy usage for air conditioning by 43 percent); invested in LED bulbs (“expensive up front, but saves energy and staff time, because they never need changing”); and committed to non-toxic cleaning supplies and customer toiletries.

Meece also looks for used or rehabbed Energy Star-rated restaurant equipment: “I’m a big fan of second-hand [she’s also the owner of consignment shop Rethreads], and it saves the energy used in manufacturing.”

It might seem hard for a hospital to go green, but when Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital decided to create a new campus on Pantops, in 2007, they tried to build sustainability in from the start. The facility (LEED®-certified by the U. S. Green Building Council) uses a range of technological tools to save resources: low-water-usage toilets, automatic controls for temperature and lighting, re-use of condensation water from AC units, and irrigation water supplied from the site’s retention pond.

Focusing on a more sustainable building enabled the hospital to double its square footage (from it’s previous location) without increasing either energy or water consumption. As both a large community institution and a major employer, executive director of support services Catherine Hughes says Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital sees the need to set a visible example, from recycling in the kitchen (including composting food and reclaiming fryer oil) to encouraging staff to bike to work and even cutting out bottled water and photocopied materials at meetings.

For help in their efforts to reduce their environmental impact, several of these organizations–and others–have looked to the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative, a nonprofit founded in 2017 to coordinate government, business, nonprofit, and community resources to address climate issues. One example: C3 is assisting on Tiger Fuel’s environmental impact assessment.

C3 also runs the annual Better Business Challenge, founded in 2010 by environmental website Better World Betty and the community-based Local Energy Alliance Program. This year (2018-2109) more than 90 businesses and nonprofits participated, taking steps that collectively will save more than $675,000 a year in energy costs and cut 4,331 tons of CO2 emissions. Teri Kent, the original Better World Betty and now C3’s director of communications and programs, says, “There’s great momentum now as businesses are stepping up to this issue. Looking just at the money side of sustainability is too siloed–we all share the same air and water.”

Business sustainability by the numbers: a hyper-local case study

New York City is requiring all large buildings to slash carbon emissions to meet a collective goal of a 40 percent reduction by 2030. In Seattle and Washington, D.C., plastic straws are officially banned at all businesses to reduce plastic waste.

So how is the C’ville business community stepping up on sustainability? From Kardinal Hall to WorldStrides, many area businesses and organ­izations are pledging to reduce their carbon footprint with the help of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative’s Better Business Challenge, a friendly, year-long competition that encourages energy savings actions and spurs sustainability initiatives on the local level. What kind of tangible impact can they—and did they—make?

The 2018-19 Challenge tracked participant actions, and the energy-savings metrics are in.

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A green dream: City Council passes ambitious goal for carbon neutrality

Susan Elliott led the team of city staff members who drafted the ambitious proposal for Charlottesville to go carbon neutral by 2050. (Photo: Eze Amos)

The City of Charlottesville has set a plan in motion to reduce its carbon footprint—and it’s not messing around.

On June 24, City Council unanimously approved a proposal to curtail carbon emissions by 45 percent over the next 11 years and achieve an end goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. It’s an aggressive plan, one considered by local environmentalists to be the most ambitious of any city in Virginia, and its success is going to depend on buy-in from residents.

“The motivation and the discussion that happened was not around, ‘We want to be the leader’ or ‘We want to be the first,’” says Susan Elliott, the city’s climate protection program manager. “This is what the climate science is showing us needs to [happen]. And based on our values and our history and our community’s priorities, we’re rising to that challenge.”

Previously, the city had a much more modest goal, having committed in 2011 to reducing its emissions by 10 percent by 2035. But in June 2017, city leaders signed onto what is now called the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, and committed to a three-phase plan to examine emissions, set a new goal to reduce them, and implement a plan to get there. Each phase takes about a year.

With a goal now in place, the city can direct its attention toward devising specific strategies for achieving it. Elliott points to two general courses of action as realistically attainable: reducing inefficient energy consumption and encouraging businesses to consider renewable fuel options.

“When we looked at our emissions profile, 5 percent of that is directly within the city control,” Elliott says. “So the other 95 percent has to be private sector action.”

In the first phase, Charlottesville determined that three areas directly contribute to the majority of its carbon emissions: residential (29.8 percent), commercial (27 percent), and transportation (26.6 percent). That means home owners, local businesses, and drivers must be motivated to reduce their carbon footprint. The city’s task is to create incentives for them to do so.

“Everybody has a role to play,” says Teri Kent, program director of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative. C3 is a local nonprofit that promotes community-based incentives for going green. One of those incentives currently being considered by the city for the final action plan is the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy financing program.

Under C-PACE, owners of local properties receive long-term loans that allow them to undertake projects such as insulating walls and installing water-efficient toilets. The extended repayment structure of the loans means the landowners’ monthly or annual payments would be covered by the money saved from implementing these energy-reducing practices. Also, the loan is tied to the property, not the business that owns it, so the remaining balance would be packaged with the real estate itself in the event that the owner decides to sell the property.

The city hasn’t yet addressed the transportation aspect of emissions, writing in its proposal that it aims to research methods for “integrating zero emissions vehicles into the municipal fleet” and encouraging community members to do the same for their cars. Given that the staff crafting the plan just had its set of goals approved, it expects to nail down specific strategies in the coming months.

Charlottesville does already have some environmental initiatives in place, such as the Local Energy Alliance Program, which is sponsored by the city, Albemarle County, and Dominion Energy. LEAP was instrumental in the installation of energy-efficient projects in 475 low-income houses across the city and county in 2018, and the initiative includes the Commercial Clean Energy Loan Program, which assists businesses in paying the interest on solar panels.

Indoor Biotechnologies, a local firm focused on asthma and allergies, installed solar panels with help from the program, and received C3’s 2019 Industry Leader Award as part of the nonprofit’s Better Business Challenge. Company founder Martin Chapman believes that while not all businesses will take advantage of these programs, the “smarter” companies will see that long-term efficiency bodes well for their overall success.

“Some businesses may just see this as, ‘Well, this is an added cost and I’m not going to recover my return on investment for 10 years, ergo I’m not going to do it,’” Chapman says. “Usually those kinds of businesses in any case are not the ones that are going to thrive because you’re always thinking in a kind of shallow way.”

Voluntary practices like these will likely not be enough to make the city carbon neutral by 2050. Elliott says the plan is to eventually consider carbon sequestration, a process that removes carbon from the atmosphere, to counteract any remaining emissions. Meanwhile, Charlottesville will focus on eliminating unnecessary factors that contribute to its carbon emissions. She hopes the city’s eventual proposal will include input from the entire community.

“If people want to be involved in this, this really is the time to do that,” Elliott says. “There is genuine interest in having something that is actionable and achievable.”

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We’ve got work to do: Lagging behind, Charlottesville aims for more ambitious climate goals

In Charlottesville, carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average. Photo: Skyclad Aerial

In the words of Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being green. Though the Muppet references the color of his amphibian skin, the famous line is a sentiment that also rings true for Charlottesville, where carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average.

With 10 tons of carbon emissions per home annually, the United States trails the considerably more environmentally-friendly Europe by nearly five tons, but “as a city, we’re even further behind,” says Susan Kruse, the executive director of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative.

Charlottesville lags behind both America and its neighboring continent by clocking in at 11.2 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per household, according to local environmentalists like Kruse, who used an emissions calculator from the California-based Community Climate Solutions.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she says.

City data shows that local greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by nearly a quarter since 2000, from approximately 470,584 metric tons to 362,192 metric tons in 2016. But according to an Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator, that’s still enough carbon dioxide to match the greenhouse emissions from 76,899 cars in one year.

Why is an ostensibly progressive community like Charlottesville doing so poorly? Kruse has a few theories, including that the city’s current emissions reduction goal is weak, and the average income here is greater than the national average, so more people own bigger homes and additional vehicles.

“Another factor is that our city was not designed around a robust public transportation system,” she says. “Without an adequate base of affordable housing to serve our community, those who cannot afford to live in Charlottesville rely on their cars to get to work.”

Time for a change

There’s a bit of history to the city’s various attempts to reduce its footprint. In 2011, it committed to a community-wide greenhouse gas reduction goal of 10 percent below those 2000 baseline levels by 2035, a far less ambitious goal than other Virginia cities like Richmond, which has pledged to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2025. But when city leaders signed on to the Global Covenant of Mayors in June 2017, they agreed to tackle a more aggressive, three-phase goal, which started with an inventory of citywide gas emissions, and will now require setting a new target for reduction, and the development of a climate action plan.

The time may be right, says Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s Climate Protection Program manager. Given the changes in available technology, cost improvements, utilities integrating more renewables into their fuel mixes, and the city’s increased focus on affordable housing, “Charlottesville is both capable and at a timely point to adopt a new and more ambitious reduction goal,” Elliott says.

She gave the most recent update on this initiative to City Council in November, when she said the inventory phase was finished, and that residential energy, commercial energy, and transportation were the highest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions—at 29.8, 27, and 26.6 percent, respectively. The city then accepted public comments through March to give community members a chance to weigh in on a draft recommendation for an official reduction target and action plan, which will be presented to council May 6.

The Charlottesville Climate Collaborative is one of several groups urging what it calls a “best in class” climate goal of a 45 percent reduction (of 2010 emissions levels) by 2030, with the additional objective of total carbon neutrality by 2050. This is the threshold recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one that Elliott says she expects her draft recommendations will reflect.

Albemarle officials recently proposed the same net zero goal for 2050.

But Anna Bella Korbatov, chair of the Cville100 Climate Coalition, says environmentalists are urging local leaders to do more than just set robust climate goals. In order to meet their target, she suggests committing to conducting a greenhouse gas inventory every two years, benchmarking progress, and making the data clearly available to the public to make the process more transparent.

And while Charlottesville is already taking steps to address climate change, areas in which the city could use some work include addressing equity issues, tree cover, and transportation, she adds.

Making goals a reality

“Energy efficiency work is really at the nexus of affordable housing and climate change action,” says Chris Meyer, the executive director of the Local Energy Alliance Program “It is not very sexy, but it delivers immediate results to reduce energy bills [and] related greenhouse gas emissions, and increases a low-income household’s quality of living.”

LEAP is tackling this issue head-on, and in 2018 it delivered free energy efficiency improvements—such as new insulation, LED light bulbs, and aerators for faucets and shower heads—to 475 low-income homes in Charlottesville and Albemarle, with financial support from the city, county, and Dominion Energy.

Charlotte and Ralph Terrell are grateful to the Local Energy Alliance Program for improvements that keep their home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Photo: Eze Amos

Over the past several years, LEAP has made multiple improvements to Charlotte and Ralph Terrell’s home in the 10th and Page neighborhood, including insulating multiple walls, ceilings, and closets. They’ve also made safety enhancements to their dryer hose, installed an upstairs heating and cooling unit, and replaced 13 60-year-old windows.

“Our gas bill has gone down considerably because the house is holding the heat in the winter,” and staying cool in the summer, says Charlotte. “We are very, very thankful for that.”

One of the major challenges Meyer’s organization faces is identifying those in need. “There are resources available, we just have a tough time connecting with those who are eligible,” he says.

Another way to make a home—and a city—more efficient is quite simple, says Wild Virginia board member and lifelong nature lover Lil Williams. Look no further than the trees.

“You don’t have to recreate the wheel,” she says. “You have to plant the right kind of trees in the right place and you have to maintain them.”

Cities are heat islands that absorb and retain warmth, and are generally a few degrees warmer than rural areas. Planting shade trees is proven to decrease a city’s temperature from two to nine degrees based on the type and location, she says.

Due to increasing development and natural causes, Virginia cities are losing approximately 3,000 acres of trees per year, and globally, 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to deforestation, says Williams.

“In Charlottesville, we’ve cut down whole swaths of forest and put in apartments and shopping centers,” she adds.

While development may be inevitable, Williams recommends the city plant broad-leaf deciduous trees in more densely populated areas with higher pollution levels, such as near schools, hospitals, and in disadvantaged communities, where shade is proven to decrease the cost of air conditioning and electricity.

The city’s 2007 comprehensive plan established a goal of 40 percent tree cover, and a 2009 study found that number at 47 percent. When the city reassessed it in 2015, tree cover had decreased by 2 percent.

Williams expects tree cover has continued to decrease over time, and seemingly without a one-for-one replacement.

A 2018 city “greenprint” noted that, “while 45 percent is a good canopy coverage, the citywide percentage does not tell the whole story,” because 72 percent of that canopy was on private land, and increasing cover would require participation from the private and public sector.

The city’s urban forester, Mike Ronayne, says the tree commission has recently said it would like to instate a 50 percent canopy goal.

Aside from encouraging the planting of more trees, community activists also hope the city’s forthcoming climate action plan will include a better plan for regional transportation, which accounts for 26.6 percent of all local gas emissions.

City residents have long complained about the ineffectiveness of the Charlottesville Area Transit. “People have a hard time getting from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time,” says C3’s Kruse. “The buses are not always reliable.”

She says the city should look at public transportation and its layout as an aspect of affordability and emissions reduction.

“It’s not just about whether Charlottesville is walkable or bikeable, it also has to have public transit for the people for whom those are not options,” she adds.

Signs of hope

But it’s not all bad news—there are some areas in which the city is successful. Charlottesville has been a leader in piloting and funding climate protection-related programs, including joining the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2006, and drafting its vision for becoming a “green city” by 2025 three years later, CPG’s Elliott says.

In 2017, Charlottesville was the first Virginia city to earn a SolSmart designation, meaning city leaders incentivized going solar by hosting a community “solarize” campaign, reviewing zoning codes, and identifying and addressing restrictions that prohibited solar development.

Several city buildings—including the Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center, Fontaine Fire Station, and Lugo-McGinness Academy—have installed solar panel systems, and the city tracks their energy production. The solar arrays at Charlottesville High School, installed in 2012, supply about an eighth of the school’s annual electricity usage.

Some private companies have followed suit: Carter Myers Automotive in Albemarle, for example, recently built a solar array that covers more than 90 percent of the dealership’s energy use.

To meet a more ambitious carbon reduction goal, the city will also have to work with UVA, its largest employer. The university has its own climate goal—currently, it’s a 25 percent reduction of 2009 emission levels by 2025. Despite university growth, it has already reduced emissions by nearly 19 percent, says sustainability director Andrea Trimble, and is on a trajectory to meet its goal ahead of schedule. Like the city and county, UVA is in the process of developing a new sustainability plan and more aggressive climate goal, and Trimble says all three entities are working on coordinating their efforts.

Says Kruse, “We have leaders in our community who are stepping out and doing the right thing. What we need to do as a community is learn from those leaders and put forward new policies.”

Corrected April 17 at 1:43pm with the correct figure from the Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator.

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It’s the little things: Locals team up to tackle carbon reduction at home

Residential energy use is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Charlottesville.

The first Earth Day occurred in 1970, long before anyone started to worry about what was, at first, called “global warming.” So those trying to get Americans to change their behavior for the planet’s sake are fighting a battle against eco-fatigue, born of repeated exposure to environmentalist messages, and their inevitable fadeout.

In Charlottesville, one organization is leveraging group psychology to spur regular people to reduce their carbon footprints. “We noticed that the largest sector emitting greenhouse gases is the residential sector, at nearly 30 percent,” says Claire Habel of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative, or C3. “We said ‘Hey, we should really be engaging households.’”

Through C3’s Home Energy Challenge, groups of friends and neighbors around the city have been attending “power parties,” where they set carbon reduction goals and resolve to track their progress as a group. The idea is that working in teams, with an element of competition and accountability to one’s teammates, might keep folks more committed to making those little shifts in personal habits that add up to a larger impact. “It’s known to be pretty effective—this positive peer pressure,” says Habel.

Power parties

On a warm evening in March, Chris and Mirentxu Meyer assemble trays of snacks in the kitchen of their roomy new house in Fry’s Spring, while Habel talks with a reporter about how the Home Energy Challenge works. “Many of our participants have done a lot of the actions already,” Habel says, explaining that the HEC offers teams a menu of carefully quantified, footprint-reducing actions they can take. If participants have already, say, bought an electric vehicle or switched to LED light bulbs, there are still ways to earn points for their teams, through actions “geared toward lifestyle”—for example, line-drying clothes.

Chris Meyer already works on climate change through his day job, as executive director of the Local Energy Alliance Program. He says that when he and Mirentxu moved into this subdivision, Oaklawn, where construction is still underway and heavy equipment blocks the street, they wanted their investment to reflect their green values, so they installed geothermal heating and solar panels. “I’m interested in seeing more done locally,” he says, referring to the City of Charlottesville’s carbon reduction goals, which have been relatively modest.

Wanting to do more on a personal level, he volunteered to host this power party and lead a team in the second season of the Home Energy Challenge. The Meyers’ first guest to arrive is Beau Dickerson, whose company Echelon developed this new neighborhood, and who lives just up the street. Soon, six more neighbors have arrived, and everyone settles in for a presentation by Habel.

With 11 teams having been part of the HEC’s first season—it wrapped up in February—Habel has clearly had practice leading folks through her spiel. She points out that while Richmond and Blacksburg have set aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals—80 percent by 2050, in some cases—Charlottesville’s goal is a wan 10 percent by 2035 (the city is currently working on a revised, more ambitious goal). Her audience expresses dismay. Habel piles on a little: Charlottesvillians create more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the average U.S. citizen (11.2 tons per person as opposed to 10 tons) and more than twice as much as the average Brit (5.2 tons).

With everyone in the room now feeling a little guilty, Habel offers hope: The 192 households that participated in the first season of the HEC saved a collective 186 tons of carbon. “We have to think about it in terms of numbers, because it’s the little things that make an impact,” Habel says. “Last season, we soared past our goal.”

Small steps

Those 186 tons saved seem small compared with the 6.5 million tons annually emitted across the U.S. (that’s the EPA’s number for 2016). As Leo Connally, another HEC participant, puts it, echoing a very common sentiment, “When I start to think about global climate change, it’s such an overwhelming thing.” Very bad news from the U.N.—whose report last fall predicted catastrophic effects from climate change sooner than previously expected—and climate-change denial on the part of President Trump may well cause people to despair.

Yet the crux of the issue—and the sweet spot where C3 is trying to do its work—is to keep people focused on doable steps and incremental change at the local level, in the belief that widespread improvements are built of many tiny positive shifts. In her presentations, Habel also appeals to her audience’s wallets, pointing out that eating one fewer meal of beef each week can save a family of four $100 per year.

Connally says he, for one, has seen some real savings. “We installed a water-saving showerhead and started being more diligent about monitoring our thermostat,” he says. “Our gas bill went from $110 to $57.” He and his girlfriend have also cut their trash volume in half by composting through the city compost program.

“That’s a tangible thing,” he says. “What appealed to us with HEC is that it kind of brought all these different things together in an organized way. I can take a couple steps and watch and see the impact.”

Of course, transportation and business sectors are also major GHG polluters, and government regulation—from the local to international levels—is needed to promote drastic change. “It’s a little bit frustrating to me that the onus is on the individual,” says Connally. “I wish I saw more effort on behalf of some of the larger corporations.” Still, he and many others hope to step up their own personal games.

“I’m a work in progress here,” he says, “but I have the best of intentions.”