1. Introduction:  Why have a strategy?

Earlier articles in this series have discussed sustainability in terms of the simple, low-risk, short-payback tactics with obvious benefits.  However, when it comes to the bigger and more expensive opportunities you need a strategy that will guide you to the most effective ones first and help you plan how to pay for them.  Currently the most common strategy is the payback calculation. This is a strictly monetary metric that says if you get your money back in a reasonable amount of time, and continue to save after that, then the project is worth it.  The problem with this approach is that it may miss synergies that can come about by combining projects, and can’t adapt to changing conditions.  In this article we’ll also talk about Fossil Energy (FE) reduction, and a 100% Renewable Energy (RE%) target strategy.  The new metrics have the benefit that they are absolute, meaning that they don’t depend on a baseline that might change over time.  As such they mark progress toward an absolute goal instead of a relative one. Here we’ll also track the traditional metrics like energy cost and payback time.

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Nick Hein, 1/28/19

Previous articles discussed the sustainability stair climb in general terms.  In this article we’ll outline a specific strategy to make real progress toward long-term sustainability goals.  Here’s why it’s important.  Your financial investments right now may be making 2-8% in conventional places like banks and money markets.  Alternatively, sustainability can give you a return from 10-80%, and your investment stays in your home where you can see and feel it.  In this article you’ll learn how to calculate that return and how to make it snowball so you can re-invest it. 

Rebates or other programs give you short-term rewards for changing behavior, but if you’re going to climb the whole stairway you need a way to see longer-term progress and set bigger goals.  A $100 rebate doesn’t help you as much as saving $100 every year, and using fewer fossil fuels this month doesn’t motivate you as much as eliminating them completely.  

In this article we describe how to track money saved during your sustainability efforts, in addition to the intangible benefits such as time-savings, convenience, comfort, safety, and quality of life. This will involve using spreadsheets, which we’ll show in sections.  There will be a link to the complete file, which should work with most spreadsheet programs.  Read more

By Nick Hein, 8/23/18

What is sustainability and how do you DO it? The answer depends partly on what you WANT it to be and what you CAN do. In this article we’ll describe the Sustainability Stair Climb basics. In future articles we’ll give some specifics, including the big step that solar PV from Legacy Solar Co-op can help you climb.

Introduction

First of all, what is sustainability and how do you DO it? There are the things in our daily lives that we need – like heat, light and food. Sustainability is just managing those resources so we’ll continue to have them as long as we need them. For our larger society it means clean air, clean water, healthy soil and wild places where nature can recover and regenerate the resources we’ve used. We can each do our part by making sure that we use only what we need and return things in the best possible condition. In our homes and lives we have some control of how we do that. So where should we start? Do you have an overall long-term plan or are you just committing random acts of greenness to collect rebate checks? I’ve found in my own journey, that I accomplish more when I have a plan. Read more