When David Payne and his wife bought a home in the Newlands neighborhood in Boulder, they got a place with good environmental credentials. Its previous owner had been director of the Colorado office of the Nature Conservancy.
“But the house had a big greenhouse-gas footprint,” Payne discovered. “There are different shades of green.”
To lower their reliance on conventional sources of energy, which have been blamed as major culprits in global warming, the couple mapped out several improvements:
A roof-mounted photovoltaic array, to be financed in part by tax credits and a 50-percent rebate from Xcel Energy, to generate electricity on-site.
A solar collector to heat water in an 800-gallon tank in the basement, for home use and for a radiant heating system.
A refrigerator with a higher Energy Star rating, plus a 98-percent efficient boiler that serves as backup for the hot water system.
An inexpensive “light shelf” to shade living areas from the sun’s heat while reflecting more light into the interior, lessening the need for indoor lighting and air conditioning.
“Energy efficiency is a hugely cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” says Payne, a researcher on climate change strategies at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. “And by paying up front, we’re investing in predictable pricing 20 to 30 years in the future.”
Other ways to battle global warming include driving a fuel-efficient car, or bicycling whenever possible, as Payne does; buying locally produced food, lessening the need for long-distance trucking; and that environmental standby – recycling.
Jack DeBell, CU’s full-time recycling coordinator, says it takes less than 10 percent as much energy to make beverage cans from recycled aluminum as to produce them from scratch.
“Yet we throw away enough aluminum cans in this country every year to rebuild our entire domestic airline fleet six times.”
Recycling paper carries the added benefit of leaving forests intact to help absorb the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For every 4-foot stack of newspapers dumped into a recycling bin, he notes, one 40-foot Douglas fir tree can be left standing.
– Jack Cox
