Becoming a Carbon Neutral Congregation

Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Agenda

• Please put your Name, Email address and Affiliation in the Chat�
• Preliminaries: What, When, Why, How
• The Congregational Carbon Footprint
• Achieving the 2030 Goal of a 45% Reduction
• Building & Grounds
• Travel
• Households
• Adaptation & Resilience
• Climate Justice

What’s Happening?

More Heat �every Year�

• Drought
• Smoke
• Fire
• Floods

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Boise City Climate Milestones

• Boise’s Climate Action Roadmap

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Boise UU Fellowship

Climate Action Goals

• 50% reduce in emissions by 2030
• Carbon Neutral by 2050

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Why become carbon neutral?

• It's a key way to limit global warming and avoid the worst consequences of climate change
• To reduce our carbon emissions
• To inspire others to become carbon neutral
• To help the city become carbon neutral
• Reduce Climate-Anxiety
• Demonstrate that we can address Climate Change

How do we meet our goals?

1. Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Understand your carbon footprint
• What are the emissions of your building?
• What are the big emitters?
2. Improve your energy efficiency
1. Insulate and seal air leaks
3. Look for carbon offsets
1. Your landscaping can offset your emissions

3 Carbon Footprints of a Carbon Neutral Congregation

1. Buildings and Grounds
2. Travel to the Building
3. Members & Friends Households

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Elements of a Carbon Footprint

How to find your carbon footprint

• Collect information
• Electricity from your electric bill
• Natural Gas from your bill
• size of your building�
• Use the Cool Congregations Footprint Calculator

interfaithpowerandlight.org/coolcongregations/calculators

interfaithpowerandlight.org/coolcongregations/calculators

Cool Congregations’ Congregational Calculator Short Checklist

Cool Congregations’ Congregational Calculator with Default Data

• Location/Year
• Ada County, House of Worship
• 2024
• Facility
• Electricity
• Natural Gas
• Other
• Water & Wastewater
• Solid Waste & Recycling
• Transportation
• Visits
• Average Travel Distance
• Food - 0
• Procurement
• Office Supplies
• Maintenance
• Reductions - Recycling, offsets

Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator, screen shot

Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Baseline: 2019

Location: Boise, Idaho

Staff : 4

Property: 4.75 acres

Building: 12,907 sq.ft

Lawn: ¾ acre

Trees: approx. 230 = 8.6 mt/yr

Electricity: 23,280 KWh

Gas: 434,500 Cu ft�Details: BUUF Carbon Footprint

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Boise UU Fellowship 2019 Carbon Footprint

Recap of BUUF’s 2019 Carbon Footprint

• Focus: BUUF’s building – the facility footprint
• Ignore miles driven for now
• Footprint is 40.5 metric tons of CO2e/yr
• Largest emitter: Natural Gas for heating, 23 mt/yr
• Next largest: construction of the building, 6.4
• Electricity: 2.5 mt/yr
• Idaho Power’s high percentage of clean energy

BUUF’s Carbon Emission Reduction Plan

• Goal
• 2030 - 50% reduction = 20.26 mt/yr
• Plan
• Replace Natural Gas heating with Heat Pumps
• switch to 100% clean energy from Idaho Power
• Look for offsets landscaping

BUUF’s Building and Grounds Reduction

1. Zero Electricity Footprint with Idaho Power’s Clean Energy Program
2. Replace all aging gas burning furnaces with electric furnace/heat pumps

Funding

• Conducting a Capital Campaign
• Looking for Incentives, etc.

Future Plans

• Energy Efficient Improvement
• Increase our Carbon Capture by planting trees

2019: 32.26 MT/yr of CO2e

Result: 7 MT/yr of CO2e

63% reduction from 2019

56%

7%

Trees: -21%

Electric

Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator: What If?

• Try different values to see how they affect the footprint
• Ignore transportation for now
• Set air miles = 0, staff miles = 0
• responsibility for visitor miles = 0
• Facilities
• 68% of Idaho Powers electricity comes for renewable energy source,
• this reduces the default footprint from 83.3 to 70.43
• What are your largest facilities emissions?
• What are your reductions?

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Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator: Visits

• Calculating Travel to the Building
• Number of staff
• Weekly visitors
• Average distance from home to facilities
• People per vehicle
• % Responsibility
• Business Air Travel/year

Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator

• Travel to the BUUF Building 2019 – 2023

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Transportation Footprint

Mitigations

• Remote Attendance
• Carpooling to increase the number of people per vehicle
• Member’s EV purchases

Average Household Carbon Footprint:

Ada County Average

• People/Household: 2.5
• Income/household: $60K
• 2 cars, 26 mpg
• No public transportation
• Living space: 2,179
• Gas heat�
• 47 tons of CO₂e/year

Member’s Household Footprint

• Household Carbon Footprint Class
• Agenda
• Session 1
• A Call to Action – carbon neutral
• What’s a Household Carbon Footprint?
• How to Calculate Your Footprint
• Refining Your Footprint
• Homework: Find Your Baseline Household Carbon Footprint
• Session 2
• Investigating Tradeoffs with the Household Carbon Footprint Calculator
• Managing Your Footprint Over Time.
• Developing Your Personal Climate Action Plan
• Daily, Monthly and Yearly goals
• Home Electrification Checklist

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We cannot focus only on carbon emissions while ignoring sustainability

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from It’s time to move beyond ‘carbon tunnel vision’

Four Essentials of Climate Action

Adaptation & Resilience

• Respond to worsening climate
• Reduce vulnerabilities
• Plan & act to increase resilience
• Adapt to changing conditions
• Promote a positive response

Impacts of Climate Change to Human Health

Courtesy of Dr. Ethan Sims, St. Luke’s

Hope, Health & The Climate Crisis

• Hope is good for health, and hopelessness is toxic
• The climate crisis can erode hope
• We can and should propel hope
• Tell the truth
• Acknowledge grief
• Articulate a vision of success
• Identify pathways toward that vision
• Empower people to take action
• Make room for joy

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Courtesy of Dr. Ethan Sims, St. Luke’s, from Hope, Health and the Climate Crisis by Howard Frumkin

Climate Justice

Champion Environmental Justice

• Strengthen local commitments 
• Support equity in climate planning / objectives
• Advocate for most affected communities

We Are Not Alone In This Work��Help & Partnership With:

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• Idaho Interfaith Power & Light
• Boise’s Climate Action Team
• Idaho Sierra Club

Deep dive into the calculator

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Congregational Emissions

• Scope 1 emissions
• Emissions of the building: Heating & Cooling, Water, Sewer, Waste, etc.
• Travel to the congregation’s building and grounds
• Congregants’ Household Carbon Footprint
• Scope 2 emissions
• Emissions that a congregation causes indirectly by purchasing energy for its building and grounds. These emissions from energy producers: Intermountain Gas and Idaho Power
• Scope 3 emissions
• All the indirect emissions that occur in the production and use of the things we buy. Examples: Printing, Supplies, Electronics

Congregational Carbon Offsets

• Landscaping
• Trees
• Lawn & shrubs
• Solar Installations
• Sierra Club: New Federal Support for Solar Power Benefitting LA-area Houses of Worship
• Idaho Sierra Club: Solar For All & Solar For The People Rallies
• Energy Efficiency
• Insulation decreases energy use
• See Notes from Why IS My Sanctuary So Cold?
• Renewable Energy
• Idaho Power: Clean Energy Your Way

Landscaping Carbon Footprint: Grasses

• One acre of vegetation sequesters:
• Lawn grass: 1.6 mt/yr
• Switchgrass: 4.5 mt/yr��

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• Lawn carbon balance
• Carbon Emissions: Fertilizing, Irrigating, Mowing
• Carbon Capture: 1.6 mt/yr/acre

Landscaping Carbon Footprint: Trees

• Example: An acre of Maple trees sequesters 6.2 MT/yr�
• Trees capture carbon in trunks, branches, leaves, and roots.�
• Trees with large trunks and dense wood tend to be the best absorbers, large leaves and wide crowns help too�
• Prefer fast growing, native species, low-maintenance

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Landscaping Carbon Footprint: Trees

• How to Calculate Carbon Capture:
• Tree Measurements
• Trunk circumference, see How to Measure a Tree
• Height, see Tree Height Calculator
• Specie, see Tree Identification, by the Arbor Day Foundation
• See How to calculate the amount of CO₂ sequestered in a tree per year

Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator: What If?

• Reducing your energy bill – reduces your footprint
• From Why is my sanctuary so cold? Webinar Improvement Priorities (DoE Guidelines)
• Air Sealing envelope
• Insulation
• Sealing ducts
• HVAC upgrades
• Window replace,
• Appliance upgrades
• Renewables

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Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator

Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator

Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator

Cool Congregations Carbon Footprint Calculator

We must act to address climate change. ��45% Reduction of Greenhouse Gases by 2030, 100% by 2050 �

2019

2030