Energy conservation and energy efficiency are truly global issues, but I'm a firm believer in finding local solutions for even the largest problems. “Think globally, act locally” is more than a cliché; it captures the reality of human nature. We don't like to have solutions imposed on us by largely invisible authorities. We're more likely to adopt homegrown practices that appeal to our innate sense of virtue. In our hearts, most of us are kind and generous. When given the opportunity, we will act in the common interest and do the right thing.

In this chapter, I share stories of people who joined the battle for energy efficiency and who made a difference. Ideally, these stories will inspire you and embolden you to become an active participant in the fight to reduce our collective carbon footprint and preserve the world.

A Virtuous Circle

Ed Boman is the assistant director of public works in the Town of Fairfield, Connecticut. If you were casting a movie, Ed would be the perfect choice to play the pragmatic New Englander who's spent most of his adult life working in town government. He definitely looks and sounds like a guy who knows his way around a backhoe and understands the intricacies of municipal drainage systems.

Ed is also a driving force in Fairfield's remarkably steady march toward a clean energy future. “Ed Boman is absolutely tenacious,” says Scott Thompson of the Sustainable Fairfield Task Force. “He knows every source of funding out there and he knows the rules for each one. He puts it all together and gets projects done like no one else I've ever met. He is truly relentless in his pursuit of energy efficiency.”

Fairfield is consistently ranked a leader in sustainability, thanks in large part to the high level of cooperation between the town and local volunteer groups such as the task force, the Earth Day Committee, the Forest Committee, and the Land Acquisition Commission. These grassroots efforts influence state lawmakers, who then pass legislation promoting sustainable energy practices. “After the laws are passed, it's up to local folks to implement them,” Scott explains. “It's like a feedback loop, between the state and the local communities.”

I agree with Scott's description of the process as a feedback loop. I also see it as an example of a virtuous circle in which one good deed leads to another, promoting a continuous series of small steps that add up significantly over time. “Collectively, the town saves about $3 million annually on its energy bills,” Scott says. “That's measurable success. If people don't perceive the benefits, these projects die.”

Scott shared the task force's approach and the key elements of success they identified:

• Leverage private sector and incentives
• Develop favorable PPA templates to minimize town risk
• Focus on economic arguments to gain approvals
• Truly engage stakeholders: listen and respond
• Share and promote success

Ed is equally adamant about the need for achieving tangible results from energy-efficiency projects. “The taxpayers have to see the cost savings. They have to see that you're reducing air pollution and improving public health,” Ed says. “You've got to show them this isn't pie-in-the-sky stuff.”

The town has two ongoing microgrid projects, one in the downtown commercial district and one at a former landfill at the town's water pollution control facility. The microgrids will ensure that essential town services such as police, fire, communications, and wastewater treatment can operate during power outages.

One of the benefits of microgrids is that they can be powered by traditional sources of energy, nontraditional sources of energy, or by combinations of both, which makes them highly attractive sources of alternative power for neighborhoods, communities, college campuses, and office parks.

The town installed a solar array at the old landfill and a fuel cell to generate power and offset the high costs of operating the wastewater treatment plant, which treats nine million gallons of wastewater on an average day and twenty-five million gallons per day during heavy rainstorms.

Ed would like to see the wastewater plant and adjacent town buildings fully powered by renewable energy sources in the next couple of years. “Today, we use naturally generated methane to heat the building during the winter, but in the summer, the methane is vented,” Ed explains. “If we convert to cogen [cogenerated power], we can burn the methane to produce electricity and heat. Then the buildings will be fully independent of outside power sources. That's our goal.”

If Fairfield's energy plans are realized, the town will reduce electricity use by 20 percent, increase use of clean energy by 20 to 75 percent, reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent, and reduce town building maintenance costs by 20 percent.

I asked Ed how Fairfield had been able to move forward on a steady pace with its energy-efficiency projects. His reply speaks volumes: “We started early and kept going. Once you achieve some success, people accept it as normal. We use solar panels on rooftops and in parking lots. Almost every school in town generates solar energy. Parents are conscious of the health benefits and they know we're saving money. It gets to be a no-brainer after a while. People understand that it's a continuous process. You're not going to just do it once; you're always looking for improvements.”

I really admire Ed's hands-on approach to energy efficiency. In many ways, he is emblematic of the global movement away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner sources of energy that are better for the environment. He is strong in his beliefs and yet realistic. He clearly is a fan of clean energy, and yet he is also aware of its complexities.

“You don't want to generate more green power than you can use,” he says. “In Connecticut, when you collect more solar than you can use, it goes into a bank. In the wintertime, when there's less sun, you can use the energy you put in the bank. If you have leftover power at the end of the year, the utility company will buy it back at 4 cents per kWh.”

The problem is that it costs 7 to 11 cents per kWh to generate solar power, which means you can't just blithely go ahead and switch to solar without considering the long-term financial consequences. In other words, you need a plan, and your plan has to take all the variables into account.

Everything Is Local

I've had several long and wonderful conversations with Mark Scully and Bernie Pelletier of People's Action for Clean Energy (PACE), an organization whose mission is transitioning Connecticut to clean energy through grassroots education and advocacy.¹

Mark is the president of PACE and Bernie is the group's vice president. Both are retired insurance industry executives, with deep experience in actuarial science. These guys are all about data, and when they talk about environmental risks from CO₂, they aren't exaggerating.

PACE was formed in 1973, and it has a long track record of effective organizing. If you're interested in becoming part of the clean energy movement on the local level, I strongly urge you to visit the PACE website (https://pacecleanenergy.org/) and familiarize yourself with their resources. Here are selections (quoted with permission) from their comprehensive list of activities for building a project team and encouraging grassroots community engagement:

Getting Started: Project Team ²

The first step to undertaking a project of this scope is to build a project team. Transitioning to clean energy will impact every aspect of town life, so you will want the team to include broad representation. If your town already has a Clean Energy Task Force or Commission, you might choose to work through this group. If not, you might consider forming one, as it can help your team be more effective.

Before jumping into the technical details, it is wise to establish an initial project vision, scope, high-level goals, and approach.

Build a Project Team

Because this transition will touch every community member the team should be a cross section of the community members. It will require business owners, key municipal staff, local grassroots organizations, and large sector representatives. The idea is to assemble a group that is diverse enough to represent your community and engaged enough to help you get things done after planning. Having diverse representation from across your community is necessary to develop a credible and actionable plan. Additionally, a varied group of planning team members may be able to help you leverage broader resources to support implementation.

In forming your team, you might want to consider representation from the following groups:

• Civic leaders
• Neighborhood groups
• Business groups (e.g., Chamber of Commerce)
• Service organizations (e.g. Rotary, Lions)
• Environmental organizations
• Workforce and educational providers
• Energy-efficiency contractors
• Green-building guilds or groups
• Faith-based organizations
• Municipal staff
  • Public Works
  • Economic development
  • Land use planning
  • Environmental staff
• Larger sources of emissions
  • Hospitals
  • University and community colleges
  • K–12 energy managers
  • Other major employers
• Individuals with relevant expertise
  • Energy policy, advocacy or technical experts
  • Regional and state partners that you may already work with

Form a Clean Energy Task Force/Commission

Across the country, clean energy task forces and commissions have proven to be effective groups in promoting the transition to clean energy. These entities speak with the authority of having been commissioned by the town authorities to address energy issues. As such, their recommendations and plans have greater authority and impact than those from other groups.

Establish Initial Project Vision, Scope, High-Level Goals, and Approach

For a project as bold and wide-ranging as the transition to renewable energy, it is essential for the team to share a common understanding of the basic project features.

Clearly, many of these features will evolve as the project progresses, but it is important to take time up front to establish a common view of a few core areas, such as Vision, Scope, High-Level Goals, and Approach. (For example, your Vision will be a “clearly articulated, transparent, and shared vision of your community's energy future sets the direction for subsequent decisions about focus areas, goals, and strategies for achieving those goals.” Your Approach might include, “How often will your team meet? Are you planning a larger workshop to determine the vision, scope, and goals? What partners do you plan to engage? Will you conduct media outreach?”)

Getting Started: Energy Plan ³

If you haven't done so already, start by discussing and agreeing upon a vision for your community's energy future. What are your high-level goals and interim milestones? What will be the scope of your vision (e.g., residents, businesses, municipality, schools)?

Next, assess the resources available to you. Does your town have a prior plan you can build on? Is the municipality able to provide assistance such as staff time, publication tools, work space? Are you able to partner with local educational institutions or other organizations? Are there individuals in your town with particular skills or expertise that you might recruit to help? Do you have funding to engage consultants or graphic designers?

Peruse a range of plans from other towns. You will find a rich diversity of styles and content. What features, language, charts, or images appeal to you? [Don't be shy about reaching out to that town—or to PACE—for assistance or permission to use their images or other features.]

Finally, decide on the style, scope, and organization of your plan. Is there a particular plan or template you want to start with, or will you start from scratch?

Checklist

If you haven't already done so, carry out a Baseline Energy Assessment.⁴ It will provide some quantitative analysis, charts, and direction for the plan.

Divvy up the work and create your plan. You will want to thoroughly discuss your concrete actions amongst your team. While it may not be possible to achieve unanimity, aim for a consensus on these action steps.

Once you have a fairly complete draft of the plan, set about engaging the community. The more stakeholders understand the plan, and feel they had a chance to provide input, the more credibility it will have, and the more likely you will be able to implement it. Key stakeholders to engage include:

• Town officials (e.g., First Selectmen, Mayor, Town Manager, Director of Public Works, Energy Manager)
• Board of Education
• Schools, parent-teacher organizations
• Residents
• Neighborhood organizations
• Businesses, business groups
• Religious organizations

After revising the plan based on input from the community, ask your town officials (i.e., Town Council, Board of Selectmen) to approve it. An official vote and/or resolution of support will be invaluable as you implement the plan.

Celebrate and publicize its passage! Get an article in the local paper. Go on local television. Create banners, buttons, and so on.

Revisit your plan annually. It should not need a complete rewrite, but you need to update your one-year and five-year plans (or whatever time horizon you use).

Getting Started: Community Engagement ⁵

If you haven't done so already, make sure all key stakeholders have seen and provided input into your energy plan. Discussions with stakeholder groups will not only improve the plan, but they will [also] uncover diverse and original ways to carry it out. And, along the way, you will identify champions to carry different initiatives forward.

Checklist

• Identify key stakeholders in your community and determine the best way to engage each of them.
• As a plan is developed, intermediate approvals are useful. For example, a Clean Energy Task Force approval is a valuable stepping stone to larger community adoption.
• After revising the plan based on input from the community, ask your town officials (i.e., Town Council, Board of Selectmen) to approve it. An official vote and/or resolution of support will be invaluable as you implement the plan.
• Reach out to Sierra Club Connecticut and consider joining their Ready for 100 Campaign.
• Carry out your own combination of activities (e.g., workshops, energy fairs, surveys, social networking, public displays, informational campaigns).
• Conduct each activity through the equity lens.

This list is merely a portion of the excellent guidance provided by the PACE team. I recommend taking a deep dive into their website and taking full advantage of the excellent work they've already done. In addition to links to other towns with energy task forces or commissions, you will also find a customizable template⁶ for creating an energy plan for your town or community. I find resources such as these to be absolutely essential for reducing your workload substantially and improving your chances for success.

Strong Legal Framework Is Essential

The Pacific Northwest is home to many of the nation's major hydroelectric plants. It also has easy access to electricity generated by coal-burning plants in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.

It seems odd that a region blessed with cheap power would become a model of energy efficiency. Despite an abundance of inexpensive energy sources, the Pacific Northwest is a trailblazer in power economics.

The region's pioneering journey toward energy efficiency began in the nineteenth century, when early settlers realized they could use the flowing currents of local rivers to power their mills. In 1885, George Fitch built the region's first hydroelectric generator near the Spokane River.

He installed a small dynamo, powered by the river, in the basement of a flour mill and sent electricity to a dozen arc lights a short distance away. Four years later, in 1889, the first long-distance transmission of electricity in the Northwest began in Portland, where a direct-current line was built from a small hydropower plant at Willamette Falls to light street lights downtown, a distance of about 13 miles.⁷

The success of Fitch's arc dynamo inspired a legion of copycats. Soon there were “run-of-river” generators and hydroelectric dams across the Northwest. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense. The combination of frontier ingenuity and the vast waters of the Columbia River Basin spawned a robust economy based on hydroelectricity.

As a New Englander, it's hard for me to imagine the sheer size of the Columbia River Basin. It encompasses portions of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and British Columbia. The Columbia River Basin is larger than the nation of France!

During the 1930s, large-scale hydroelectric projects such as the Grand Coulee Dam transformed both the regional and national economies. The lasting impacts of these projects are incalculable. As of today, the Pacific Northwest region depends on hydropower for roughly 50 percent of its electrical needs. This power is also widely shared: About 40 percent of all the hydropower used in the United States originates in the Columbia River Basin system.⁸

But let's take a step back and revisit a critical moment in the energy history of the Pacific Northwest. By the mid-1960s, virtually all of the region's electricity was generated by hydropower. Then a confluence of events forced the people of the Pacific Northwest to rethink the future of their energy sources.

First, the region's growing population and expanding economy required more energy. At the same time, however, the region simply ran out of places to build new hydroelectric dams. Next, a natural meteorological phenomenon called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation⁹ reduced the flow of water in the Columbia River Basin. The oil embargoes of the 1970s drove up energy prices, ending a long period of inexpensive and readily available power.

Facing a growth in demand and limited new sources of hydropower, the region shored up its energy needs with inexpensive electricity from coal-fired generators in the intermountain states and the development of nuclear power. But a general sense of uneasiness over nuclear energy and rising awareness of coal's harmful impact on the environment led many people in the region to seek alternatives that were less risky and more friendly to the natural landscape. By the late 1970s, it had become apparent that new sources of energy were needed.

This was the moment at which energy efficiency began to emerge as a serious long-term strategy. “We saw a cloud on the horizon,” recalls Angus Duncan, who served on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a four-state organization authorized by Congress to “develop, with broad citizen participation, a regional power plan to ensure an adequate, efficient, economical, and reliable power supply, along with a program to protect and enhance fish and wildlife affected by hydropower dams in the basin.”¹⁰

The looming cloud they saw was climate change. “We began thinking about how we would have to change the way we use energy to cope with that,” Angus remembers. The council's efforts to develop exceptionally strong regional policies programs for energy efficiency also positioned the Northwest to move forward on climate change mitigation strategies.

Thanks largely to those policies and programs, the Pacific Northwest has become a leader in the energy-efficiency movement. Efficiency is now the region's second-largest energy resource after hydropower. The strong focus on efficiency has made it possible for the region to build fewer power plants. According to statistics from the council's Regional Technical Forum, the region has met more than half its load growth with energy efficiency since 1978, resulting in these savings:

• More than 6,000 average megawatts saved, enough power for five Seattles
• $4 billion saved in lower electricity bills per year
• Carbon emissions reduced by 23.5 million tons per year
• Producing more with less energy compared to the national average

In hindsight, the region's decision to concentrate on energy efficiency seems like a no-brainer. But in the 1980s, when the Pacific Northwest was paying substantially less for energy than other parts of the nation, it took considerable foresight to pivot sharply and focus on efficiency.

“One of the things we wrote into the federal law setting this all up was that you have to treat energy efficiency as though it's a generating resource,” Angus explains. “You have to think about efficiency as a tangible resource, not just as a frill or an extra.”

From his perspective, greater efficiency translates directly into long-term savings because it is the equivalent of not having to build a new generating resource. “We've saved between two and three Grand Coulee Dams' worth of energy in the last 30 years. Which means we have not built fifteen to twenty additional coal or gas plants we otherwise would have had to build to meet our energy needs,” Angus says. “It's been a real economic benefit because this is money we didn't have to spend on construction and operations.”

One of the key lessons I learned from over the course of my conversations with Angus is the importance of a solid legal framework for guiding and informing the development of energy strategy.

The US Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act of 1980, more commonly known as the Northwest Power Act, has played an absolutely essential role in the creation and implementation of the region's energy-efficiency strategy. The act serves as map, compass, and rulebook for navigating successfully through the complexities of energy policy. At a high level, the act sets forth three bedrock principles:

• Energy efficiency must be regarded as equivalent to an energy resource.
• Energy efficiency must be prioritized over building new power plants.
• When new energy plans are considered, integrated resource planning techniques must be used to determine the least-cost option.

“If you want to build a new power plant, you have to do an analysis showing that it's the least-cost option,” Angus explains. “Additionally, when you're calculating costs, you have to look not just at dollar costs, but at environmental costs and benefits as well. If you can put a dollar figure on them, you have to add them into your dollar calculation. Even if you can't put a dollar value to them, they still have to be stated and they have to be a part of the record of the decision process.”

For many readers, that might sound overly wonky. Yet the strength of the Northwest Power Act is in its details. As a lawyer, I appreciate carefully written laws because they make life easier. The Northwest Power Act was largely written by people who live and work in the Pacific Northwest region. The act has stood the test of time and has enabled the region to pursue its goal of energy efficiency successfully since the 1980s. It's become a model for legislation worldwide, and it's worth studying.