Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

The Hope Conference (Healing Our Planet Earth (HOPE): Singing a New Song of Hope) was held in Seattle in 2008.  Featuring keynote speakers Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Bishop Stephen Charleston this event put the Episcopal Church on record as a “green” denomination. 

At the conference my Bishop, Greg Rickel of Olympia, worked out a deal with the city of Seattle to launch a pilot environmental program to retrofit several churches for electrical efficiency to reduce their carbon footprint. My parish, St. Andrew’s, was one of them.

Let there be light.

What followed this opportunity was a bare-bones, down and dirty capital campaign we called “Green and Growing.” In six weeks we raised $190,000 to change out all our light fixtures, replace our belching 50-year-old oil-burning boiler with a high-efficiency gas unit, replace all the windows in our office suite and green up our campus in a number of other ways.

Two of our biggest donors? The Diocese of Olympia and the City of Seattle. Immediate savings? We saved 40% on our heating costs in the first year on utilities alone.

In addition to the energy efficiency support, the City of Seattle also helped fund a major recycling program paying for all the containers, signage and training materials to make it work.

Many churches have the opportunity to take advantage of city-run programs that can greatly reduce utility costs and make us all better stewards of the earth. Sunshare’s Energy Program in Durham, North Carolina, has trained more than 2,000 residents to build solar collectors and weatherize their homes. More than 600 churches and non-profit buildings have been retrofitted since 1987, saving some $500,000. In Camden, New Jersey, the Program Offering Widespread Energy Recovery (POWER) uses a model of whole-neighborhood retrofits in low-income urban communities, using a one-stop-shop approach based in local churches for program delivery and financing.

Give your city council member or mayor a call, meet them for coffee and see if they can shed a little light on the opportunity to reduce your energy costs and help save the planet.