Where are my savings going? Looking at fossil fuel divesting.

Hard to see that we are surrounded by mountains with all this smoke.

It's been a few weeks since I have posted anything. Shortly after my last post I drove down to Washington State to visit friends and do some research - my fourth and last trip of the summer. Even then - mid-August - smoke from forest and grass fires was heavy in the air.

On August 13th, when we were driving to Omak, smoke from a fresh fire rose like a huge mushroom cloud in the air. When I left on the 15th, I wasn't even sure that the roads north would be open.

When I arrived home to Revelstoke we had some refreshing rain followed by cooler weather and a few days of good sunshine. I was able to take advantage of those sunny days to bake a banana cake and a loaf of bread in my solar cooker. The cake recipe said to bake the batter for two hours but I took the cake out after 1 1/2 hours and felt it was overcooked. I think one hour of baking in the mid-day sun would have been perfect. The bread wasn't perfect because, as the sun moved, the cooker became shaded and the bread flopped. It's edible though. Next time I'll start baking around noon.

The bread wasn't perfect because I wasn't there to protect it
from the shade but I can see how it would work.

Part of the challenge of baking bread with only sunlight is heating water early enough in the day to permit the bread dough to rise twice for at least an hour each time. I discovered that my SunRocket solar kettle, which I had not used much up until now, was the perfect tool for heating water quickly. With only ten minutes in the morning sun, I had warm water that could be added to the yeast.

By Sunday and Monday the smoke from the forest fires drifted into the Revelstoke valley. The mountains, if they could be seen at all, were just a dim outline and I could feel the smoke in my lungs.

This intense fire season makes me think often of global warming and the reasons that I'm doing this project. It also highlights another limitation of solar energy. Like clouds, smoke obscures the sun, making cooking almost impossible and greatly reducing the energy output of the solar panel.

*  *  *

One of my concerns in recent years has been saving for my retirement. I have struggled with the idea of mutual funds because I know that my money would be supporting companies with practices that I have serious concerns about. Most mutual funds, even ethical funds, invest in energy - i.e. oil and natural gas - and mining. While I benefit from the products of these industries, I am also very aware of the damage that they can cause. 

I have been investing my retirement savings in ethical funds but with this project I would like to go one step further and invest in funds that have divested from fossil fuels. Is it possible to do this while working with the financial institutions available in Revelstoke? 

I went around to all the banks, the Credit Union and investment companies. I learned that the banks had access to ethical funds but they did not have mutual funds that had divested from fossil fuels. Richard, at the Royal Bank, was very helpful. He said that if I did the research on fossil fuel divested funds, most banks would be able to set me up with a broker who could facilitate the purchase of that fund but that is the most they can do.

I also visited Investor's Group, which has its own socially responsible fund but no fund that has divested from fossil fuels. They offered to help me invest in particular companies but I am really looking for a more balanced mutual fund that is divested from fossil fuels.

My appointment with the Edward Jones representative is not until September so stay tuned.

Through my research, I learned that VanCity Credit Union has developed a fund that is divested from fossil fuels. The fund is called IA Clarington Inhance Global Equity SRI Class and it can be bought through our local Credit Union. The disadvantage with this fund is that it is an equity fund so it has more risk. We've been reminded of the risks in the dramatic events in the financial sector this week.

I think that if people keep asking their financial institutions for fossil-fuel-free investment options those institutions will eventually respond, just as VanCity did. 

I'm receiving e-mails from several campaigns that promote fossil fuel divestment. One interesting one is the Guardian newspaper's Keep it in the ground campaign. Another interesting group is 350.org. These campaigns try to persuade big investors to divest: Bill Gates, universities and pension funds. They don't seem to have much for small investors like me. Globe.net also has an excellent newsletter that deals with climate change issues from a business perspective.

Post Script, September 3

This week I was able to meet with Chris Bostock at Edward Jones in Revelstoke. Edward Jones does have access to a fossil fuel free mutual fund but Chris also talked with me about creating a guided portfolio where the client chooses the companies s(he) invests in. It is still done in a balanced way and guided by the Edward Jones representative. This option was also offered by the banks and Investor's group using their external brokers.

The positive side of this is that I don't have to include companies that I have concerns about and I can support companies that I believe in. The negative sides are that I am not as knowledgeable about investing as a professional would be and the minimum investment is a lot more than many people can afford - a $50,000 minimum. 

Inspirations - building green, conserving energy

The lovely wood home of John and Heather Pallas and the energy and water-saving ideas of Inge Anhorn are some of the inspirations discussed in this blog post.

There are a lot of people thinking about green living and putting those thoughts into practice. In this blog I want to introduce you to some of them. 

This past Thursday, the North Columbia Environmental Society's Sustainable Living Committee organized a Green Home Tour. It was well attended by some very knowledgeable people so the conversations were fascinating. My house, with my off-the-grid project was the first of the three homes visited. Basically, my house introduced the ideas of reducing energy consumption and working with the elements. The other two houses focused on beautiful, energy-efficient home design; sourcing local, more environmentally friendly materials; and reusing and repurposing materials to avoid waste.

The second house, designed by Greg Hoffart of Tree Construction, working with David Arnott of Stark Architecture, is the home of Francois Desrosiers and Andrea Ferguson. It is a gorgeous 721 square-foot house with an open-concept kitchen-living room and large windows, strategically placed to take advantage of natural light. 

Greg acted as the general contractor and was able to find local and reused building materials. The hardwood floors were made from wood ends from Take to Heart mill in Revelstoke, which saved them money. Even though the wood was of different widths, they made it work to produce a beautiful floor. Another wonderful feature was the use of repurposed wood from an old barn for the wall behind the wood stove in the main room. 

Greg stressed that homes don't need to be huge to accommodate, say, an enormous table that is only used a few times a year. We often build homes for the biggest possible use (peak use) and we pay for building, heating and cooling all that space when we barely need it. He also stressed the value of good-quality insulation and windows. Francois and Andrea's home uses wood as its primary heat with electric baseboard back-up. The front has been wired for solar electricity so that is easy to install if they choose that option - I wish I had done that! 

The third house is owned by John and Heather Pallas. John and Heather wanted to build a beautiful, comfortable home that was light on the environment, using local and reused materials whenever possible. The house was constructed with pre-fabricated, solid-wood wall panels from the Take to Heart mill. The wall panels are insulated with wood fiber. In their effort to keep their environmental footprint as low as possible, the walls used no metal screws. Instead, dry wood screws were used. Once in place, the wood screws expand to match the moisture content in the walls, creating a very secure fit. 

Dining area of home, featuring harvest table crafted by John Townley

The timber frame features of the house were constructed from pulp-grade, locally logged Douglas fir logs. One large slab was crafted into a stunning harvest table by local wood artist John Townley. 

John and Heather are skilled at finding reused items for their home. They bought their beautiful fireplace from a building that was being demolished or renovated in Whistler. Their cabinets and several mattresses were bought for a fraction of the original price because they had been returned to stores. 

Their lovely garden, featuring metal art, was xeriscaped, requiring no watering. Pathways were made of crush gravel and the only lawn was in the front of the house, again requiring no watering because of the shade from the surrounding trees.

Thinking about the construction of my home four years ago, I wished I had visited these houses before I built. I would have used less toxic wood stains and would have sourced my wood floorboards locally. I have written in other posts about speed leading to energy waste. Once again, concerns about speed during the construction of my home resulted in less environmentally appropriate choices. As Revelstoke, and other communities, attract and nurture builders who are knowledgeable about green building, we will have more experienced people to go to as we plan the green homes and buildings of the future.

*  *  *

The second source of inspiration is a local institution: 80-year-old Inge Anhorn. Here I am reproducing (with permission) in blog form an article that I wrote for the Revelstoke Current:

Very few people in Revelstoke have thought more about energy conservation than Inge Anhorn. Inge, who will be 80 in December, is known for gliding down the streets of Revelstoke on her signature folding bicycle and for selling hand-woven and knitted items at the farmer’s market.

Over the years, Inge has collected some thoughtful tips for conserving energy – or rather, avoiding waste. When she cooks something on the stove, she covers the pot with a glass pot lid, placed upside down. On that lid, she places a smaller pot, covered with a lid.

The second pot may contain butter that she needs to melt, a sauce or other food that she needs to heat up. The heat from the first pot, which would have just gone into the air, is then doing double service. (Extra pot lids can be found at the thrift store).

Inge also turns off the heat on the stove a few minutes early, letting the food sit to cook the extra amount over the cooling element.

When Inge sees waste heat, she sees an opportunity to do something with it. Although she has insulated the pipes of the water heater in her laundry room, heat still escapes so she hangs small things like rags and wash cloths on them. That is also a good place to dry cloth bags that she has washed.

She air-dries all her laundry on a wooden rack. “I can use the sun or the little bit of heat that’s around to dry my clothes,” she said. “I don’t know what it costs to use a drier. Maybe $1 a load. In my case that would be two loads a week. That is eight loads. That might amount to $10 a month and $120 a year. That’s a lot of money for someone on a pension or even on smaller incomes.”

Another energy-saving strategy came from Nicoline Beglinger, co-owner of Selkirk Mountain Experience, a back-country skiing company based near the remote Durrand Glacier. As Inge explained, fuel has to be helicoptered in to the chalet at great expense so to conserve energy Nicoline would fill kettles and pots with water at night and let it warm to room temperature. By morning the water would be a few degrees warmer and that meant using less fuel to heat it.

Being organized also makes a difference in conserving energy, Inge said. Before she opens the fridge door she thinks about all the things she needs to take out and before she returns items to the fridge she assembles them all on the counter. “That way I only need to open the fridge door once.”

Inge still has her driver’s license but she gave up her car eight years ago when it became too expensive to maintain. “Why pay for a car when it just sits there most of the time and I can go with my feet or my bike? It’s a little awkward not to have a car because I can’t go on the spur of the moment to Vernon or take a drive” but generally Inge enjoys the exercise of walking and biking. 

Inge’s concern about conservation and avoiding waste dates back to her childhood in Germany during World War II. Water was metered and the family went to great lengths to avoid wasting it.

“Every drop counted because it cost money,” she said. “My family tried to preserve it and get as much use out of water as we could. That meant making the water work double or three times.

“Our clothes were washed by hand and boiled, not in a machine. That meant the clothes were washed in soapy water, rinsed, rinsed, rinsed (in separate buckets), until it was all clean. The soapy water was used to clean toilets or wash floors. The next water was used to water plants or wash the stairwells in the building. The next water was stored until you used it all up. That was a very big thing. That made a big impression on me. Even today I still use that idea.”

As a child, Inge remembers hauling water from a standpipe for the community garden and for her grandfather’s bee-keeping house. They weren’t allowed to run around with it or spray it.

“That was totally unheard of,” she said. “It’s nice for children (to play with water) but in my mind people should respect water a little bit more than they do.”

“One drop of water is nothing. If a family saves 100 drops and you multiply that by 30,000 Canadians, that’s a lot of drops. That’s how I look at it.”

Even in Revelstoke where water is relatively plentiful, when Inge runs water to make it hot, she takes a bucket to collect the cold water and uses it later to wash her hands or water plants.

For Inge, “You don’t need to use resources just because they’re handy. With a little bit of extra effort you can do without. Even if I made $100,000 a year, it doesn’t mean I need to spend a resource when I can do without it. That’s my philosophy. It might not mean much to other people but to me it’s a practice that I like to do.”

With her emphasis on conservation, I thought that Inge might be a person who saves things just in case they might be useful one day. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Inge’s apartment is free of clutter. It is fresh and light with lots of open space.

“I don’t save things that I don’t use. Let someone else use it,” she said. She saves a few jars and a few yogurt containers to store food but the rest goes to recycling – or if they’re usable, to the thrift shop. “I don’t want clutter because I don’t want my children to go through a nightmare.” 

Also, things get old, she said. “You have something in your house sitting there for 20 years. By the time you leave this world the stuff is too old for the thrift shop. What happens? It gets thrown out. It’s better to give it away while it’s still useful to other people. They can still make a buck on it and your house is clean.” 

As a final piece of advice, Inge stresses that time is precious so it should be used purposefully. “I don’t want to waste my time in a way that doesn’t interest me. I want to do things that are important to me and that’s why I want to use my time in a positive way.”

Westerners have become used to living as if resources are plentiful. As we adapt to new realities brought on by the threat and realities of climate change, designers and engineers are striving to develop more efficient technologies that maintain our lifestyles while relying less on fossil fuels and other non-renewable energy.

The other side of the equation is the practice of consuming and wasting less. As Inge’s habits and my off-the-grid project try to show, simple adjustments can lead to less energy waste and that can only be good for the planet and for future generations.

Keep it cool. Keep it light.

Upstairs apartments can be very hot in the summer and renters often have limited ways to keep their upstairs apartments cool. One simple trick is to put sheets of reflective insulation inside windows on the side of the apartment where the sun is shining. This idea was shared by my upstairs tenants, Marc Paradis and Maria-Lynn Johnson (pictured here).

I am very lucky to have thoughtful, inspiring people around me who really think about energy use and the environment. I am enjoying the challenge of living off-the-grid and almost fossil fuel free (my four car trips excepted) but what makes the project especially worthwhile is the conversations I'm having with like-minded people.

The top floor of my house is a rental suite and my tenants are a wonderful couple, Maria-Lynn Johnson and Marc Paradis. Maria-Lynn and Marc have been involved in several co-housing projects (shared houses where single people and couples live together in a deliberate community) and feel that shared housing is one important way to address social isolation, share resources and reduce our environmental impacts. For Marc, single detached housing, with very few people occupying big spaces, is a major contributor to climate change.

Marc is also a builder and has been working on energy-efficient building for about 20 years. When the temperatures rose this summer, Marc and his wife Maria-Lynn put reflective insulation in their windows, in addition to closing the curtains, to reduce the heat. The result is impressive. This simple technique resulted in a temperature reduction of several degrees. One day, when it was well over 30 degrees C outside at 3 pm, it was a relatively cool 26 degrees C inside. (I will provide you with more temperature details later).

This is an effective and inexpensive technique for people living in upstairs suites or any other place requiring cooling in the summer. The reflective insulation - like two sheets of aluminum foil with bubble wrap between them - is readily available for $4 a foot or less at local hardware stores. Marc points out on his website that there are more expensive options for passive cooling like In'Flector (a reflective, see-through-radiant barrier insulator) or external rolling sun-shades outside the window. However renters often don't have the option or the money to install these things.

Of course, covering windows with insulation reduces the light in the apartment. Often only one side of the house requires reflective insulation at a time so other windows might provide light. If you need to turn on lights, it is worth noting that LED lights are not only more efficient, they give off much less heat than incandescent lights. Another reason to change your light bulbs.

Remembering that hot air rises (convection), having operable transom windows other operable windows that allow air to escape in the upper part of the room is helpful. Marc and Maria Lynn also turn on the bathroom fan when it's very hot, sucking the hot air out of the room. Managing air flow by keeping windows closed on the sunny side of the house and open when it's cool also helps.

Marc suggested that another way to capitalize on convection and air flow is to open both the screened basement windows and interior doors leading to the stairway of my house. The airflow will push the cool air from the basement up the stairs, cooling the apartments above.

*  *  *

As for me, living off the grid is becoming easier and I'm pretty comfortable with the energy I have. If I'm careful and turn off electronics and lights when I don't need them, I generally have enough power through my solar system to meet my needs. As you might have read in my last blog, cooking on cloudy days is a challenge and entertaining with unpredictable sunshine is difficult but I'm getting used to it. This week was fairly sunny so I held three dinner parties while I could. I just work with what the elements give me.

One big luxury that arrived by mail just over a week ago was a LuminAID LED lantern. This product was developed by two graduate students in architecture at Columbia University, Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta, who were trying to address the need for light of people affected by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. They developed a solar lantern that can hold its charge for months and casts a good light. The lantern, which is like a light in a translucent plastic bag, is compact when shipped and is blown up like a balloon for use. It was featured on the ABC TV's show Shark Tank and has won several clean energy awards.

With this light I am able to read in my living room or sit comfortably with friends at the dining room table in the evening. I bought two lanterns at a cost of almost $40 each, including shipping. However, in keeping with my new practice of carrying one item with me when I need it (for example, my ipad which serves as my radio), I found that I only needed one lantern. Some friends loved the lantern and bought the other one from me.

I also have a nifty light solution in the bathroom. My friend Anna Mint, who has had her own adventures building a tiny house, loaned me a string of solar-charged IKEA garden lights. They come in lengths of 24 or 12 lights. With decorative bulbs added, this provides a nice, soft light for the bathroom. There is a detachable solar panel which I charge every few days in the garden and it works really well. I don't need a lot of light in the bathroom at night so this is just perfect for my needs. As with all my lights and electronics, I turn the light off when I'm not in the room as a solar charge is a precious thing and I don't want to waste it.  I have just ordered another set of these light strings for the porch to provide a bit of atmospheric light.

The lights in the bedroom and office are wired directly into my solar system. With 3-watt, 12-volt, soft white bulbs, they provide a very nice and bright light. I made a lampshade out of light orange tissue paper and wire for the office light. My bedroom light also shines into the porch, giving me enough light to read in my cosy porch in the evenings.

Finally, the little light in the kitchen that I wired into the 15-watt solar panel (that I bought two years ago in India) and car battery has stopped working. I don't think the 15-watt panel is providing enough charge. I plan to experiment with this as this is closer to the kinds of panels that are available in developing countries.