Chris Woolery, a residential energy specialist for How$mart, explains a test of energy efficiency to Larry Watson of Flemingsburg, Ky. Photo by MACED.

Jamie Blair had owned his own business for about seven years when he started to think it was missing a crucial piece. He was installing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in and around Paintsville, Ky., but heated air isn’t much good if it leaks out through poorly sealed doors or underinsulated attics. That was right around the time he discovered How$martKY, a collaborative program designed to encourage better energy efficiency in Kentucky homes.

“Ten years ago, you never really thought about it,” Blair explained. “You went in and put the unit in, and you didn’t care how tight the house was or how well it was insulated.”

The Kentucky pilot works with 17 contractors, but Kansas works with hundreds—all of them now advocates for energy efficiency.

But all that is beginning to change. In 2011, Blair and his employees joined up with How$mart for hands-on training, learning how to perform energy audits and install higher-efficiency insulation. The homes where this training took place belonged to customers of four local energy cooperatives, which had partnered with How$mart.

“Now we feel pretty comfortable that we can come in and do a full-service retrofit,” Blair said.

Operated by the Eastern Kentucky-based Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED), which seeks "economic alternatives" to "to make Appalachian communities better places to live," How$mart collaborates with homeowners, energy co-ops, and contractors to make local houses more energy-efficient. The houses get better insulation, HVAC, heat pumps, sealing—or all of the above—and the homeowners pay for everything on their utility bills, so there’s relatively little paperwork. The program not only helps the homeowner save money on every bill, but also creates an economic ripple effect by training contractors and cutting expenses for energy companies.

The potential environmental impact is profound. The pilot program has cut energy usage by an average of 20 percent in How$mart homes. That amounts to an annual projected savings of 552,829 kWh—equivalent to 390 metric tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide. It’s more energy than the entire country of Vietnam saved during Earth Hour 2010, when 20 cities and provinces turned off their lights for an hour—an impressive feat for just 108 Kentucky homes.

The program hasn’t just cut carbon emissions—it’s also spurred small-business growth. Since starting with How$mart, Blair has hired three new people to keep up with the extra work. His company now conducts energy audits with customers whether they’re with How$mart or not. And in the next few months, he plans to expand his business to include insulation and add on another three men.

Training local professionals

East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) first approached MACED with what might seem like an unlikely problem for an energy generator: Its customers were using too much power. As a result, EKPC had to purchase power from other providers, which was hurting its bottom line.

As it happened, MACED was already exploring ways of making energy efficiency more appealing to people in Appalachia. That’s how How$martKY was born.

Midwest Energy saw customer satisfaction among How$mart participants soar to 97 percent.

In two years of cooperation with four energy co-ops powered by EKPC, How$martKY has created five to 10 jobs for local contracting companies and saved customers almost $61,000, according to program coordinator Bill Blair.

The process starts when a homeowner asks his or her energy co-op for an efficiency audit. How$mart or a co-op staffer conducts the audit, though local contractors like Jamie Blair join in to learn the ropes. If the homeowner qualifies for the program, the contractor sets about repairing or replacing anything that is driving up the bill—whether it’s insufficient attic insulation or an oversized furnace. Finally, How$mart checks the quality of the contractor’s work. The contractor is welcome to come along during these inspections, but either way, he’s responsible for fixing any problems. It’s a part of the education process, Bill Blair explained—a way for contractors to learn from their mistakes.

Homeowners pay for their retrofitting in installments on their monthly bill. The average monthly installment comes out to just under $40, but homeowners save about $50 a month on average. In fact, How$mart won’t take on a project unless it’s sure the homeowner will save money each and every month.

Blair doesn’t like to call that financing a loan, perhaps because it makes it sound riskier for co-ops than it is. After all, customers pay back installments at 3 percent interest like any other loan—but unlike most loans, customers end up with more money in their pockets and fewer reasons to skip payments.

John Smith, owner of Smith Insulation Inc. in Flemingsburg, Ky., says he’s had trouble convincing customers that highly efficient spray foam insulation is ultimately a worthwhile investment.

“I’ve always been looking for ways to help the homeowner to be able to afford spray foam insulation by looking for tax credits and rebates,” Smith said, “and that’s how I found MACED.”

Experienced contractors like Smith appreciate How$martKY because it offers third-party validation of their work and the chance to spark word-of-mouth interest. But for those contractors seeking more extensive training, How$martKY’s namesake program in Kansas offers continuing education credits and a set of standards for HVAC size. The Kentucky pilot works with 17 contractors, but Kansas works with hundreds—all of them now advocates for energy efficiency.

Green customers are happy customers?

When Barb and Steve Ritchie signed up with How$mart to install a new furnace and insulation in their house in Ewing, Ky., the bill came to nearly $14,000.

It’s a daunting number. But a Kentucky Home Performance rebate helped, and their monthly bill is lower than it was before.

The results were striking: In 2011, the Ritchies used 28,406 kWh of energy. In 2012, that number dropped to 14,651 kWh. Barb Ritchie estimates they’re saving $400 a month now that they no longer have gas delivered for heating—not to mention the savings on their bill.

“I just feel like I was very blessed,” she said. “This is the warmest and coolest our house has ever been.”

Mr. and Mrs. Purdon, of Maysville, Ky., are How$mart customers. Photo by MACED.

“Most of the time they’re not going to say, ‘I’m saving a lot of money,’” Blair explained. “They say, ‘I’m actually comfortable in my house.’”

Customer satisfaction is a powerful incentive for utilities to take on programs like How$mart, Blair added. And Mike Volker, director of regulatory and energy services at Midwest Energy, Inc., in Kansas, has the numbers to prove it.

Midwest Energy took its inspiration for the original How$mart program from Pay As You Save, a plan developed by the Vermont-based Energy Efficiency Institute. After making a few tweaks, How$mart Kansas became the first utility in the world to implement the concept comprehensively, starting in 2007 with a four-county pilot.

Since then, Midwest Energy saw customer satisfaction among How$mart participants soar to 97 percent. Compare that to the 85 percent customer-satisfaction rate the company observes overall, and you can see why the program has expanded to 41 counties covering most of western Kansas.

Scaling it up

In Kansas, the original How$mart program now saves more than 1.9 million kWh of electricity and 234,000 therms of gas per year. Over 20 years, the reduction could amount to nearly 50,000 tons of CO2. Midwest Energy has invested $5 million in How$mart, but the program has also disproved the notion that green-friendly projects must be a financial drain.

A 2009 report estimates the U.S. could cut energy consumption 23 percent by 2020 by implementing efficiency measures alone.

In fact, How$mart consistently breaks even and could do even better. Midwest Energy doesn’t turn a profit on the program because its funding options are designed to be accessible to a wider demographic, including low-income households. But according to Volker, it has the potential to be just as profitable as regular utility service.

That profitability is possible in large part because efficiency measures beat out renewables for cost-efficiency hands-down. A 2009 report from consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates the U.S. could cut energy consumption 23 percent by 2020 by implementing efficiency measures alone. Another study estimated that while wind power costs $38 per ton of CO2 saved, replacing incandescent lights with LEDs saves $159 per ton.

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That means any utility, co-op or not, could find a program like How$mart beneficial, Volker said.

Similar programs have already sprung up in Georgia and South Carolina. And when MACED launched How$martKY, Volker was there to help.

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“Doing energy efficiency is a lot less sexy, shall we say, compared to putting in some shiny black photovoltaics or a wind turbine,” Volker says. “But very few people would disagree with me when I say the most cost-effective kilowatt hour is the one you never use.”

MACED and three of its partner co-ops have applied for a tariff with the Kentucky Public Service Commission to transform How$mart from a pilot to a permanent program.

“We’re hoping to add four or five new co-ops this year,” Blair said. “Our goal really is to see every electric provider in the state pick it up.”

For contractors like Jamie Blair and customers like Barb Ritchie, environmental benefits are just an added bonus. Better lives and livelihoods are the everyday results they see — and that might just be enough to inspire grassroots efforts that help reign in carbon emissions on a nationwide scale.

Erin L. McCoy wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Erin worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer in Kentucky for almost two years. She is now a Seattle-based freelance writer specializing in education, environment, cultural issues, and travel, informed by her time teaching English in Malaysia and other travels. Contact her at elmccoy [at] gmail [dot] com or on Twitter @ErinLMcCoy.

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A demonstrated solution exists to this problem, in the form of state-owned banks like the one that exists in North Dakota. As climate change makes disasters like Hurricane Sandy more common in many parts of the United States, the fight to establish state banks in new places will become ever more urgent.

The focus on lending moves money from the victims of disaster into the hands of loan servicers, who make enormous profits off these loans.

In the coastal regions of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut that got slammed by Sandy, homeowners were already strained by underwater mortgages prior to the storm. Many properties have now depreciated to the point of having no market value at all.

They have no choice but to try to rebuild, but how can they take on more debt? FEMA's focus on lending moves money from the victims of disaster into the hands of loan servicers, who make enormous profits off these loans.

Those were the conclusions of a report by Strike Debt, an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street. The report was based on observations made at a community meeting in Midland Beach, Staten Island, on November 18, 2012, as well as on interviews with FEMA and Small Business Association (SBA) representatives, volunteer workers, local business owners, and residents throughout New York City. Among other findings of the report were that:

• Federal aid programs require victims to first apply for loans before qualifying to apply for FEMA aid, placing the economic cost of the disaster on the individual victim.
• Aid programs are based on credit history, further exacerbating pre-existing inequalities among residents.
• Federal programs are inflexible and fail to meet even basic individual and community needs.
• Relief options are not clearly communicated or well understood. Policies are so complex that even lawyers are confused.

According to Strike Debt’s report, the vast majority of FEMA’s resources and efforts are spent on public assistance programs that provide infrastructure restoration. Individual victims of disaster are mostly offered personal loans to help them “get back on their feet.” Although these loans might seem good on the surface, they ultimately make long-term financial burden the precondition for “recovery.”

Disaster victims are now being expected to shoulder relief expenses that used to be shared publicly. It is a failing of our austerity-strapped federal disaster relief system that it offers little real help to individuals; and it is a failing of our private, for-profit insurance system that the legal duty of management is to extort as much money as possible from customers while returning as little as possible to them, in order to maximize shareholder profits.

Most victims of Hurricane Sandy left stranded

There are three main sources of financial support being offered to Sandy victims: insurance, grants, and loans. Federal support is available only once private insurance has been exhausted.

In many cases, residents who believed they had insurance that would cover the Sandy disaster are finding out that, for a variety of reasons involving the fine print in the policies, their claims are being denied. Difficult-to-understand clauses allow insurers to deny coverage depending on such things as whether the storm was officially classified as a hurricane or a tropical storm.

Favorable interest rates are available from FEMA only if the applicant cannot get credit elsewhere.

Except for temporary living costs, FEMA program grants are accessible only after the homeowner, renter or business applies for a loan. If the applicant qualifies for a loan, he or she is not likely to be provided further FEMA aid. Disaster loans are made through FEMA on the basis of credit history, and favorable interest rates are available only if the applicant cannot get credit elsewhere. That means favorable interest rates are offered only if an applicant cannot qualify for credit through a commercial bank.

There is no FEMA money for small businesses other than SBA loans, and businesses have difficulty taking on debt when they don’t know when they will be able to reopen. The SBA application is reported to be at least 30 pages long, and is often difficult to complete because flooding has destroyed much of the required paperwork.

Except for temporary living costs, FEMA grants are accessible only after the homeowner, renter or business applies for an SBA loan.  If the applicant qualifies for a loan, he or she is not likely to be offered further FEMA aid. Disaster loans are made on the basis of credit history, and favorable interest rates are available only if the applicant does not have “credit available elsewhere.” That means favorable interest rates are offered only if an applicant cannot qualify for credit through a commercial bank.

A better model exists in North Dakota

Compare this to the disaster relief available in North Dakota, the only state in the union to have a state-owned bank. The Bank of North Dakota (BND) has a mandate to serve the public interest, and it has no shareholders other than the state itself. This gives it wide-reaching flexibility in emergencies, allowing it to act quickly to catalyze and coordinate resources.

The BND’s emergency capabilities were demonstrated in 1997, when record flooding and fires devastated Grand Forks, N.D. The town and its sister city, East Grand Forks, which is on the Minnesota side of the river, lay in ruins. Floodwaters covered virtually the entire city and took weeks to fully recede. Property losses topped $3.5 billion.

The response of the state-owned bank was immediate and comprehensive, demonstrating a financial flexibility and public generosity that no privately owned bank could match. Soon after the floodwaters swept through Grand Forks, the BND was helping families and businesses recover. Led by then-president and CEO John Hoeven—who went on to become the governor of North Dakota and a U.S. senator—the bank quickly established nearly $70 million in credit lines to the city, the state National Guard, the state Division of Emergency Management, the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and for individuals, businesses, and farms. It also launched a Grand Forks disaster relief loan program and allocated $5 million to help other areas affected by the floods. Local financial institutions matched these funds, making a total of more than $70 million available.

Besides property damage, flooding swept away many jobs, leaving families without livelihoods. The BND coordinated with the U.S. Department of Education to ensure forbearance on student loans; worked closely with the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration to gain forbearance on federally backed home loans; established a center where people could apply for federal and state housing assistance; and worked with the North Dakota Community Foundation to coordinate a disaster relief fund, for which the bank served as the deposit base. The bank also reduced interest rates on existing family farm and farm operating programs. Families used these low-interest loans to restructure debt and cover operating losses caused by wet conditions in their fields.

To help finance the disaster recovery, the BND obtained funds at reduced rates from the Federal Home Loan Bank. These savings were then passed on to flood-affected borrowers in the form of lower interest rates.

The city was quickly rebuilt and restored. As a result, Grand Forks lost only 3 percent of its population between the 1997 floods and 2000, while East Grand Forks, right across the river in Minnesota, lost 17 percent of its people.

Bringing real security to communities

When the biggest private banks needed an emergency bailout, trillions of dollars in nearly interest-free money came flooding their way. Why? As Sen. Dick Durbin said of Congress in 2009, “Wall Street owns the place.” The private banking industry owns not only Congress but all twelve branches of the Federal Reserve. If we the people want the sort of security in emergencies that is available to Wall Street banks, we need to own some banks ourselves.

A publicly owned bank has both the tools and the mandate to bring real security to the community.

Unlike private insurers that are prone to withdraw coverage based on obscure technicalities, a publicly owned bank is not beholden to short-term shareholder profit-seeking and is free to act swiftly and generously in the public interest. And unlike federal disaster relief agencies, a public bank is not dependent on a penny-pinching Congress for funds. Like private banks, it has the ability to create money in the form of bank credit on its books, and it has access to low interest rates. A public bank can pass these low rates on to disaster victims and local governments.

A publicly owned bank has both the tools and the mandate to bring real security to the community. Twenty states have now introduced bills of various sorts to establish their own banks. For more information on the campaign in your state, see here.

Disasters, as Naomi Klein points out, are opportunities for capital to expand its grip on the necks of the people. But just as Occupy Sandy has pre-empted the official rescue agencies through community organizing, so a Public Bank of New York could pre-empt the vulture Wall Street banks and finance the rebuilding. What could be a more opportune time than now?

Ellen Brown wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Ellen is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute. In Web of Debt, the latest of her eleven books, she shows how a private banking oligarchy has usurped the power to create money from the people, and how we can get it back. Her websites are WebofDebt.com, EllenBrown.com, and PublicBankingInstitute.org.

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Led by students at Unity College in Maine, over 500 Common Ground Fairgoers raise local organic pumpkins in a massive 350 to celebrate local agriculture solutions to climate change. Photo by Megan Mallory.

We are running out of time. While our public policy makers equivocate and avoid the topic of climate change, the window of opportunity for salvaging a livable planet for our children and grandchildren is rapidly closing.

The way forward is clear, though for many confrontation-averse academics the path seems impassable. It requires action that is unnatural to the scientifically initiated: to fight to regain the territory illegitimately occupied by the climate change deniers.

Every day that we avoid taking action represents additional emissions and additional infrastructure that is dependent on our fossil fuel-based economy. In our zeal to be collegial, we engage with those who are paid by vested interests to argue that our Earth is not in crisis. When these individuals demonize public investment in alternative energy, we fail to point out how the oil industry benefited from significant taxpayer support in its infancy and continues to receive government subsidies today. We also sidestep the thorny issue of how oil and coal, in particular, fund large-scale organized opposition efforts to deny legitimate science, winning the battle for climate change public opinion with slogans, junk science, and money.

While there is much uncertainty about how climate change will play out with respect to specific regions and weather patterns, one thing is very clear: Our current emissions trajectory will carry us beyond 5oC average global warming by 2100. This will be a planet that is not consistent with our civilization and the impact will be largely irreversible for a millennium. I don’t know how the stakes could get any higher.

Higher education is positioned to determine the future by training a generation of problem solvers. As educators, we have an obligation to do so. Unlike any time in the history of higher education, we must now produce leading-edge professionals who are able to integrate knowledge from multiple disciplines, and understand social, economic, and resource tradeoffs among possible solutions. Imagine being a college president and looking in the mirror twenty years from now. What would you see? Would you be looking at a professional who did his or her best to avert catastrophe? For me, the alternative is unacceptable.

Those within higher education must now do something they have largely avoided at all costs: confront the policy makers who refuse to accept scientific reality. We must be willing to lead by example. Like the colleges and universities of the 1980s that disinvested from apartheid South African interests— and successfully pressured the South African government to dismantle the apartheid system—we must be willing to exclude fossil fuels from our investment portfolios. We must divest.

The colleges and universities of this nation have billions invested in fossil fuels. Like the funding of public campaigns to deny climate change, such investments are fundamentally unethical. The Terrifying Math of the 350.org campaign is based on realistic, reviewed science. Moreover, in our country it is clear that economic pressure gets results where other means fail. If we are to honor our commitment to the future, divestment is not optional. This is especially true for Unity College, where Sustainability Science, as developed by the U.S. National Academy of Science, guides our academic mission.

I am honored and proud to be a part of the 350.org program of divestment, and I am especially proud of the Unity College Board of Trustees. Indeed, the College has been on this path for over five years. The Trustees have looked at the College’s finances in the context of our ethical obligation to our students, and they have chosen to make a stand. I can think of no stronger statement about the mission of Unity College.

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Our college community will lead by fearless action. We will confront policy makers who continue to deny the existence of climate change. We will encourage those who work in higher education to bravely step out from behind manicured, taxpayer funded hedges, and do what needs to be done. We will not equivocate, and we will meet those who have been misled by climate change denial in their communities.

The time is long overdue for all investors to take a hard look at the consequences of supporting an industry that persists in destructive practices. Because of its infrastructure and enormous economic clout, fossil fuel corporations could pump trillions into the development of alternative energy. Government subsidies and stockholder shares could be used constructively to move these corporations to behave responsibly.

Higher education is the crown jewel of the United States system of education, and it remains the envy of the world. Higher education has always been dedicated to the highest standards of honesty and integrity. If our nation’s colleges and universities will not take a stand now, who will?

Stephen Mulkey is the president of Unity College. It originally appeared on the Unity College website.

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New York is nearly silent today as Hurricane Sandy approaches. Trains, buses and subways have all been closed since yesterday evening, and now several tunnels are shutting down as well. For the past few days there's been a lingering anxiety that is one part over-saturated media coverage and one part fear brought on by the relentless gloom and the palatable low-pressure system.

New Yorkers have been forced to take precautions in ways they never have before because the planet is acting in ways that it never has before. The ocean off of the Atlantic coast is five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than its average October temperature, which loads this storm with more water and draws it further north. Sea levels are rising, too, accelerating the impact of storm surges.

In short: when scientists give warnings about what climate change will mean for those of us who live on the East Coast, this is what they mean.

Right now, 375,000 New Yorkers are displaced from their homes. Some of their neighbors gathered in Times Square to connect the dots between extreme weather like this storm, and climate change. We unfurled a giant climate dot, calling for our leaders and the media to end their silence about the impacts of climate change.

Ending the silence is just the first step—but if there's one thing we learn in disasters like this, it's the incredible feats of goodwill that we can accomplish when people work together to protect our communities. By connecting the dots, we can begin to bring that same kind of energy to building the renewable energy future our planet needs to take on the accelerating crisis of climate change. 

Duncan Meisel wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. Duncan is an actions organizer and the social media coordinator for 350.org, and lives near one of the predicted flood zones in New York City

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"There are moments in a nation’s—and a planet’s—history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived."

"Ahead of the UN conference in Copenhagen and with climate and energy legislation coming down the pipe, 2009 is a now-or-never moment to ensure that climate and energy decisions by our government are bold, just and far-reaching. Right now, it is up to civil society to take the lead in demonstrating in ever-more powerful ways to provide political cover for lawmakers who will face fierce pressure from business groups, like the coal lobby, to water down or vote down bold solutions."

“This demonstration marks the beginning of a sustained effort to draw a line in the sand against this dirty and dangerous fuel.”

"We will be sitting-in at the dirty coal power station that literally powers our congressional building in DC. This Power Station is just blocks from Congress and is a national symbol for the stranglehold dirty energy sources like coal have over our communities, our climate and our future. Coal is the single biggest contributor to global warming and it will be impossible to have a safe and secure future for humankind if we continue to burn it."

“Coal is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country and that must change. The world is waiting for the Obama administration and Congress to lead the way forward on this defining issue of our time. They need to start by getting coal out of Congress.”