Residential Energy Efficiency Revolving Loan Fund (RLF)

Did you participate in the Corvallis Energy Challenge by having an Energy Trust Home Energy Review in 2008-2009?  If so, you are eligible to participate in the Energy Advocate program, which includes working with an Energy Advocate and determining whether your income level qualifies you to receive a low-interest loan for up to $10,000 from the Revolving Loan Fund, available for a limited time through the City of Corvallis to use towards energy efficiency projects in your home.  

Energy Advocates are volunteers who will follow up on your Home Energy Review and help you move forward with energy efficiency projects by answering your questions, connecting you with financial incentives and tax credits, and sharing additional low-cost and no-cost ways to conserve energy.  Sign up to have an Energy Advocate work with you at www.energizecorvallis.org/index/our-programs/energy-advocates.

 The RLF is a project of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition’s Energy Action Team, in collaboration with the City of Corvallis and the Corvallis Environmental Center. 

If you did not participate in the Corvallis Energy Challenge, you can still get a free Home Energy Review (sign up at http://energytrust.org/).  In the meantime, you may want to take advantage of the following opportunity which is open to all Corvallis homeowners and business owners who meet the specified criteria:

Corvallis Weatherization Incentive Program (CWIP)

Get up to $500 for insulating or sealing your home or business through the Corvallis Weatherization Incentive Program – a joint effort of the City of Corvallis and the Corvallis Environmental Center. Available to homes and businesses located within City limits.

How it works:

1. First, receive a free Home Energy Review from Energy Trust of Oregon (ETO) or a free Business Energy Review through ETO subcontractor, Corvallis Environmental Center.
2. Choose your contractor(s) from the CWIP Contractor List, available at www.corvallisenvironmentalcenter.org (click on the Energy Efficiency tab and then CWIP).  Projects MUST be completed using a contractor from this list to qualify for CWIP.
3. Work with your contractor to decide which weatherization project you want in your building.
4. For homes, your contractor will fill out the paperwork and subtract the incentive from the amount you owe them; the contractor is then reimbursed by the Corvallis Environmental Center.  For businesses, the incentive is a rebate, reimbursed directly to the business by the Corvallis Environmental Center.

CWIP covers 75% of the project cost, up to $500 for floor, attic, wall, and duct insulation, duct sealing and air sealing, plus $35 each for air sealing and duct sealing tests. 

For full project details, visit www.corvallisenvironmentalcenter.org.

It can’t be easy for matter-of-fact OSU-educated journalist Dimick, born in Oregon in 1951, to take his “Where Energy and Climate Collide” talk on the road. As executive editor for the environment at National Geographic, he has a ringside seat on, and a responsibility to document, the slow-motion unfolding of this global catastrophe. He can marshal iconic images—two polar bears adrift on a very small sheet of melting ice, a mountaintop blown to hell for coal in West Virginia, a massive tar sands mining operation in Alberta where boreal forest once stood, a subsistence farm in Bangladesh with the ocean lapping at its edges—with sobering scientific fact to make his case: We are burning ancient sunlight to meet the energy needs of a mushrooming human population, and we have to stop. We have to start living on current sunlight. 

It all adds up to the same inconvenient truth that scientists, intergovernmental panels, ex-politicians, and even popes have been trying in large and small ways to get the world to acknowledge for decades now. But as Dimick admits, there is a large gap between what scientists know and the public understanding of it. The field of climate change communication is just emerging. “What’s really too bad is that we’re still arguing over this”—over whether there’s even a problem—says Dimick. For a key question he poses near the end of his talk, after asserting that we can solve this, is “Do we have the will?” 

But I wonder, given my friend’s reaction to the talk, how effective these kinds of presentations really are. Maybe one day climate change communicators will understand that presenting people with evidence of the enormity of the problem is not the best way to make change. Maybe they will understand that this in fact only leads to a phenomenon that psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton identified in people who survived the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and in those affected by the trauma of war, which he called psychic numbing. This phenomenon is perhaps why some—many? most?—members of the public will go on denying that there’s any problem and eating their cheeseburgers. —by Lorraine Anderson, an NCD contributing writer/editor living in Corvallis

Shiva herself is a small and solid woman, with a round, open face, warm brown eyes, silver rings on her fingers and silver threads in her dark hair. Wearing a sari of muted metallic blues and reds, she spoke last night with the deep authority of someone who has started movements. Once a gymnast, she was educated as a nuclear physicist and then, as she says, by life. Her most recent project is Navdanya, a networking organization based in India that promotes organic production of food along with seed keeping and seed sharing.

Addressing an auditorium full of people young and old at LaSells Stewart Center, Shiva moved first through the familiar litany of dark forces: industrial agriculture, the destructive effects of the green revolution, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, GMOs, the WTO, Monsanto, corporate control of everything, privatization of the commons of soil, air, water, seeds. Then she said: “The new world will be born from the flexible, the adaptable, and the small.” 

The small must be the energy that resists the big. The local is where the leverage is, and nonviolence is the way. Defend seeds as a commons. Declare regions GMO free. Build decentralized systems based on renewables of all kinds. Join with the energies of nature. Address climate change by increasing living carbon production (plant trees! farm and garden organically!) and phasing out dead and killing carbon. Combine indigenous spiritual wisdom with the best of systems and holistic science. Remember the deep lessons of spirituality and ecology: know there are limits, be conscious of others and their needs, be conscious of your own interconnectedness. Insist on true earth democracy: respecting and meeting the needs of the 300,000 species and 6 billion people on the earth.

Perhaps the most instructive and personal moment came during the question-and-answer period at the end when a young man appealed to Shiva for advice, telling her that her talk had just made his current job search more complicated, since he wouldn’t feel good working for a number of the employers he had been considering. Shiva replied, “I don’t run a counseling service, but I can tell you where I seek answers: from nature and from community.” – by Lorraine Anderson , an NCD contributing writer/editor living in Corvallis.

Mayor Piercy gave over the podium to a design and planning team workng on an EWEB Greenpower consumer selected project:  two solar-powered charging stations for electric cars at Lane Community College (LCC) main campus.  These stations will have a 75 to 80 KW capacity, enough juice to recharge as many as 36 parked electric cars at one time.  It kind of gave me a little charge to imagine the time when those stations will be up and running and there are enough electric cars on the road to fill those charging spots.  Hopefully that is only a few years down the road. 

After the presentations, we all left on our various tours.  This year to accomodate both the number of people and the number of projects on the tour, everyone was assigned to take a tour that included only three or four of the eight projects.  There was a North (Eugene) Loop Tour, and two variations of a South (Eugene) Loop Tour.  Each had four projects, with little overlap.  There was also a bike tour, which I understand had just three projects that  were all close in to EWEB.  As you might have guessed,  I was not among the hearty souls who braved the weather for the bike tour.   Perhaps next year.   Instead, I went on variation two of the South Loop tour in my fully fossil-fuel powered vehicle.  To ameliorate my guilt, I made one or two necessary delivery stops for Natural Choice Directory between tour stops.

My tour included four projects.  The first was a spectacular, but not overly large home (about 2,050 square feet) in the East Hills of Eugene. Set to take advantage of the western view of a large and permanent open space across the street, the site was literally carved out of a hillside.  An innovative and far more cost-effectient Gabion retaining wall was used. Essentially the wall looks like hundreds of tons of rocks in cages, stacked in a very high terrace in the back yard.  The system will allow the owners to grow vines all the way up this retaining wall.  Once done the now monolithic presence will become a green and beautiful view through the rear windows and outdoor patio.  Light-filled, this Central Blvd home incorporates many green building features including radiant-heat floors, passive solar design, PV & solar hot water.  Energy conserving measures also included air-tight insulated walls, an advanced heat recovery system that brings in fresh air while heating it, and triple pane windows. There is also a high efficiency air-to-water heat pump.  This home is Earth Advantage certified. 

The downside to all these features is cost.  Few would be able to afford a home such as this, that architect Jan Fillinger indicated was in the range of $300 -$400 a square foot.  Likely the cost was at the top end of that range. And no, that doesn’t include the cost of the land purchase. However, he also indicated that if you remove the very costly site preparation (ie: hillside prep and retaining wall), and many of the architectual touches including the triple-pane wood windows, you could build something closer in the range of $200 to $250 a square foot range and still maintain many of the sustainability features.  Which brings the price into affordable range  for many more people, but certainly not most.  As is, this is a stunning example of what can be done when the owners say, “I want to build as sustainably as possible” and cost is not the primary concern.

The builder was James McDonald of the EcoBuilding Collaborative and the solar hot water system was provided by Eugene’s Green Store.

Nexst stop was a downtown live/work community at 265 W. 8th St.  Although I’d been on this block many times before the bulk of this affordable housing complex was mostly hidden from my consciousness.  Consistenting mostly of 102 units of affordable housing, this Earth Advantage certified project, also has 9 units of live/work spaces, with retail/office space at street level.  One of six affordable housing communities run by the non-profit Metro Affordable Housing, West Town on 8th Ave incorporates passive solar, natural ventilation, recycled steel framing, water efficient plantings, eco-roof tops, and Energy Star applicances.  Completed in September 2008, these very pleasant downtown apartments are available only to those who qualify with low or moderate incomes.  The only spaces where you do not have to income qualify are the live/work spaces.  For those looking for a studio, office, or retail space, there are currently three such spaces available, and they currently run at about $1 square foot.  Residing in the space is an option, not a requirement. 

Perhaps my favorite building on the tour was a detached  mother-in-law cottage built in a Whitaker area backyard.  Custom-built to the mother-in-law’s specifications, this cottage incorporates many sustainability features including being residential in-fill close to a bike path, site orientation to maximize passive solar benefits, a rainwater catchment system, tankless water heater, wood/fiberglass hybrid windows, and a dual flush toilet.   Although the space felt light, spacious and airy, the single person home is only around 525 square feet.  Both the bathroom and kitchen felt luxurious, lots of windows, easy access with no stairs contribute to the long term livability of this place for the owner who plans to continue living here for the remaining years of her life.  Designed and built by Rainbow Valley Design & Construction.

Final stop on my South Loop tour was a single family home expansion in the South Unversity district, adding more than 1,000 square feet to the previous 750 square foot home.  The home is still under construction with much work still to be done before the owners can move in.  The new construction reflects the vintage character of the surrounding homes in the neighborhood.  Sustainability features include or will include use of existing foundation & basement, construction waste management, solar hot water panels, rainwater cisterns to collect water for use in toilets & washer, bio-swale & native plantings, hybrid insulation, deep roof overhangs for shading, and engineering to handle the extra weight and demands of a green roof.  The owner explained that the home will be PV ready, but due to cost considerations no PV panels will be installed initially.  Nir Pearlson is the architect on the project, Tree Born Carpentry the builder, with help from the owner.  Solar Assist is responsible for the solar water and PV ready systems.

All the tours completed at the same spot – La Perla Pizzeria – for a reception.  Nir Pearlson  was also the architect for this commercial project that opened in 2008, a conversion of the old ice-cream parlor building into an authentic Neoapolitan pizzeria, Pearlson incorporated a PV array, high-efficientcy lgihting & daylighting techniques, a super insulated roof, and a number of other features into a lively restaurant design on the corner of 13th & Pearl.  Two seperate solar arrays were installed by two different Eugene solar companies, Solar Assist and Energy Design.   -  Larry K. Fried