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Pilot program helps Genesis Covenant burn bright
A five-parish pilot program organized by the diocese's Genesis Covenant task force and aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2019 started by replacing the parish buildings' incandescent light bulbs with new compact florescent lamps that use up to 80 percent less energy.
The project's annual cost savings is estimated at $10,000 and annual energy savings at 135,000 kilowatt hours. In total, the churches replaced 349 light fixtures at a cost estimated at $57,670, less a $22,331 energy credit from Seattle City Light, for a $35,339 total, according to the plan.
"We decided that the best way for us to learn would be to do it for our own church," said Ruth Mulligan, who serves on the diocese's task force.
In July, General Convention adopted a resolution (C070) memorializing the covenant and committing the Episcopal Church to reaching the 50 percent goal at the facilities it maintains. The Diocese of Olympia proposed the resolution, which it adopted at its November 2008 convention.
"It's a bold goal, but many of us believe we have to do it or no other goal in life will have a point," said Olympia Bishop Greg Rickel.
Response to the pilot project has been "almost universally good," Rickel said. "Of course there are people who are not happy about it and don't believe it. But the argument is usually not an argument but a good conversation about how we look at these things … Even if we are wrong, how can we hurt with what we are doing? It's a bet I am willing to take.
"People would say that it hurts our economy and industry; I believe they will need to get on board with this as well. Frankly, as I have said all along, the younger generation wants to see the church involved and authentically doing something about it."
Plans are underway for a Genesis Covenant focus day in the spring, and the diocese is working to choose a carbon-footprint calculator, said Nancy McConnell, a member of the task force and the bishop's committee for the environment.
"The churches involved are very engaged and pleased with the results," she said, adding that other diocesan congregations are interested in replicating the pilot program. "We have identified church interest in environmental issues."
For the covenant to have a real impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, however, Episcopalians must implement the covenant individually and in their households, McConnell added.
Many scientists agree that increased greenhouse-gas emissions resulting from human activity, including burning fossil fuels and deforestation, have caused the earth's temperature to rise. If left unabated, they say, global warming could have catastrophic results for the earth and its inhabitants.
"For years now, the environmental movement has told us that there is a clock ticking, a clock, ticking, a great organic ecological clock that is ticking away the time of our lives to that when we no longer will be able to reverse the damage that we have done to this planet through our own greed, negligence and ignorance," California Assistant Bishop Steven Charleston warned in his sermon during a General Convention Eucharist celebrating creation.
The questions he posed – If people of faith do not work to save the planet, who will? And, what are we waiting for? – begat the Genesis Covenant.
Charleston articulated his vision of such a covenant while preaching in June 2007 at an interfaith conference in Seattle on the environment aimed at reaching a common expression of support for protecting God's creation.
Michael Schut, Seattle-based associate program officer for economic and environmental affairs in the church's Advocacy Center is monitoring the Olympia diocese's pilot program in hopes of an eventual churchwide roll-out to help meet the goals of convention.
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