Alan Strachan set up a non-profit Green Energy Loan : https://www.greenenergyloan.com/

"With a Green Energy Loan (GEL), you apply for a home equity loan, have your home audited for energy problems, and receive a comprehensive report with a prioritized list of cost-effective energy-efficiency improvements for your home, upgrades for your indoor/outdoor water use, and an assessment of your home's potential for solar hot water and solar photo voltaic energy generation.

Use Energy Savings to Pay Loan

The GEL report also includes an estimate of how much money you may expect to save each month in reduced energy costs when you follow the report recommendations. You and your lender may use the estimate of monthly energy savings to create a loan package in which the money saved each month from lower energy and water bills covers the loan payment. (Please note that individual results will vary. Participating GEL lenders will not require that you use the loan proceeds as recommended. GEL cannot guarantee that your energy savings will offset your loan payments, even if you follow the recommendations for use of the loan proceeds. Only you can determine if taking a Green Energy Loan is in your best interest.)"

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From: "Alan Strachan"
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 00:50:11 -0000

Climate Change - Are We Serious?

Last Friday Sonoma County's leadership on the issue of Climate Change met at Villa Chanticleer in Healdsburg. It was the fourth annual event, and marks the high point of efforts to address the issue at the local level. Many of those in elected leadership positions were in attendance, as were most of the organizations that are actively working on reducing our carbon footprint. Sonoma County and all of its cities are the most advanced in the entire country on the issue of global warming. This is one of a handful of places in the U.S. where we're supposed to take a stand, and demonstrate how to switch off of a fossil fueled economy.

I was seated in the middle of the audience. But, we're only singing praises to each other; we're not even close to being serious about solving this problem.

Ann Hancock of the Climate Protection Campaign presented the numbers which quantify the problem. They are huge. They're getting worse, not better. We have to reduce our current annual output of CO2 by 1.5 million tons just to hit our target for 2015. We have to take out another 3 million tons right after that if we ever expect to hand our children a legacy that isn't horribly malignant.

Those numbers are big, in millions of tons, not pounds. Yet, when it comes to actions, we are dealing in pounds, happily making believe our actions don't have to be at the same scale as the problem. We're talking about getting more people to carpool, more people into transit, tightening up the green building requirements, insulating our houses better, and switching to cars that get better mileage or run on electricity. No doubt, we need to do all of those things, and more. We've been saying so for years. But, we need to do them much, much faster, and on a massive scale. We are truly kidding ourselves to think otherwise.

A typical house can reduce its carbon footprint by 2 or 3 tons per year with an energy efficiency retrofit. We have about 180,000 households in Sonoma County. If every single household reduced its footprint, we'd only be a third of the way to our 2015 target. That's every single household in the County! And an energy efficiency retrofit is just a financing challenge that pays for itself. What about the actions that actually cost money?

At this stage, if we are serious, every City and the County should be working on ordinances that will require every home and commercial building to be retrofit by a date certain, no later than January 1, 2015. But any elected official will tell you that even mentioning such a proposal is "political suicide." Well, whatever it turns out to be politically, it is Governance 101. Thinking it doesn't absolutely have to be done is embracing a fantasy. Energy efficiency retrofits are the easy actions. Transportation is far more challenging. If we can't handle the politics of the easy ones, how do we handle the tough ones?

The demand for governance is painfully obvious. If we believe we are a democracy and believe we can govern ourselves, it's definitely time to prove it. The actions required to eliminate 1.5 million tons of CO2 from our lives are clear, and they are enormous. We can accomplish them. But, not by playing make believe -- telling ourselves we're all good environmentalists -- while we destroy our kids' future by doing essentially nothing.

It's time to decide in each of our cities. And it's time for our electeds to lead, not follow. What we are doing on greenhouse gas reduction so far is token. We're failing. Our carbon footprint is growing, not shrinking. Do we pass ordinances requiring that every building reduce its carbon footprint? We know it has to be done. We know it is both easier and more valuable to do it sooner than later. We know that the energy savings pay for the retrofits. Do we act? Or, do we just punt, tell ourselves we're good people, and conveniently ignore the damage we're doing to our kids? On this question, if we tell ourselves that passing such ordinances is political suicide, how can we claim to govern ourselves?