In 2009, the Bishop s office of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (FLUMCB) had

Transcription

1 CY 2009 ANALYSIS OF CARBON FOOTPRINT REPORT OF THE BISHOP S OFFICE FLORIDA CONFERENCE of THE UNITED METHODIST CHURCH November 29, 2010 ABSTRACT In 2009, the Bishop s office of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church (FLUMCB) had a footprint of 47 metric tonnes of solid carbon. FLUMCB has a moderate carbon footprint when compared to an administrative office of similar size. The office has three full time employees in addition to the Bishop and was housed in a separate building from the rest of the Florida Conference offices. This moderate carbon footprint is due in part to the age and inefficiencies of the office building they occupied, the age and inefficiencies of the Bishop s parsonage, and the amount of travel for cabinet members to attend meetings. Life and work style changes in the way the readers of this report travel and cool buildings will go a long way in reducing FLUMCB s carbon footprint. This study provides a baseline measurement for FLUMCB as it moves to join with denominational initiatives and geo political urgencies to reduce its Greenhouse Gas emissions and carbon footprint. The planning, data collection, analysis and reporting took 25 staff hours to accomplish. In addition to the preliminary general recommendations offered at the conclusion to this report, this report recommends that the Bishop s office take steps to repeat and refine this exercise at least every three years into the next generation, to measure performance in conservation and mitigation, thereby joining in President Barak Obama s call for the U. S. economy to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by the year We believe this is an achievable goal for reduced emissions by FLUMCB as it prepares for the next generation of church and community leadership.

2 INTRODUCTION: THE WHY A. Denominational Background God s Renewed Creation: Call to Hope and Action A Pastoral Letter from the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church [1] God s creation is in crisis. We, the Bishops of The United Methodist Church, cannot remain silent while God s people and God s planet suffer. This beautiful natural world is a loving gift from God, the Creator of all things seen and unseen. God has entrusted its care to all of us, but we have turned our backs on God and on our responsibilities. Our neglect, selfishness, and pride have fostered: pandemic poverty and disease; o environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons and violence.[i] Despite these interconnected threats to life and hope, God s creative work continues. Despite the ways we all contribute to these problems, God still invites each one of us to participate in the work of renewal. We must begin the work of renewing creation by being renewed in our own hearts and minds. We cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it. We all feel saddened by the state of the world, overwhelmed by the scope of these problems, and anxious about the future, but God calls us and equips us to respond. No matter how bad things are, God s creative work continues. Christ s resurrection assures us that death and destruction do not have the last word. Paul taught that through Jesus Christ, God offers redemption to all of creation and reconciles all things, whether on earth or in heaven. (Col 1:20[ii]) God s Spirit is always and everywhere at work in the world fighting poverty, restoring health, renewing creation, and reconciling peoples. Aware of God s vision for creation, we no longer see a list of isolated problems affecting disconnected people, plants, and animals. Rather, we see one interconnected system that groans in travail. (Romans 8:22) The threats to peace, people, and planet earth are related to one another, and God s vision encompasses complete well being. We, your bishops, join with many global religious leaders to call for a comprehensive response to these interrelated issues. We urge all United Methodists and people of goodwill to offer themselves as instruments of God s renewing Spirit in the world. First, let us orient our lives toward God s holy vision. This vision of the future calls us to hope and to action. For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jer. 29:11) Christ s resurrection assures us that this vision is indeed a promise of renewal and reconciliation. As disciples of Christ, we take God s promise as the purpose for our lives. Let us, then, rededicate ourselves to God s holy vision, living each day with awareness of the future God extends to us and of the Spirit that leads us onward.

3 Second, let us practice social and environmental holiness. We believe personal holiness and social holiness must never be separated. John Wesley preached: The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social. No holiness but social holiness. [iii]through social holiness we make ourselves a channel of God s blessing in the world. Because God s blessing, care, and promise of renewal extend to all of creation, we can speak today of environmental holiness as well. We practice social and environmental holiness by caring for God s people and God s planet and by challenging those whose policies and practices neglect the poor, exploit the weak, hasten global warming, and produce more weapons. Third, let us live and act in hope. As people in the tradition of John Wesley, we understand reconciliation and renewal to be part of the process of salvation that is already underway. We are not hemmed into a fallen world. Rather we are part of a divine unfolding process to which we must contribute. As we faithfully respond to God s grace and call to action, the Holy Spirit guides us in this renewal. With a resurrection spirit, we look forward to the renewal of the whole creation and commit ourselves to that vision. We pray that God will accept and use our lives and resources that we re dedicate to a ministry of peace, justice and hope to overcome poverty and disease, environmental degradation, and the proliferation of weapons and violence. With God s help and with you as our witnesses 1. We as your bishops pledge to answer God s call to deepen our spiritual consciousness as just stewards of creation. We commit ourselves to faithful and effective leadership on these issues, in our denomination, and in our communities and nations. 2. We pledge to make God s vision of renewal our goal. With every evaluation and decision, we will ask: Does this contribute to God s renewal of creation? Ever aware of the difference between what is and what must be, we pledge to practice Wesleyan holy dissatisfaction. [iv] 3. We pledge to practice dialogue with those whose life experience differs dramatically from our own, and we pledge to practice prayerful self examination. For example, in the Council of bishops, the fifty active bishops in the United States are committed to listening and learning with the nineteen active bishops in Africa, Asia and Europe. And the bishops representing the United States conferences will prayerfully examine the fact that their nation consumes more than its fair share of the world s resources, generates the most waste, and produces the most weapons. 4. We pledge ourselves to make common cause with religious leaders and people of good will worldwide who share these concerns. We will connect and collaborate with ecumenical and interreligious partners and with community and faith organizations so that we may strengthen our common efforts. 5. We pledge to advocate for justice and peace in the halls of power in our respective nations and international organizations. 6. We pledge to measure the carbon footprint [v]of our episcopal and denominational offices, determine how to reduce it, and implement those changes. We will urge our congregations, schools and settings of ministry to do the same.

4 7. We pledge, to the best of our ability, to provide the resources needed by our conferences to reduce dramatically our collective exploitation of the planet, peoples and communities, including technical assistance with buildings and programs, education and training, young people s and online networking resources. 8. We pledge to practice hope as we engage and continue supporting the many transforming ministries of our denomination. Every day we will thank God for fruit produced through the work of The United Methodist Church and through each of you. 9. We pledge more effective use of the church and community webpages to inspire and share what we learn.[vi]we celebrate the communications efforts that tell the stories of struggle and transformation within our denomination. With these pledges, we respond to God s gracious invitation to join in the process of renewal. God is already visibly at work in people and groups around the world. We rededicate ourselves to join these movements, the movements of the Spirit. Young people are passionately raising funds to provide mosquito nets for their siblings thousands of miles away. Dock workers are refusing to off load small weapons being smuggled to armed combatants in civil wars in their continent. People of faith are demanding land reform on behalf of landless farm workers. Children and young people have formed church wide green teams to transform our buildings and ministries into testimonies of stewardship and sustainability. Ecumenical and interreligious partners persist in demanding the major nuclear powers to reduce their arsenals, step by verifiable step, making a way to a more secure world totally disarmed of nuclear weapons. God is already doing a new thing. With this Letter and the accompanying Foundation Document, we rededicate ourselves to participate in God s work, and we urge you all to rededicate yourselves as well. We beseech every United Methodist, every congregation and every public leader: Will you participate in God s renewing work? We are filled with hope for what God can accomplish through us, and we pray you respond: We will, with God s help! May God s grace purify our reason, strengthen our will, and guide our action. May the love of God, the peace of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit be among you, everywhere and always, so that you may be a blessing to all creation and to all the children of God, making peace, nurturing and practicing hope, choosing life and coming to life eternal. Amen. [1] The 2004 General Conference of The United Methodist Church called for the Council of Bishops to publish new documents and a study guide similar to the Council s landmark call in 1986, In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace. This is the Council s response to the General Conference action (The Book of Resolutions of The United Methodist Church 2004: Replace In Defense of Creation with new Document and Study Guide").

5 B. Council of Bishops Background In a statement that says, We cannot help the world until we change our way of being in it, the bishops of The United Methodist Church announced a significant call to all United Methodists, ecumenical and inter religious partners and people of goodwill around the world. As bishops, we know that critical issues of the day have left people feeling fearful, cynical, hopeless and overwhelmed, said Bishop Gregory Palmer, president of the Council of Bishops. God s Renewed Creation: Call to Hope and Action" contains our pledges to work in hopeful and robust ways for transforming change as God s stewards of creation. We invite the church and our partners around the world to join us. A liturgical setting for the letter offers responsive elements for congregational participation. These are a lament for God s people and God s planet, confession of failure to embody the image of God and call to action inviting everyone to join the bishops in their own nine pledges for urgent, effective action. The Bishops' Pledge We the bishops pledge: 1. To answer God's call to deepen our spiritual consciousness as just stewards of creation. 2. To make God's vision of renewal our goal. 3. To participate in dialogue with those whose life experience differs dramatically from our own, and...to practice prayerful self examination. 4. To make common cause with religious leaders and people of goodwill worldwide who share these concerns. 5. To advocate for justice and peace in the halls of power in our respective nations and international organizations. 6. To measure the "carbon footprint" of our episcopal and denominational offices, determine how to reduce it, and implement those changes. 7. To provide, to the best of our ability, the resources needed by our conferences to reduce dramatically our collective exploitation of the planet, peoples, and communities including technical assistance with buildings and programs, education and training, and young people's and online networking resources. 8. To practice hope as we engage and continue supporting the many transforming ministries of the denomination. 9. To make more effective use of the church and community web pages to inspire and to share what we learn.

6 AUDIT METHODS AND RESULTS: THE HOW AND WHAT The measurement of a carbon footprint encompasses three primary tasks: the quantification of direct emissions in the form of utilities, quantification of transportation emissions, and the assignment of indirect emissions in the form of purchased material products and outside services. A. UTILITIES The first task is to assemble all utilities records and convert the energy usage listed there into tonnes of carbon. These records are delivered monthly on the energy provider s receipts. In this case, the energy provider for FLUMCB was Lakeland Electric. From these records, 12 months of receipts were summed on a spreadsheet in units of kilowatt hours (kwh) and then converted into tonnes of carbon. Because the mix of fuel types for electricity is complicated by the sources of renewable and hydrocarbon facilities at Lakeland Electric, this report used the calculator carbonfund.org provides for converting kwh into tonnes of carbon. Water use is a minor source of CO2 emissions and therefore was not considered in this report. Based on this calculator and the 26,040 kwh hours used, the Bishops office generated metric tonnes of carbon. The parsonage used 15,321 kwh and generated 9.66 metric tonnes of carbon. B. TRANSPORTATION The second task for measuring CO2 emitted is to quantify vectors of transportation by surveying airline and ground transportation distances traveled during the year. Included in the Bishop s office transportation profile is travel by the Bishop, his office staff, 9 District Superintendents, and 5 Extended Cabinet members. Airline segments were determined from two sources: the requests for reimbursements by FLUMCB staff for airline flights generated back up credit card receipts obtained from the billing office. These receipts listed airline travel by airport itineraries for each staff requested reimbursement. The itineraries were then classified by miles traveled. The first classification were flights under 600 miles, the second were flights between 600 and 2,000 miles, and the final classification were flights in excess of 2,000 miles.

7 From these classes of airline travel for the operations of FLUMCB in 2009, and utilizing a calculator provided by carbonfund.org, the Bishop s office is estimated to have generated 1.26 metric tonnes of carbon. The second vector for transportation is ground transportation. This vector includes the Bishop and his staff commuting, traveling within the conference and commuting to originating airports, longer distance automobile travel by staff and cabinet members attending meetings. In each case, assumptions had to be made regarding auto fuel economy and frequency of commuting. Again due to different types of fuels available we opted to use a calculator provided by carbonfund.org. Based on this calculator and 46,273 miles travelled, it was calculated that metric tonnes of carbon were generated by ground transportation in C. INDIRECT EMISSIONS The third source of CO2 emissions for an institution is the indirect emissions embedded in the acquisition of goods and offsite services. The supply chain for cement and chemicals, furniture and equipment, for example, emits CO2, so that a given level of material consumption correlates with Greenhouse Gases emitted during production. Outside services in the form of contractors also bring their own carbon footprint that is proportionate to their contracted work at the institution. Some portion of CO2 emitted, then, of each product or outside service that enters the institution s plant is attributable to that institution. Another way of saying this is that CO2 emitted by material consumption is demand driven and thus ought to be attributed in part to the purchasing institution. The question is how to attribute the embedded emissions to the institution when it has access to no data regarding the production processes of contractors and material providers. In this case, it was felt that a top down study of economies of production may be applied to the scale of overall material consumption of the institution. Again we turned to a calculator provided by carbonfund.org for this calculation. Based on the number of nights spent in hotels, reams of copy paper used, number of letters mailed and it was determined that the Bishop s office generated 1.98 metric tonnes of carbon from its indirect emissions.

8 FURTHER FINDINGS Some further points arise from the energy use audit portion of this study. Conservative reporting: Regarding the precision of this report, it should be noted that the bias of this report has been to be conservative when estimating. Not only this, there were numerous sources of energy use that were not counted or undercounted in the course of this study. Travel by Cabinet members to and from their place of residence went undetermined despite their being part of FLUMCB requirements and in some cases part of its internal operations. In addition, transportation to and from the various seminars and meetings organized at and by FLUMCB that involved in traveling specialists, lecturers and attendees went unmeasured. ANALYSIS AND IMPLICATIONS The 47 tonnes of elemental carbon in the form of charcoal would almost fill a boxcar or a silo with a radius of 20 feet to the depth of 5 feet. This carbon footprint would thus be almost chapel full of waste carbon that would need to be buried if it could be recipitated from the atmosphere after atmospheric carbon abatement technology becomes available. At the midpoint of the current available mitigation offsets currently priced by various environmental groups ($30 $100/tonne), the social cost to the global commons of FLUMCB operations from CO2 emissions not captured by the market is $65 times 47, or $ 3,055/yr. Abatement and mitigation technologies become an issue when discussing moving toward carbon neutrality. It might be argued that the costs of offsetting climate change may be borne at lower cost in the future as technology becomes available to precipitate solid carbon from atmospheric Greenhouse gases. Alternatively, other technologies can be presumed to move human families and institutions toward carbon neutrality as a developmental ( secular ) process of technological change. It thus seems prudent that developed nations and its structures move toward, at a minimum, the 80% reduction in Greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 per the climatological modeling of Schmidt and Archer (2009). Even by their scenario of industrialized nations following this path to reduction, allowing

9 in the meanwhile for industrial catch up by developing nations, the probability of maintaining global temperature increase from Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to less than 2 degrees Centigrade would be marginally less than 50%. The lower end of expected warming beyond 0.8oC already measured is expected to have a major impact. On the other hand, buildings have large potentials for payoffs in emission mitigation by investment. At the $ range of offset mitigation costs, numerous technologies exist today in the investment in energy efficiency, building design and reflective surfaces. RECOMMENDATIONS As noted in the Introduction, the Council of Bishops approved a letter to the churches that included the following recommendations for all to consider: 7. We pledge, to the best of our ability, to provide the resources needed by our conferences to reduce dramatically our collective exploitation of the planet, peoples and communities, including technical assistance with buildings and programs, education and training, young people s and online networking resources. A. Conservation. In light of the cut of the expense budget of FLUMCB in 2009, it seems reasonable and prudent to make the same cut in CO2 emissions by simple conservation measures, targeting the gross emissions of cooling, jet and automobile travel, and purchased services. a. Conservation, for economic and technological reasons given in the prior section, seems most called for in the transportation sector. Can automobile travel be cut substantially because of its very high greenhouse warming potentials? For example, a 50% cut in automobile travel by the institutional staff would result in about a 17.4% reduction in total emissions of the institution. b. In addition, the highest source of indirect emissions is hotel lodging. Moving toward no overnight travel would reduce indirect emissions from.4% to.2% of total FLUMCB carbon emissions. c. Consider ways to improve the efficiencies of the Bishop s parsonage or investigate its replacement. Plans are now under consideration by the Trustees of the Florida Conference to replace the Bishop s parsonage.

10 B. Invest in global commons by investing in mitigating technologies for FLUMCB operations. As the non captured social cost of carbon emissions at current rates is on the order of $ 3,000 (see above), it is recommended that FLUMCB, in lieu of purchasing carbon offsets, undertake internal investment in energy efficiency. As the bishops office cuts down its 47 tonne footprint, it may in coming years be obligated to less offset expense for investment. C. Commitment to emission audits on a three year timeline. The preparation of this audit and study took the finance team about 25 hours. Thus it is recommended that a portion of the investment that the seminary commits to reducing its carbon footprint be dedicated to measuring it every three years at a cost of $750. This would break down into 10 hours (@$10) for data collection and data entry; 10 hours (@$50) for project planning and data analysis; and 5 hours (@$30) for research and report Writing. LEAD AUTHOR S COMMENTARY: USING AVAILABLE RESOURCES TO BECOME MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR CREATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT In 2010, Under the careful guidance of Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker, the Bishop s office, the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Florida United Methodist Foundation, and the Georgia/Florida United Methodist Credit Union are now all housed in a LEED certified building. This new facility was designed with the most current green technology. This building uses chilled water to make the air conditioning unit run more efficiently, rainwater is collected for irrigation, lights are automatically turned off when a room is no longer occupied. This building also has showers so that employees may ride their bicycles to work rather than drive their automobiles. This building replaced two extremely inefficient buildings as well as some leased space. It should also be noted that this is not new construction, but rather a retrofitting of an existing structure which had sat vacant for a number of years and was in extreme disrepair. It should also be noted that this building has already been recognized for both its visual appeal and the utilization of green technology to reduce its effect on the environment. Another advantage of this new facility is that members are now able to transact all their

11 business in one location. This will cut down on automobile travel required and therefore also reduce the emissions. It is this type of vision and dedication that needs to be passed on to our churches and ministries to insure we reach our future goals in the reduction of our impact on God s creation. THANKFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The producer of this report thank Joanna Proferes in the FLUMC Bishop s Office for timely answers and provision of documents, and to Palma Dziedzic and Kathi Raker of the Financial Services Department for providing all the information necessary for the calculations contained in this report.