Last Monday, Bowen in Transition organized a talk by Tarah Stafford concerning retrofitting homes for energy and carbon dioxide savings.
Tarah, who lives on Eagle Island in West Vancouver, told us how she had single-handedly roused her fellow island residents to become engaged in improving theenergy efficiency of theirhomes.Of the 31 homes on the island, 24 are engaged in making improvements.
Tarah, who is a screenwriter and has no formal training in anything environmental, has taken a wonderfully pragmatic approach to her cause of bringing about change at the local level. Looking at the barriers to change, she identified three: meetings are boring, people didn't know what to do to improve their homes and no one has time for organizing. She decided to have parties instead of meetings, to offer energy audits that could identify problems and possible solutions, and to do all the scheduling of audits herself for efficient use of time.
The result has been that Eagle Island homes have spent as little as $200 to seal air leaks bringing savings of around 10 per cent, to spending several thousand dollars bringing savings of up to 75 per cent. Three homes have installed heat pumps, two are air-sourced and one draws heat from the ocean year round.
Tarah joined Cool North Shore, an environmental group that covers the area from Lions Bay to Deep Cove, to extend her work across the North Shore. The group have been borrowing thermal cameras from fire stations to detect heat leaking from homes. Tarah and Cool North Shore have helped home owners access grants from the provincial and federal governments to make energy saving changes.
And she is in the process of organizing group buys of furnaces, heat pumps, highly efficient windows and solar hot water. Group buying brings savings of around 15 per cent, sometimes more. Bowen Islanders are invited to participate in any buying groups.
To go on a list to receive more information on developments in this area, or to enquire about how you might benefit from the work Tarah is doing, contact Don Marshall at [email protected].
Bowen in Transition is part of a worldwide network of transition initiativescreating resilient, vibrant communities that are ready for a post peak-oil future, and are involved in averting climate change through positive, grassroots local action.
