Energy Efficiency and Conservation (Connect to the SCRES Webinar 2 of 5)

Thanks so much for being here. And for Colleen, she is my coworker at REAP as our education director. And I'm sure Kay, I'm not sure about Matt, are familiar with the Sitka Community Renewable Energy Strategy. It's an ETIP project with Sitka and the city of Sitka. And so we are working with Bree Gable.

As the sustainability coordinator with the City and Borough of Sitka on this webinar series and radio series to engage the community on some more energy topics. And so Colleen's here to talk about energy efficiency and conservation with us.

So we tried to make it very Southeast-specific, so hopefully you can bring a lot home with you. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so I'm Colleen Fisk, and Hailey and I work for REAP Renewable Energy Alaska Project, and as part of this renewable energy strategy that Sitka Community is putting together, they asked me to do this presentation on efficiency and conservation, and like Hailey said, we worked to incorporate Southeast and especially Sitka-specific information throughout, but this is also information that can be really applicable to anybody, even if you don't live in Sitka or Southeast Alaska. And, um, just a little bit about myself. The education director at REAP, I have been here since 2016, so over 8 years now.

I grew up in Alaska outside Wasilla, and I'm living outside Wasilla on Dena'ina lands once again. My passions are animals, so I really love horseback riding and doing things like agility and hiking with my dogs. And I've really been, since I'm fortunate to have grown up in Alaska, really been a lifelong sustainability advocate. I'm very fortunate that my family introduced me to these topics as I was growing up and was like that nerd who in National Honor Society was like volunteering at the recycling center. So That was totally me growing up.

Oops. And, um, yeah, so I'm gonna be going through some of these topics. I have the chat pulled up here, so like Haley said, if you have any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat and either try to address them when I see them or on a later spot where it makes sense, or even at the end. We should have some time at the end to answer questions. So these are the objectives and key questions that were set by the Sitka Sustainability around this efficiency and conservation topic.

So really thinking about everyday energy choices that are influencing Sitka's energy future, who plays what roles in energy efficiency and conservation, what is the role of policy in energy and conservation, and what are the benefits and/or how does it impact Sitka residents. So I'm going to be touching on each of those throughout this session, throughout these 45-ish minutes. You know, probably won't be able to dig deep get into all of those, but that's what's really great about these CITCA webinar series and the engagement that they are doing is there's a lot of opportunity for you to engage with the strategy that the CITCA Sustainability Commission is putting together. So we just want to make sure we're on the same circuit. I got this slide from Bree after her last presentation.

I really like it and One thing to keep in mind is that we use energy in a lot of ways in our lives, and especially throughout society, and we'll talk about some ways that we use that in our homes. And sometimes that term energy and electricity gets used interchangeably as if they're the same thing, but of course they're not. And so I'll work really hard to be specific when I talk about energy versus electricity versus heating versus transportation or other types of energy. And Sometimes people, often people like to make the distinction between conservation and efficiency. So conservation refers to less energy with behavior.

Okay, so like remembering to turn off the lights versus efficiency has to do with better technologies or materials. So using LED bulbs or an Energy Star appliance, for example. And so what this means in Practicality, if like a light bulb is such a really common example. Incandescent light bulb, which is the standard kind of light bulb, the one that was invented over 100 years ago. 10% Of the electricity that comes into it is light.

Most of the rest comes out as heat. A CFL, compact fluorescent, those twirly ones, that was like 40% is light, the rest mostly heat, whereas LED is 80% of electricity becomes light. And so that's why LEDs use so much less electricity because they can convert it into light much more directly and use it just for that. But really what we're thinking about and talking about is that we just wanna maximize our energy savings. How can we use less energy?

That is the real topic for today. So now that we're on the same circuit, as it were, Quick reminder about the physics fundamentals of energy. There's a lot of different types of energy, and we really think about energy transformations. So turning from electricity into heat or light or thermal energy into electricity, or, you know, chemical energy in a battery into electricity. All of those are different types of transformations, and energy, of course, can't be created or destroyed.

But it has these transformations that occur. They're just not ever 100% efficient. Can't ever have something that's 100% efficient, but we get as close as we can, and we're getting better and better with the technologies that we have.

So no system is perfect, right? I kind of said this already. Nothing is 100% efficient. And so another example of efficiency is thinking about an internal combustion engine. So your typical, like, gasoline or diesel.

Vehicles and comparing that to a completely electric vehicle. And so of all of the fuel such as gasoline that goes into an electric vehicle, about 16 to 25% of the energy actually goes to the wheels, to movement, to moving forward, whereas the rest is lost as mostly heat, although there's a little bit that's used in other ways. But for the majority, the energy is lost as heat. Now, of course, we can take advantage of that in Alaska in the wintertime. We like using that heat to heat the cabin of our vehicles.

But most of the time it's not useful energy, not useful heat. Whereas electric vehicle, 100% of the electricity that goes into it, 90, up to 90% of that goes into the wheels, into that forward movement. Of course, there still is some loss.

And what's really cool about electric vehicles, they have this regenerative braking, which up to 22% recapture in a battery, that's a whole other thing. But the main idea here, right, is that this is an example of efficiency, is that an electric vehicle is inherently more efficient because you're not having as much loss for heat.

And so, and again, nothing's 100%, right? But you can be more efficient and closer to that. So what does this look like in your home, right? That's gonna be our focus is thinking about our home and how does that benefit you. Well, the first one that we talk about a lot, of course, is how much it saves money.

And so no matter the energy source, energy costs money. A lot of my work is I do outreach to K-12 students, and I'll hear students say, well, I get my heat from wood. And it's like, well, doesn't that, doesn't that take time to get that? I mean, if you're not buying it, it still takes time and effort, maybe like gasoline in your chainsaw or the gasoline in your splitter. Sure, it costs less, but everything that we use uses— costs us money, at the very least time.

The other major benefit that we think about is that it can make your home way more comfortable, especially when energy efficiency and weatherization really overlap with each other a lot. So can be less drafty, better lit, more humid, All those things can make your home more comfortable. And often that is the energy efficient way to use energy in your home. Also think about improving home health. So if you're not burning a fuel like gasoline or oil, then that's better for the air inside your house.

If you're having better air circulation, um, and it's less humid, you may not have mold growing. And so all of that just makes your home healthier for you. So some great benefits for us inside of our home because of this efficiency and conservation.

So what does this look like for the utility? So Sitka and Bri did a great presentation. If you haven't already, there is a recording of the webinar. Actually, I'm not 100% sure it's posted yet, but if it isn't, there is a recording of the webinar that Bri already did about energy in Sitka, so electricity and heating, and the efficiency impacts to the electric utility. So we think about electricity.

Sitka's electricity is almost completely.

100% Renewable, so coming from hydro systems, Blue Lake, Green Lake, but it's not unlimited. Okay. And so if we can use less of it than for what we're already doing, then we can save that for other uses, perhaps electrification or other things that we might want to do. So thinking about that conservation. And Sitka is unique in that its largest user throughout the year, actually residential consumers, often electric utilities.

Those consumers, highest consumers, tend to be more on the commercial or public authority side of things. But in Sitka, residential uses are really big, and so the impacts that those who live in Sitka can make on their reduction really does have a big impact on the Sitka Utility. And Sitka Utility is a nonprofit, right? Again, back to that, when I talk to students and they say, oh, but why do you want me to use less energy? You know, the utilities want to make more money.

It's like, well, that's, it's a lot more complicated than that, right? The utilities are— a lot of the utilities in the state are cooperative. Sitka is part of the city. Sitka's utility is part of the city of Sitka, and so they're not trying— they're not— their goal is not to make a profit. Their goal is to have it be safe and affordable and reliable for their consumers.

And so if you want to learn more about the energy use in Sitka, especially for electric utility, You can go to the City of Sitka website to learn more about that, but we're going to dive more into the home energy use now.

And so with our home energy use, like we said, we talk about conservation versus efficiency. Conservation is, in some ways it's really easy, right? And sometimes can be really easy, free, it's immediate, but this takes practice and if you don't do it consistently, you're not gonna see as many benefits. Whereas with efficiency, can save even more money. Some are super inexpensive and do-it-yourself, right?

Like replacing your LED bulbs or installing a programmable thermostat, using caulking on cracks, right? Those are really easy, don't cost a lot. But if you have bigger projects, bigger things to upgrade, then that will cost a lot more money and can require more planning. But if you combine both of those together, you're really just maximizing your energy savings. That's not a— Definitely not one or the other, put both together.

And in our home, this is, or in our like home energy budget, we think about transportation, thermal energy, and electricity. These are the three big ways that we think about our energy use in society and especially our home energy budget. And we also, in some People often ask me about food too. And so food is a really important thing to think about. Food, energy, water, all of that is combined together, or not combined together, but related to each other and important to each other.

So the food, for example, you have to cook the foods that takes heating, you have to transport it, you have to store it. All of those are part included in these energy costs as well. And in Sitka, 99.9% of electricity is from renewable hydroelectricity. And so at least the electricity right now is renewable, and it's the transportation and thermal energy sources that are fueled by non-renewable sources, unless you have something like an electric vehicle or electric type heating system.

And so when you're thinking about this, you want to think about all of these costs combined together are your energy spending. So things like the fuel for your vehicles or other travel, your heating fuels, your cost on your electricity, so that electricity bill, all of those combined together do spending. And an important thing to note is that when you think about electrification, so for example, if you have an electric vehicle instead of a gas-powered vehicle, or a heat pump instead of an oil heater, you will spend more on electricity, but you're usually spending even less on the heating or the transportation or wherever else that you're doing that. And so the total energy spending still goes down even if part of it goes up. Other areas go down more for most of the time.

And if you want to dig into this more, the next webinar on October 24th is on energy economics, so can really nerd out on that even more.

And you can really think about this personally, right? We're thinking about our home energy efficiency and conservation as the focus on this. So each month you want to keep an eye on what this looks like, at least have a general idea. The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation did a housing needs assessment. And so they show that, like, in Southeast Alaska, uh, our heating costs are the most.

So think about space heating, almost 70%, water heating, 14%, appliances, 17%. So keep an eye on what those costs are, and we're going to go through some ways that you can conserve your energy and be more efficient. And so we have these items. I'm going to talk through these different areas of saving energy. And so you'll see like a C or an E next to it, thinking about conservation versus efficiency.

And so this is the way that you can start creating your own habits and your own personal policies. You can think about it that way as well.

And this is a great place to start. Hopefully Haley will be able to drop this link in the chat for you. But there is this checklist that I've developed with Alaska Housing that is an energy and comfort home checklist that is a really great, easy place to start. And so you can go through this checklist. Not all of them will apply to everybody, of course, but it has this mix of tips and small efficiency projects that you can do.

Thanks, Hailey. So let's talk through what some of these look like. So if you're thinking about your heating thermostats, this is like the number one, right? Heating is the biggest energy use anywhere in the state, including in Southeast. And having a programmable thermostat, if you have a heating system that's compatible with that, is like one of the biggest ways you can save energy.

The general recommendation is 62 to 68 degrees in the winter. And if possible, turn off in the summer. And every degree that you turn the heat down, you save 2% on your heating bill. So it's a really huge savings. You can also, on programming it so that you don't have to remember this, right?

So this can be just an efficiency thing. Set it and forget it. So turning down the heat 2 hours before bed and set it so that it increases right before you wake up and then have it turned down when no one is home. Like if during the day, if you have people at home, at work or school, or if you're like, we're outside a lot on the weekends, so we often have our heat turned down. If you go on vacation, those are all great ways.

And often even like Toyo stoves will have this. You can get really fancy with these smart thermostats that are connected to Wi-Fi, or you can just get really inexpensive ones at like $30, $40 at a home supply store.

For the hot water, so still thinking about heating, you want to make sure that your hot water is closer to that 120°F. And so if you have— most of us will have some sort of boiler for our heating system, and so often the automatic setting is higher at the 140°F, but the temperature that's recommended is 120°F. You don't want to go lower than that for boiler systems because of, um, that's the recommendation in terms of preventing the buildup of minerals inside of the tank and for health reasons, especially if you have folks who are elderly in your home. But having at least 120°F, and if your system doesn't have a temperature, or if you're not sure that that's an accurate temperature reading, The way that we recommend is that you turn on a faucet, preferably farther away from the boiler in your home, and run it for 2 minutes, and then just use a digital thermometer like what you might have in the kitchen to check what the temperature is there. And so then that gives you an idea of what it's actually at.

That's a quick check on there, and that can be a huge savings, up to 10% on your energy bill. Think about that 10% reduction in like fuel oil that you'd have to have delivered. Be really great.

And so also thinking about our home heating, any air vents, radiators, registers, you don't want to have blocked. A friend of mine sent me this image of the bunny, which was really fun. I like that. But also, you know, not having your couches in front of the radiators in the wintertime, or when it's not— if you're not using a fireplace, have that sealed up. Having a professional tune your heating system every year is really recommended, and generally systems that are 15 years or older, it's probably about time to replace them.

Just as they age, they get more efficient, and technologies have just been improving so much that in those 15, 20 years, the improvements in efficiency are really great and can really help pay back the costs of replacing or upgrading that system.

Now, heat pumps— these are a type of heating system that use electricity, but they are much more efficient than the kind of electric heating, like resistant heater that you might think of as like a space heater or the ones that have the registers along the floorboards. These capture heat from a source. Usually when we're talking about for homes, we're talking about air source, but they can also be from water or ground source. And they use the magic of thermodynamics is how I like to call it. To capture the heat out of that source.

Like I said, usually air, talking about for heating system, and then doing a heat exchange to use some of that heat into your house. So they're moving heat, they're not generating heat. Things that generate heat, like a space heater or a hair dryer or microwave, they use a lot of electricity. Heat pumps are not generating heat, they are moving heat. And so to learn more about this Alaska Heat Smart which is in Southeast Alaska, has amazing resources about what this can look like.

They're expanding their program on residential evaluations. They help people do energy audits and figure out if a, uh, heat pump could be right for your home. And they also have some funding for low-income households to help them install heat pumps. And you can also just on your own use this heat pump calculator Haley got, got these 3 links to hot jump to drop in the chat for us. There's a lot here on this page, but heat pumps are something that is technology that's really, really improved and is an example of a really efficient technology.

And, and some of the colder places in the state, they're not recommended for the middle of winter, but they still work really well spring through fall, even into late fall. Late, you know, in the late winter, it's just maybe the middle of winter, they don't— aren't the most efficient, but the rest of the year they work really well. And fortunately, there's currently a federal tax credit for heat pumps, and they'll cover 30% of the costs for heat pumps and efficient biomass stoves and boilers, up to $2,000. And then there's this awesome new resource, I just got emailed about it, that was published this morning. I've been waiting and expecting this for a while, but Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, HFC, just published this new resource called Heat Pumps in Alaska.

So if you want to learn more about that, these, all 3 of these resources are really great, great way to learn more about heat pumps in a really Alaska-specific way and how that can look for you.

So a note about water. In Sitka, water is power. So the same place where the electric utility is producing their electricity, um, especially from the Blue Lake Hydro, that is also the source for the water that you use for drinking and bathing and cooking and all of that. And so when you think about conserving your water resource, not only are you conserving any energy that it takes to heat that water, but you're also conserving the water that is then used for electricity production. So that is really thinking about saving water saves power.

And this is— can be kind of unique in Sitka. And so really important point that I wanted to make. And so when you think about water, I think these are some maybe pretty typical ones that we can think of, like not letting the water run, fixing our leaky faucets, running toilets, low-flow showerheads, aerators. And in terms of the energy for heating the water, you can also add a blanket to your older water heater. Of course, check the manufacturer to make sure that it works for them.

You can also upgrade or downsize. Your water heater. And there are, just like the heat pump for your house for heating the air, you can also get tax credits for heat pump water heaters. So that up to $2,000.

So weatherization, like I said in the beginning, weatherization and efficiency and conservation are really closely related. So there's some great weatherization techniques that you can do to help keep that heat inside of your home. And there's some simple things like identifying the major air leaks. Most of the time we kind of have a good idea of where this is, but if you want to get more specific, you can do things like have an, a lit incense and see where the smoke is blowing near a window or a door. And then you can caulk those gaps and cracks.

So they recommend caulking for things that are quarter inch wide or less, and then the spray foam. For things that are larger gaps or holes, and installing those efficient exhaust fans. They've gotten really quiet nowadays. So if you have like a loud bathroom exhaust fan, for example, maybe it's older and you can do— get something that's more efficient and much quieter, which is a nice bonus.

And again, tax credit up to 30% of weatherization costs. Unfortunately, they don't cover installation costs. So if you're paying somebody to help you with this, the installation costs won't cover, but the materials costs up to $1,200 for the year. And this is something you can take advantage of every year. So maybe you do one project one year, another project another year, and you can take advantage of those credits each year.

Windows. This is what I like to remember this time of year as we're going into the colder season. It's October right now as I'm recording this. And so in the summertime, we often have windows that we open up for airflow, enjoy that fresh warm air in the summer. But now it's time to close those windows.

Of course, probably already closed them, but a nice hint is to actually latch them. So if you have a window that has like some sort of latch thing, and that helps really close the seal that you have on the windows to help put— make sure that you're really preventing and reducing any air transfer and heat loss. You can use blinds and curtains for insulation. These window insulation kits are something I took advantage of when I was a renter, uh, since, you know, I wasn't going to do investment into the windows of my rental, but I could take advantage of these window insulation kits to really help keep the heat in better. You know, take advantage of that caulking.

Um, have any cracked panes repaired. And there are— there is an IRS rebate, that federal, sorry, tax credit for up to $600 for new windows. Again, doesn't include installation costs, but it is per year. I just will caution that usually replacing windows financially only makes sense if they're single-pane windows. So normally double-pane windows, you can do a lot of improvements and upgrades too to match what maybe a new window would look like for a lot less money and effort.

So doors, weatherstripping is great, something that's really easy to use and pick up from a hardware store. Same thing with thresholds or sweeps. If you use a draft stopper around doors, you know, check those frequently for moisture. So you don't want to have, especially in the wintertime as we start getting snow or more rain, Then we don't, you know, anything of that water that's building up could cause mold and not healthy for your air. So make sure you're checking those and swap them out for something that's dry.

This also can also, if you need like a new door, maybe you don't have a very good exterior door, you can get $250 per door up to $500. Again, this is per year, just like with the windows and weatherization.

So if you want to go even deeper into this, uh, or maybe you have really high energy bills, or you know it's an older house that hasn't had upgrades recently, an energy auditor is super helpful. These are the professionals who do a very deep dive into your home, like looking at the R-value, which is how they rate insulation, um, for how good it works, looking at vapor barriers, attic and foundation insulation, and they provide recommendations for upgrades along with an estimate of the costs and payback for you. So it's very helpful. It helps you provide that list of how, when, where you can do these upgrades. And there is a $150 tax credit for an energy audit.

What I've heard is that for homes, typically it costs around $500 for energy audit. And so you get $150 credit for that on your taxes. And then Alaska Housing has an approved Rater list. It's another word for a home auditor. And so that's a good place to start looking for somebody who is a very experienced professional in the state in terms of doing those energy audits.

I haven't seen any questions yet. Keep going.

Reading your electricity bill is a very important topic. This is an example of a Sitka bill that was generously shared with me.

And this, um, really wanna be looking for is your kilowatt hours. So kilowatt hours is the total electrical energy that you used for the month. And so on a residential, this is what it's gonna be looking like. And so that 526, that's the lower number you wanna see. And this is this consumption, the cost that you're gonna see.

That are the variable rate applied to that kilowatt-hours. A lot of times we have the— and this of course are other types of utility, but you're looking at the electrical consumption if you're looking at for your electric bill. So that's, that's what you're looking at right there, and that's based on the kilowatt-hours that you use each month. Again, want to learn more about this? Look at the energy economics.

Also, if you are not in Sitka, maybe you're listening to this from another place in Alaska or around the US, a lot of electric websites like mine is Matanuska Electric, Chugach Electric in Anchorage, Alaska Electric Light and Power in Juneau, they have pretty informative examples of electric bills on their websites so that you can have a better understanding of the breakdown. So highly recommend checking out resources that are local to you. If you're listening to this not from as a Sitka resident.

And so it can be really helpful. Maybe you have a really high electric bill, you're not sure why, you know, you're thinking, man, I turn off my lights, I don't leave things running, what's going on? And so one thing that can be really helpful is actually measuring the individual electric items that you use. And you can do this. A lot of them will say on them how much they use.

Like, I have an example here of an LED, of a light bulb and a blender. And that they say on them how many watts they use. You can Google it. There's also these really handy electricity monitors. There's a couple different brands, like this is the Pony brand.

Kilowatt is another brand that's really common, and these are really simple to use. You can— a lot of utilities lend them out to their customers, and you can also buy them. Like, this Pony is like on sale for $10 on Amazon right now. So you can buy them for not too much money and they can help you. And so then you can plug things in and find out if they have— if they're using more electricity than you're expecting or using electricity when you're not expecting it.

So that can be really handy.

And so with all kinds of appliances, really recommend using Energy Star rated appliances. Some other tips include using a dishwasher only if you, if you have one, and then running only when it's full. Or using the feature that is only washing like the top or bottom rack. Some of the newer ones have a feature where it's just looking at one or that. For things like your dryer, clean out your lint filters, not just the inside lint filter, but that exterior lint filter as well.

Your refrigerators and freezers, just like your heaters, don't have to be working harder than they need to. So the recommended temperature for refrigerators is 36 to 38°F. Can buy these fridge freezer thermometers for like $5 at hardware stores. And then for freezers, 0 to 5°F. You can also clean the coils and check for leaks in the door seal.

A really easy way to do this is get like a piece of paper or dollar bill and close it in the door. And if it's really easy to pull out at that seal, that means that the seals aren't very strong. And so look into finding ways to replace it. Also, another tip is that if you have, say, more than one freezer, like I think a lot of us do for our game and our fish, when you can consolidate those into one freezer, fuller freezers and refrigerators use less energy because they can hold the cold better. The solid materials hold cold better than the air.

So that's another way. So save if you have more than one that could be consolidated.

So lighting, you know, use your LEDs, turn them off when you're not in use. They also have Energy Star fixtures and lamps, and use timers. Timers are really helpful. You can also calculate your costs. So we have this calculator on the AK Energy Smart website, and I'm very remiss on Should have said this in the beginning.

I usually do, but my position is funded through— at REAP, my position is funded mostly through Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, and we have a contract with them for this curriculum called AK Energy Smart. And it started as a K-12 curriculum, so I have lessons free available for anybody to use for K-12 students, but we've also been expanding into adult education. And so we have this great tool on electricity use that is on that AK Energy Smart website. So if you have your phone and you want to pull it up, it's pretty mobile friendly, or Haley's going to drop the link in the chat for us so that you can, if you want to try it out. And so it's really handy.

You need to know your electricity utility rate. So in Sitka, that depends on the time of year, what the rate is. Lower in the winter than in the— or sorry, higher in the winter and lower in the summer. And then, but the average is 17 cents per kilowatt-hour.

And Haley, if you can redo that link in there, because it doesn't look like it hyperlinked that last piece of it. I don't know if there's some spacing issue maybe going on there. Well, this is really handy. You can compare the cost of different things, or maybe you want to see like, well, how much is my refrigerator using? Now, what would a new refrigerator cost me?

You know, so you can kind of compare. Thanks, Hailey. So this is a tool that, like I said, is really mobile friendly and is also available on the website.

And these measuring your tools can— looking at your costs, a really great way to think about your vampire loads. So vampire loads, right? It's October, getting into Day of the Dead, Halloween season. And vampire loads are things that use electricity even when they are off, or you think that they're off. Maybe they're still using a little bit of electricity.

So anything with a remote is a good example. So TVs, DVD players, other types of entertainment systems that use a remote because they're always on trying to talk to the remote. So they're always sent using a little bit of energy, electricity. To talk to that remote. But other things are also really small vampire loads, like maybe a microwave with a clock.

The, um, used to be that chargers were really bad, like phone and computer laptop chargers. They've gotten a lot better over the years, but you can still check if they're vampire load if you get one of those electricity monitors. Sorry, I need to clear my throat.

But you can use— if you find those vampire loads, or you know ones that tend to be vampire loads, like those entertainment systems, you can plug them into a power strip and then turn them off when no one— when they're not in use. You can also use sleep timers, sleep modes on your appliances to help reduce electricity use.

And so using those timers is really handy. And so you can use lamps for when you're gone. I know back when I was in high school, I'd house, you know, check on someone's house for them, kind of house sitting for them. And they'd have— this is the first time I saw, oh, timers for your lamp. So looks like maybe somebody's still there if someone's watching your house.

And I also use them nowadays for my holiday lights. And so we're going to be turning ours on here pretty soon, but we don't want them on all the time or even all night. And so just having them on for a few hours at night and a couple hours in the morning can also be helpful for heat tape. You can maybe have it only on during the coldest times or overnight or cycle it. And then block heaters for your vehicles.

It's recommended you only need about 2 hours for your block heater to do its job to keep the fluids moving in your vehicle. And so you can use an outdoor timer to make sure it's only coming on about 2 hours before you leave instead of having it plugged in all night or even longer.

So those were the main tips to talk about. Definitely take advantage of that energy saving tips book that Haley put in the chat earlier. And I just wanted to reemphasize these federal incentives. These tax credits that are available now, and these are purchase costs for energy audits, $150, that weatherization for insulation, air sealing, up to $1,200, and doors, windows. Again, that's not for installation, just the purchase cost, but still really helpful.

And eventually there will be point-of-sale rebates. They're not available yet, but will be coming. And that is from the inflation. This is all part of the Inflation Reduction Act savings. And so eventually, hopefully next year, we'll start seeing when you go to the store to say purchase a new washer or boiler, there will be rebates that you can get there.

So you just don't have to pay that upfront cost. And then you can learn more on the IRS website.

At that link that's been put in the chat.

I also highly recommend— this is another very helpful tool that you can use— Rewiring America, which is a national nonprofit, put together this online calculator to be able to identify the different types of tax incentives and eventually rebates that you can take advantage of. And so you just need to put in, you know, are you a homeowner? Your tax filing status, household size, income, and zip code. It's very easy to use. You don't even have to put in your email address and it will pop out with, hey, here's the incentives that you are available— that are available to you that you can take advantage of.

So there's a link there, but also check it out on your phone. This is for anybody around the US. Anyone wants to check this out and take advantage of it.

So this Energy Saving Tips for Alaskans, this is a handy guide. That checklist that I mentioned earlier is also in the back of this book, but this has a lot of the tips that I've said and even more. The focus is on residential efficiency and conservation. Published by Alaska Housing Finance Corporation and Alaska Energy Authority, and it's free to download on REAP's and AHFC's website. There's a link on the REAP website.

And so it has— if you want to dig into this even more, you can check out there. And if you want to keep learning— but wait, there's more! Oops, go back, went, went far too one. We've also been working on an online class called Home Energy Efficiency: The through Alaska Housing. And so this is a self-paced, self-enrollment.

You can go in and take this class, and there's different modules. Right now we have 5 modules on things like intro to efficiency, your heating appliances, and we're going to keep adding more. And so REAP has been helping write these modules for Alaska Housing as part of the AK Energy Smart program. So you wanna learn more and check that out and dig into this even more, all at your own pace.

So whose job is all of this? One of the questions and objectives for this set by the CITCA Sustainability Commission is what are the different roles in efficiency and conservation? And so it's all of us, right? I find this really helpful to think about it through the lens of this 4 levels of action for societal change that Will Grant posted. It's a really short video, highly recommend it, uh, like 3 and a half minutes long, I think.

And so this is where I'm getting these 4 levels of action from. And this definitely totally applies to efficiency and conservation. We've been thinking about and talking about efficiency and conservation through the lens of our home, but really wanna think about this on a really large scale. And so you can share this information and tips with your family and friends, maybe your community and local installations, like, uh, institutions. I mean, like, if you think, if you attend a religious location or your local club or your local school, right?

There's a lot of ways you can make impact. And then you can think about the high-level economy, policy, and laws. Too often we get stuck thinking about, uh, what impact is my one little thing doing? Like, how much impact is it really having if I turn off my lights or switch to LEDs? And how much impact is it really having?

Is Senator Murkowski actually reading the comments that I submitted to her at the federal level, right? But there's a lot of levels and interactions in between that we can really make a big change, but it takes as many of us as possible talking about this and spreading out that change to our communities and our circles. And if you wanna look at this more, there's also this video that I like of transforming climate anxiety into climate action. So Haley can throw those video links in the chat as well for you to check out.

Now, the other Another objective that the commission set was thinking about policy, and there are so many policies. There are a lot of options that are available. Most of these are not being applied and used in Alaska yet, but it's a starting place for us to think about. So at least a couple utilities have credits for heat pumps and electric vehicles. And then the rest of these are much more common in the lower 48.

We haven't seen them a whole lot yet in Alaska. So things like on-bill financing.

Where you can do upgrades to projects and you pay it back through your utility bill instead of like through a loan at a bank. You can have special rates for heat pumps or electric vehicles. You can shift the cost recovery from customer, from demand chart, from commercial customers to energy charges. So, you know, that you can really get into the weeds on this. I'm not necessarily going to get into the weeds on all of these, but there are a lot of options.

And this is something that REAP also works on, and so you can check out our website if you want to learn more about some of the policy stuff happening in the state. Really though, I want to have this takeaway is that it's your personal energy policies that can really start that impact. We have those 4 levels of change, so starting with yourself, sharing with your families, friends, your communities, local institutions, all of that. Can really start right now and you can make an impact now, which is great.

So if you wanna learn more, maybe I'll turn this over to Haley to talk about this briefly. We're right here wrapping up the end of our session presentation. Thanks so much, Colleen. It's been awesome. Yeah, so if you are looking for other ways to engage, we are on the radio almost every other week-ish at 8:16 in the morning for the KCAW morning interviews.

So next we'll be talking about heat pumps. We have local organizations talking about that and emergency preparedness. We'll have the National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, talk about greenhouse gas emissions inventory and where— what the status is on that in November. And then the grayish color are, yeah, the webinars. Next we'll talk about energy economics and hope that this really sets us up for some of those future conversations.

Yeah, reliability, resilience, and independence in Sitka as a microgrid, as a vulnerable island, and then Sitka's energy options, which is from the first ETIP project, and we'll kind of go over what was learned during that. So then you can look forward to workshops in the winter. Once we have all this foundation laid, we will really be heavy on community input, but always welcome ideas, questions. Check out sitya sikka slash gres online, sitya.com/gres, and You can always email that email as well for any questions, comments, or ways you'd like to be engaged. So if you— yeah, feel free to post any questions in the chat if you have questions for Colleen.

If not, it was really great spending the lunch hour with you both, and we will make sure to have this recorded for anybody else who wants. I'm just reading a comment from Matt.

Yeah, you don't have to feel guilty about turning on lights from an emissions perspective in Sitka, which is a really good feeling for sure.

I also put my email in here if others want to engage with me on education efforts, [email protected]. But if you want to learn about sustainability with Sitka, the web— email there, [email protected].

Really appreciate everyone hanging out today.

Give it another minute, see if folks are typing in questions. Otherwise, it's all—. Oh, Matt. Yes, the first recording hasn't gone up yet. We are just editing the audio.

It didn't come through as, as much as we wanted it to. So Bree's working on that today, actually, and hopefully we'll get it up soon, but it will be on the cityofcitka.com /SCRESS website.

Great, we'll talk to you later.