Chair: Daniel Moyer
Mission Statement: To educate and encourage the St. Alban’s Parish, both corporately and individually, to take action to mitigate the damage we continue to do against the Lord’s creation.
Goals:
- To take action resulting in the St. Alban’s facilities having a zero carbon footprint by 2030 in accord with The Episcopal Diocese of Northern California 2022 Resolution R1-2022.
- To encourage each member of the St. Alban’s congregation to study, pray, and work to discern how the Spirit is leading them to address climate change in their households and daily lives.
Saint Alban’s Creation Care Ministry was approved in late 2018 by vote of the Vestry as a result of an outreach survey on our parishioners showing that creation care was a top priority. Our first meeting was February 5th 2019. We meet on the second Tuesday of the month at 6:30pm PST via Zoom. One of our first actions was to install a 7.3kW photovoltaic array on the south roof of the parish that was made possible by a bequest. Using the gift in this way, St. Albans realizes monetary savings on its energy utility bills plus, reduces our carbon footprint, and makes us friendlier to the environment.
Next we began an effort to reduce our electrical consumption through energy efficiency and replacing gas appliances thus ridding ourselves of costly natural gas. Here is a summary of our efforts:
- Replacing our old kitchen refrigerator with a new Energy Star model.
- Changed out our commercial gas range with a commercial electrical range.
- Removed our gas water heater for an electrical water heater.
- LED lighting upgrade for the entire parish building.
- Xeriscaping to reduce our water usage for landscaping.
- Installing a Wifi Mesh Network to control smart devices, like thermostats, throughout the parish building.
- Removing gas furnaces and replacing them with Heat Pumps.
- Duct sealing of both supply and return air ducts.
- Update our electric service from 200 amps to 400 amps to allow future electrical loads, like EV charging stations.
Many of the above projects were paid for by grants from our local community choice energy authority and donations.
In addition to physical upgrades to the parish we have also hosted a number of workshops for the congregation, between services, that discuss topics like: driving EV's/Hybrids, eating vegetarian, and ways to reduce carbon footprint at home.
If you are interested in joining the Saint Albans Creation Care group please email Daniel Moyer at danielmoyer24@gmail.com.
