Feb 4th
Climate Protection on the Home Front tells the story of how our Finger Lakes Climate Fund works from the point of view of some of our carbon offsetters, grant awardees, and our partners at Snug Planet. Many thanks to Eric Banford for the music, and Fred Bertram, Lucienne Cruvallier, and David Way for the photos. Thanks to Bill Hecht for the drone video, and to David Way for making the video and editing all the pieces together. Check out our other Climate Fund videos on our YouTube channel!
Feb 16th
Adrienne Cook is well on her way to a zero carbon home. She owns a rare 1950 Sears Roebuck “kit house” in the Town of Ithaca. Despite the small size of the 2-bedroom house, the fuel oil boiler was costing close to $3000/yr to heat the home.
Snug Planet set her up with highly efficient air source heat pumps to both heat and cool the home, and provide hot water. ETM Solar will come in the spring to put 7.2 kw of solar panels on her roof to power the home. We gave our 28th Climate Fund grant of $2,213 for her offset of 89 tons of CO2 from these projects.
Let’s make sure everyone gets a chance to participate in the clean energy transition! Visit FingerLakesClimateFund.org to day and offset your carbon emissions and help more folks like Adrienne shrink their carbon footprint.
Watch Adrienne tell her story here.
Jan 23rd
Sustainable Tompkins is pleased to co-host a visit to Ithaca by Peter Donovan of the Soil Carbon Coalition from Thursday, February 6 to Sunday, February 9. Peter is part of a movement to use systems thinking to help us “manage wholes” and find the right scale of intervention to solve problems.
We’ve all been involved in the many tasks of making our community more sustainable and resilient in the face of escalating change. Everything we are all doing in green building, energy efficiency, resource conservation, and renewables is an essential part of taking responsibility for our shared future.
But we don’t often talk about the dirt under our feet, and affirm its primary role in helping to regulate atmospheric carbon and slow climate disruption. Yet, a mass effort to move carbon from the air and into the soil is needed to decelerate the rate of planetary warming. If we did this, we’d also rapidly address a number of linked problems as illustrated in our elephant friend.
We’ve been interested in adding soil carbon storage to our portfolio of climate protection projects for the Finger Lakes Climate Fund, and we’re looking forward to a wider conversation with farmers, land managers, developers, policymakers, and citizens interested in doing all we can to protect our climate.
We hope you will join us for the public lecture on February 6 up at Ithaca College, or the all-day workshop on February 8 (see details below).
To get a sense of how fundamental the carbon cycle is to climate change, please watch this video (in two segments) by Peter. Then mark your calendar for February 6!
With thanks to our partners Snug Planet, Sustainability at Ithaca College, and the Good Life Farm! Read the rest of this entry »
Sep 26th
Residents of the Town of Newfield have a new source of support for making energy improvements to their homes. Thanks to the impressive generosity of a local donor, Sustainable Tompkins has a pool of funding reserved just for the people of Newfield to help them reduce their fossil fuel consumption.The funding is available as two new grant awards from our Finger Lakes Climate Fund. These grants of up to $2,500 help modest-income households commit to a work scope of energy improvements to their home. Newfield households with less than the county’s median income will qualify for the grant awards, but application must be done through certified contractors for the Home Performance Program of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Participating local firms include Energy Tec, Snug Planet, and Tompkins Community Action. Read the rest of this entry »
How many planets would it take to maintain your lifestyle, if everyone lived the way you do? Find out with this Ecological Footprint calculator.
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