Southside Pride

Andrew Lambert is at the next door on his route through the Little Earth housing complex, shuffling from foot to foot trying to stay warm in the 20-degree weather, with a box of compact fluorescent light bulbs under his arm. He’s been before, at an American Indian feast a couple months back, and a little girl calls out, “Hey, it’s the light bulb guy!” It is a nickname he is starting to hear a lot in the Phillips Neighborhood in South Minneapolis. “That’s great,” he says, grinning, “as long as it’s the energy efficient light bulb guy.”

Lambert is the Program Coordinator for the newly-formed Phillips Community Energy Cooperative (PCEC). A new initiative of the Green Institute, the co-op is taking the first steps towards a vision that could revolutionize the way energy is conserved and distributed in urban areas. And it is a vision that hopes to put a few extra dollars and cents into the pockets of the people each month, while reducing the demand for energy at the same time.

The executive director of the Green Institute, Michael Krause, says, “I can more easily imagine energy independence and a green energy future at the neighborhood level—and how we get there with the co-op—then I can imagine the change on a global level.”

Once upon a time, the residents of the much-maligned Phillips Neighborhood fought against the siting of a solid waste transfer station in the midst of their community. The residents won, and they didn’t stop there. In 1993 neighborhood uber-activist Annie Young and others formed the Green Institute. Program operations started in 1995 with the ReUse Center, a retail store providing salvaged building materials. In 1997 the Green Institute created DeConstruction Services, which provides crews to salvage out structures to reduce the amount of debris going into landfills. In 1998, on the very ground where the garbage transfer station was going to stand, the 64,000 square foot Phillips Eco-Enterprise Center was built. Located a block north of Lake street near Hiawatha, the award-winning building is one of the most energy-efficient and environmentally sound facilities of its kind in the country. It houses the Green Institute and dozens of other tenants working in environmental and community development fields. Among the center’s original objectives was the creation of high-quality, living-wage jobs for local residents. Another success: the building currently houses 124 employees.

Now the Green Institute is organizing the Phillips Community Energy Cooperative. Hennepin County Commissioner and co-op chairman Peter McLaughlin says, “The initial goals are clear: giving people and businesses in Phillips access to the latest in energy conservation technology, and the means to invest in it through the cooperative—as well as exploring the generation of green electricity and heat from waste materials at the old ‘Minneapolis Destructor.’” (You may know it as the South Side Transfer Station located north of the cemetery on Lake Street.)
“The co-op will democratize critical energy decisions,” says Krause, “and give more people greater control over their energy futures.”

Funds were approved in November 2002 through Xcel Energy’s Conservation Improvement Program. This provides the cooperative $250,000 over two years to develop the conservation programs and services within the Phillips community and $150,000 to conduct a full-scale feasibility study to see if converting the South Side Transfer Station into a bio-mass fuel facility is environmentally and economically sound. (A biomass plant produces electricity and also captures and uses the heat from that process.)

“The conservation awareness activity within the Phillips community presents Xcel Energy with another opportunity to tell our electric customers about our existing conservation programs which are designed to save them energy without sacrificing comfort,” says Bob Zaragoza, Xcel’s product portfolio manager.

Getting the conservation programs out into Phillips will not be easy. “We’ll need to break down the barriers that have historically prohibited Xcel Energy from penetrating this market,” says Lambert. “There is poverty, great ethnic diversity, the general level of understanding of energy conservation programs is low, and also there is the transient nature of the neighborhood, with between 70 to 80 percent renters.”

The Energy Information Administration has sobering statistics about low-income energy usage. Compared to the national average, low-income households are far more likely to own old, inefficient room air conditioners (152 percent more likely), refrigerators (84 percent more likely), and main heating equipment (21 percent more likely). Due to these and other factors, low-income households are harder hit when energy prices jump.

But buying the most energy-efficient goods also costs the most money up front. For example, a package of two compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) can cost around $10. Sure each one lasts five years—or the equivalent of eight regular bulbs—and can save you over $40 in energy costs over the course of its lifetime. When you are strapped for cash, spending $10 on light bulbs can be a bitter pill to swallow. And when the major appliances need replacing, the difference between the Environmental Protection Agency’s EnergyStar-rated machines versus the less efficient models can amount to hundreds of dollars. “The co-op strongly believes that energy conservation should be affordable to everyone and not a luxury,” Lambert states.

The PCEC board is a Who’s Who list of politicians, community members, environmental activists...And several folks who embody all those classifications and more. Annie Young, now Minneapolis Park & Recreation Commissioner, says, “The new energy cooperative, I hope, will not only provide energy efficiency products and services to households and businesses in the Phillips neighborhood. I believe the future is coming for small, decentralized energy distribution systems and we are launching an organization that is on the cutting edge of that thinking. This co-op will be replicated in many places if we can make it work.”

Commissioner McLaughlin adds, “As the Information Age continues, access by individuals and businesses of all sizes to reliable and affordable energy will become even more important. Smaller businesses and renters and families with modest incomes will be increasingly vulnerable to energy crises. And everyone is threatened by the environmental effects of traditional means of producing energy. The co-op structure has great potential to address these issues in ways that will directly benefit the people and businesses of Phillips.”

The first project out of the gate: light bulbs. “Xcel has compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) they want to get out to affordable housing,” Andrew explains. “So they turn to us and say, ‘ We’ve got 2,500 CFLs for the cooperative to give out.’ It is kind of like a test, to see how effective our community organizing is.”

As of January 21, 2003, PCEC has given away 1,094 CFLs to 344 households in affordable housing communities, all within the last two months. Based on figures provided by Philips Lighting and several energy conservation web sites, the savings over five years will amount to $67 and 402 kWh per light bulb, with a grand total of $73,298 in electric costs and 439,788 kWhs in electricity savings. (Power is energy transfer per unit of time. Electrical power is usually measured in watts (W), kilowatts (kW), and megawatts (MW). Energy has to be measured during a certain period of time, e.g. an hour, a month, a year. Power, on the other hand, can be measured at any point in time.)

Furthermore, replacing an incandescent bulb with a CFL prevents carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere. The 1,094 CFLs distributed so far will prevent an average of 1,641,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and 13,128 lbs. of sulfur dioxide from polluting Phillips in the next five years.

The PCEC board is currently brainstorming about what constitutes “membership” in the co-op and which services would best meet the needs of the community. “Then we’ll put together a canvassing team that will go door-to-door and tell the neighborhood about the co-op and how to become a member,” Lambert explains. “We’ll try to get businesses and all the landlords signed up as well. We’re looking into energy audits for homes and businesses, energy education workshops, buying energy-efficient products in bulk, and other programs.”

When asked what his pie-in-the-sky vision of a successful Phillips Community Energy Cooperative is, he smiles. “If it all works out, the biomass plant could be up and running by 2005. We’ll sell district heating capacity to Phillips businesses; that will be a sustainable revenue source. Using that revenue source, we will be able to purchase energy-efficient products and sell them at reduced rates to our members utilizing the collective buying power of a co-op. We’ll fund an educational component. We’d have an ongoing series of workshops that homeowners, renters, landlords, businesses and children could attend to learn about conservation issues. The ultimate goal is to save energy and reduce demand for energy, especially during peak-demand days.”

And so Lambert hits the streets like some energy-efficient Johnny Appleseed, meeting people face to face with boxes of light bulbs in tow. And the Phillips community sees the birth of a co-op with great potential.

“We are challenged by all the ‘stigmas’ placed on Phillips by the outside world,” concludes Annie Young. “But for those of us who have lived for many years here in Phillips, we know our strength often rises above the adversity and obstacles placed before our residents. Our diversity is a strength and sets an analogy for the co-op: our energy resources need to be diverse, too and certainly not dependent on the fossil fuels, nuclear or coal.

“Challenges certainly lie ahead and lots of planning to make this work needs to happen. It will be a slow process at first, but one must believe that the rewards will be many in the future if we can make it work.”

For more information about the Phillips Community Energy Cooperative and other Green Institute programs, go to www.greeninstitute.org or contact Andrew Lambert at 612-278-7118 and by e-mail at alambert@greeninstitute.org