This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 12, 2012 - When she came to St. Louis in 2009 with her husband Todd, so that he could take over as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Kirkwood, Sabine McDowell wanted to give the congregation’s home on E. Argonne something that many houses of worship may never have -- an energy audit.
Such audits can be complicated, but it turned out that Grace's rating was actually remarkably simple to understand.
“Bad,” she said with a rueful laugh. “Like every congregation that’s not in a new building.”
The church’s story was among those on display Tuesday night at a special U.S. Green Building Council event at Grace where three presenters, including McDowell, spoke about the connections between faith and sustainable living.
“It’s something that’s always been pretty prevalent because faith-based beliefs in general have a strong connection to the environment,” said Hope Gribble, membership and education coordinator for the council's Missouri Gateway Chapter. “We are looking to reach out to the broader community beyond just the building industry and we thought this would be a great topic.”
Dozens attended the event, which took place in Grace’s cavernous wood and stone sanctuary where Bible verses and carbon footprint statistics were quoted with equal passion.
Sister Paulette Zimmerman of the School Sisters of Notre Dame focused on the philosophical aspects of the issue, saying in an interview before her talk that sustainability touched on a spiritual imperative.
“If one believes, as I do, that God, the Divine, the Ultimate Mystery, is the source of this whole evolving story -- all of it is sacred,” she said.
Zimmerman said her religious order’s facility near Jefferson Barracks had taken a number of steps to practice sustainability, from not buying bottled water to using cloth napkins to washing clothes in cold water. Part of the institution’s property was even left unmowed as a refuge for wildlife.
She said she was part of a collection of women from area Roman Catholic institutions who come together periodically to discuss sustainability.
Gail Wechsler, director of domestic issues and social justice with the Jewish Community Relations Council, said her agency had put together the Jewish Environmental Initiative, which helped to encourage environmental stewardship among houses of worship and community organizations.
In an interview preceding her talk, she noted that much of the work was done by a group of teens who use a “Greening Your Synagogue” presentation, which has encouraged everything from paper recycling to ditching Styrofoam cups.
“We’ve been told that the teen presentations are really helpful because they are very concrete,” she said. “If you want to increase your recycling, here’s the number of this agency. Here’s the number of that company. It allows congregations to really take action rather than just have an abstract idea of why they should do something differently.”
The longest presentation came from McDowell, founder of www.ourgreenchoices.com, a pro-sustainability website. She talked about the congregation’s own efforts to go green, spurred by both the audit and a visit to Interfaith Power and Light, a unique web destination where congregations can use tools to understand their carbon footprint better.
The results were dramatic. The site’s “statement of energy performance” for Grace rated it a lowly 29 on a scale of 1 to 100.
The solution was not cheap. Grace had to run a more than half-million-dollar capital campaign to fund the effort. But McDowell said it became an easier pill to swallow when the congregation examined a potential for $800,000 in costs over the ensuing decade if green solutions were not implemented. Thousands of dollars would be saved on lighting alone and the HVAC system was well beyond its expected life.
“We were paying an amazing amount of money on maintenance and repairs without getting anywhere,” she told the Beacon.
The eventual improvements included all new heating and cooling systems along with energy efficient windows and new lighting. The same measuring scale at Interfaith Power and Light now puts the facility’s score at a 69.
McDowell told the assemblage that if America’s 370,000 houses of worship cut energy use by just one-tenth, they would save more than $300 million that could be spent on their religious missions. That energy reduction would prevent more than 1.3 million tons of greenhouse gas, roughly the emissions of nearly a quarter million cars.
In the interview, she said energy audits are key to understanding where a congregation stands.
“To me, an audit is like a roadmap,” she said. “Without a roadmap, you don’t know where you are going. If you don’t measure it, you don’t know how much you are saving.”
But in a sense, perhaps one thing that may be saved is the soul of the congregation itself.
“We believe as people of faith that God’s creation was created because he loved it and if we are not doing what God had in mind,” she said. “We are not loving it back.”