Equipping Churches to Care for Creation

On a day when any sane person would be taking a flask of iced tea and a good book to the nearest shady bench, I chose to take the green travel option to Wokingham (bike/bus/more bike) and so arrived looking slightly roasted at Oxford Diocese's Creation Care event this afternoon. I counted at least 45 delegates from Berkshire churches, and soon learned that across the diocese 184 churches have registered for EcoChurch, which feels very heartening. 

The key note speech was both sobering and inspiring as Bishop Olivia drew on her personal experiences of living in drought prone parts of Africa and encouraged us all, in Marianne Williamson's words 'to make manifest the glory of God that is within us' to make a difference in the face of the plethora of environmental issues we face. There were inspiring stories from around the diocese - I kicked off, sharing something of St John and St Stephen's campaigning, and plugging Hamish Preston's still very relevant and useful engagingthepowers website. Peter from All Saints Dedworth spoke about their impressive reductions in energy use (I need to get us some data loggers it seems - data is key!). Then Deborah reported on the wonderful opportunities for local engagement at the Lambourn Benefice's four day big green weekend. Finally Fr David of All Saints Ascot traced his church's recent engagement with the EcoChurch programme. 

There was plenty of opportunity for meeting up with others and sharing experiences in between the more formal sessions, the final of which looked at changing cultures to achieve the radical realignment we need. This was led by Hannah Mann (Diocesan Environmental Programme Manager), Rev Hannah Higginson of the host church - All Saints Wokingham - and Bishop Olivia. Suggestions ranged from getting the PCC to agree an environmental policy and using the church's seasons to structure action, to a multi-faceted approach to engage people of different temperaments, gifts and prejudices. Hannah Mann concluded proceedings with an impressive summary of the resources available, starting with the Diocese's EcoHub.

I came away buzzing with encouragement and throughout was much too focussed to take any photos of the day, but luckily I'd stopped off on my way to the station to look in at the Erleigh Road Community Garden at St Luke's - the first time I've popped my head in since before Covid I'm sure - and it is a glorious oasis there. So here are a few photos from that:

Sunshine, wind, and not much rain

Having put into practice many of the 'quick wins' suggested by the energy audit that Oxford diocese have subsidised for us, we've been looking at some of the more challenging tasks to improve our energy efficiency. Finding anyone prepared to offer a sensible quote for the cavity wall insulation is proving nigh on impossible. Quotes for solar panels are not easy to come by either and we're aware that churches are often not the most efficient buildings on which to put these panels because of the short periods of time for which they are in use. Consequently, we're exploring working together with St John's school so that energy produced on our roof can support them. Unfortunately, the only way to do this will be to link in to their electricity supplier which is not as green as ours, but is part of a much more economical scheme used by the schools. In terms of our EcoChurch score, we would lose as many points for switching our energy supplier as we would gain by installing solar panels, but we've decided that in the bigger scheme of things the latter is the greener option and we're going to keep pursuing it.

Back in May some of the congregation joined Greenpeace's Big Plastic count. Greenpeace recently launched their final report from this, revealing that "the UK’s homes produce 96.6 billion pieces of plastic packaging waste a year, with only 12% being recycled in the UK. The rest is exported to other countries to deal with (17%), buried in landfill (25%) or burnt in incinerators (45%)."

Another May highlight was the St John's School Fair at which we set up a stall for the first time (pictured above). The centrepiece was a craft activity that had proved popular at Forest Church - cardboard hearts (from old boxes) with elastic bands (salvaged from post) across them, into which the children could thread flowers we supplied. It proved a great hit at the fair too. We also encouraged people to make a commitment to green their life in some way, and to put a pebble in the jam-jar marked with their good intention so that we could see which was most popular - walking to school and eating less meat got the most votes; closely followed by picking up litter and turning off the tap when brushing your teeth. A number opted for choosing their own green commitment. The next highest votes were for avoiding buying fruit and veg in plastic and buying fairly traded. Trailing these were a handful of commitments to turn off 'vampire' devices, tell politicians what they thought, and learn about Reading hydro. In addition we had a treasure hunt, using postcards with images from The Lost Words - anyone who found all (or nearly all!) of the 'lost birds' could pick a prize (the results of a recent playroom clearout - some of which proved surprisingly strong incentives). Behind the stall we had a collection of information boards including encouragement to act for the planet - unfortunately nature wasn't entirely on our side in this as high winds through the afternoon meant we eventually had to take a couple of these down.

Now that summer is here we have been holding outdoor services again for the first Sunday of the month. Admittedly the threat of rain sent us back indoors in June, but last month we followed this up with a picnic (and had the additional entertainment of Scouts dragon-boat racing on the Thames). Next Sunday there will be another picnic, hopefully a little more peacefully.

Last Sunday I spent a couple of hours (divided either side of the service) attempting to deal with the weeds that have been sprouting up in our courtyard while no one was looking. I'm sorry to say I realised then that we had also made the classic error of everyone assuming someone else was taking responsibility for the watering over this heatwave, with the inevitable disappointing consequence. Luckily most of the plants had been chosen for their resilience, but a watering rota is now top of our next agenda!

Energy Audit

 

We have now received the report back from the Diocesan Energy Audit that was carried out on 12 October. It is hugely useful and positive. It includes 17 practical suggestions for actions with details of the estimated costs, carbon savings and eventual financial savings as well as whether they would require a faculty.

The next step is for the PCC to work out which they want to prioritise and how to take this forward.

Climate Emergency

This blog has been silent since the Lockdown began but there's been quite a bit going on in our electronically connected world. Just days before the order came to stay at home, four of us from St John's were on the team leading worship for the Diocesan Synod ahead of their debate on a motion to declare a climate emergency and commit to becoming carbon neutral by 2035. Along with scripture readings we included Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "God's Grandeur" and a quote widely attributed to Gus Speth (in fact slightly paraphrased from a report by someone who attended his talk at a retreat), and the songs "God of the Poor" and "I the Lord of Sea and Sky". The motion passed and you can read more here.

In May Rosemary spent a long time working on the Climate Stewards' 360 degree carbon calculator. Because much of our heating and electricity is from Ecotricity this significantly reduces our total, although we are aware that cutting our energy use is still needed. Our annual total came in at 16.32 tonnes.

We've also managed to find two churches to partner with us for the diocese's energy audit, as soon as it is practical to carry that out - this should help us find ways of directly cutting our energy use.

Many of us lobbied our MPs by Zoom on 30 June as part of the Climate Coalition's: The Time is Now campaign. 14,000 others across the country joined us.

Very recently several of the congregation have supported Christian Climate Action at the Extinction Rebellion September Uprising with Dr Rowan Williams, Bishop Olivia and others

Christians Together on Climate - the event

Over 60 people turned up on a rainy evening to St Laurence's church for Reading Area Green Christians' event to help empower churches to act on climate change. Highlights included our school striker, Francesca, who inspired everyone with her story and her commitment; University of Reading doctoral researcher Lydia Messling whose workshop on finding the right words to communicate about climate change clearly taught people a lot; and a final act of worship/lament before we took our ideas home to act on. 

We were especially grateful to those who came with information stalls - notably https://readingenergy.coop/ who are still looking for public buildings with high daytime usage to put solar panels on as well as offering opportunities for green investment; and https://readingcan.org.uk/ whose strategic plan for Reading's response to climate change will be out for consultation early next year. 

One of the key reasons for holding the event was to advertise the energy audits available to churches - Oxford diocese are providing financial incentives for CofE churches doing this, but the company will work with any churches - more information here: https://www.oxford.anglican.org/mission-ministry/environment/resources/church-energy-audits/

There's more information/resources on the extra blog page here for Christians Together on Climate, including some of the information sheet I produced to report back on the event at the Diocesan Synod last week. For just five days you can also still catch Paul Coia interviewing me on BBC Radio Berkshire's Faith programme the Sunday before the event!

Acting on Climate Change (and feasting)

For once our family arrived in time to get cycle racks for our bikes this morning (Mark was leading the service so it was necessary to arrive before the first hymn!).

Quite unprompted by the EcoCongregation planners, the notice section this morning turned out to be a climate change marathon - Hamish P has digested a couple of Michael Northcott's books into accessible papers to help us all get at the salient facts easily and he gave an impassioned summary to encourage us all to read them and to start taking meaningful action. Abi announced her planned bus to the climate change march on March 7th. Finally, a Reading University student who is researching electricity use among the over 65s asked for volunteers so that he can set up monitors in their homes - thanks everyone who agreed to get involved with that: 11 volunteers means St John's are providing just over a quarter of the homes he needs.

Liz and Rosemary provided a very delicious lunch, with a small amount of fish and no meat. The puddings were especially fabulous today as Pathfinders had a social yesterday during which they made ginger ice cream, baklava, trifles and cheesecakes. All money raised after the lunch ingredients are paid for this month will go to the LAMB hospital in Bangladesh.

EcoCongregation Meeting

Last Tuesday we had a rather better attended meeting to check up on our pre-Christmas targets. Progress had been slow and clearly more advertising is needed about the recycling but it was good to hear that the school recycling is apparently working well at present. The gathering of info on personal energy use was beginning to bring interesting results but we'd not yet started on the one bit of church energy monitoring that seems practical (the refectory). The school eco-team are working on making sure lights and smart boards are switched off habitually. My task is to shape up the action plan before the next PCC meeting so we can officially get back on the programme with EcoCongregation. We also shared Abi's excellent plan to arrange a bus for Reading people to go to the Time to Act Climate Change demo on 7th March.

Energy Use

Between the service and our wonderful, mostly vegan, church lunch on Sunday we had a quick gathering with our treasurer and church wardens to find out more about how the church's energy supply works now. My hopes that the new building project would have made the situation simpler were dashed, but perhaps the fact that it is so bound up with the school's energy use will prove a blessing in that we have to work together. Meanwhile several of us have committed to monitoring our own energy use at home in preparation for comparing and trying to cut down.
The reason for the picture is that I was summoned to the open area between church and school because a dead bird had been found, possibly having flown into our large clear windows, and was surprised to realise it was a goldcrest.

Ecotricity

Hugh tells me that Ecotricity CEO Dale Vincent was on Broadcasting House this morning and well worth listening to. Their decision not to join in the Big Six's price hike is much appreciated since our church uses their electricity. It also means that their 'frack free' gas is now cheaper than that of the Big Six (they're working on building green gas mills in Britain so hopefully more people will get on board and make this possible).

sMeasure so far

I put up a couple of charts on the EcoCongregation notice board showing energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in recent weeks. These charts are just for the gas in the refectory (where there are various meetings during the week) and for the electricity. There was a very obvious dip in electricity use during the Easter holiday (2-16 April) when the children were not in school, although curiously not in the gas (despite fewer meetings). Gas did dip in the good weather before the holiday. Technically, I think, since we use Ecotricity New Energy Plus the CO2 measurement for the electricity might be discounted although it would still be good to reduce the usage!

Community Buildings Event

The Community Buildings event that I mentioned last month went really well. There were about 22 groups represented, of whom half were churches.

The evening opened with a presentation from a member of the United Sustainable Energy Agency who began by urging us all to REDUCE ENERGY CONSUMPTION FIRST before considering alternative methods of generation. He recommended checking the energy efficiency of boilers at www.sedbuk.com and replacing those over 15 years old. He gave a variety of tips including mentioning that foil behind radiators and energy saving light bulbs will usually be paid back in energy savings within a year. For those considering alternative energy schemes he urged us to ensure that the installer is MCS accredited and explained the various finanical benefits. In the discussion following it emerged that it is important to get advice on ensuring you have the best inverters available (generally European made ones since these companies are more established).

Then Rev Rob Weston of Park URC reported on their scheme for pv panels and a biomass boiler. On the latter subject the ethics of wood burning were discussed and one of those present explained that in Britain we have a problem of unmanaged woods at present so that, on a certain scale, demand for wood for such boilers will lead to better management and therefore better wildlife habitats.

Anne Wheldon of the Society of Friends explained how they'd made spectacular cuts in their emissions by a long list of measures, each of which alone often looked quite small. She also pointed out that it is a much cheaper way of cutting emissions than the initial outlay of microgeneration. She explained that the first step is to start reading meters at least once a month and make an audit, looking for opportunities that will tie in with routine maintenance, such as the thermal reflective blinds when their old blinds needed replacing.

Gabriel Berry briefly introduced Reading Energy Pioneers who are currently organising a bulk buy of pv panels to enable homeowners to buy them more cheaply.

Jane Wallis of LoCUS (Low Carbon Understanding for SMEs) explained how they could help negotiations between landlord and tenant businesses to arrange for energy saving measures to be installed in their buildings.

The event was primarily organised by RITE with help from GREN volunteers and those present have received copies of the slides presented so if anyone would like these forwarded to them, just let me know.

How to use your community building to generate clean energy

An information evening for voluntary, faith and community organisations:

This event is for you if your community, faith or voluntary organisation owns or rents a building.
On the night there will be:

* Impartial advice from an Energy Savings Trust expert plus local project study from Park United Reform Church

* How to save money making your building more energy efficient; a case study from Friends Meeting House

* Don’t own your building? Expert advice on how to convince your landlord to help

Please book a place by emailing chair@gren.org.uk or call 07828 498 315

Time/venue:
Tue 23 November 2010 7:00 PM - 8:30 PMFriends Meeting House, 2 Church Street, Reading, RG1 2SB

How to use your community building to generate clean energy

Park URC are now well on the way to installing pv panels and a biomass boiler, having secured most of the funding needed. They hope to be installing the panels before the end of the year and the boiler next May. So, a speaker from there will be among those encouraging users of other community buildings in Reading to take advantage of the current very generous Feed in Tariff rate to help them produce green energy for themselves and the grid:

How to use your community building to generate clean energy and get paid for it

An information evening for voluntary, faith and community organisations:

This event is for you if your community, faith or voluntary organisation owns or rents a building.
On the night there will be:

* Impartial advice from an Energy Savings Trust expert plus local project study from Park United Reform Church

* How to save money making your building more energy efficient; a case study from Friends Meeting House

* Don’t own your building? Expert advice on how to convince your landlord to help

Please book a place by emailing chair@gren.org.uk or call 07828 498 315

Time/venue:
Tue 23 November 2010 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Friends Meeting House, 2 Church Street, Reading, RG1 2SB

Park URC - on the way to sustainable energy

Below is an e-mail I've just received from the Minister at Park URC: exciting news that means Reading should have a church with PV panels on it very soon. They'll still need another £15,000 so if anyone would like to contribute do get in touch with the Minister, Rev Robert Weston. Hopefully this will be a very visual reminder to people at this busy spot on the outskirts of Reading of the importance of trying to limit climate change:

I’m delighted to let you all know that we have been given a ‘conditional offer’ of a grant of £39088 from the Community Sustainable Energy Programme – Capital Grants Scheme, towards the cost of PV solar panels to go on the church roof and a wood pellet boiler to provide heat to the church and church halls.

This is fantastic news for us and reflects the huge level of support given by members of the church and the local community. We will now be seeking to secure the remainder of the funding required for these two important eco-projects.

Please join us in giving thanks and praise to God for this wonderful news!

Wind Power

I've had a more detailed reply back from Ecotricity about their electricity generation. Unfortunately my efforts to copy across extracts therefrom have failed due to text incompatibilities it seems (or my ineptitude). Apparently a wind turbine is likely to be saving 35,000 tonnes of CO2 in its lifetime. It is expected to save between 40 and 70 times as much fossil fuel as it took to construct. If anyone reading this wants more detail I'm happy to forward them the e-mail.

Carbon footprint 2

Last night I reported back to the PCC on the Eco-congregation assessment. It emerged that one of the other home groups had already discussed measuring their footprints and buying a communal OWL (at home we've just borrowed one of these devices for measuring electricity use and it is a real eye-opener - for me the biggest surprise has been how much difference a single notch up on a hotplate control will make. I've always wondered whether boiling a kettle was just faster or really more efficient than boiling water on the hob prior to cooking veg and now I know the kettle is more efficient).

Measuring our carbon footprint is going to be difficult since we pay a set percentage of the gas bill for the whole school/church plant (as well as a small extra bill for the refectory over which we have more control). This however is a good incentive to work more closely with the school, and probably the council too since they have the basic controls for the heating.

I've been in touch with Ecotricity this morning who were very helpful in discussing the 'carbon footprint' question. Unsurprisingly they don't have specific figures to calculate the amount of carbon input that should be taken into account in individual bills (I wonder if a meaningful statistic could even be reached on that?), but they have promised to e-mail me details about the construction of their wind turbines which currently account for 53.6% of the power they supply.
Please see the comments on the previous 'carbon footprint' post for their replies.

Last Sunday (we were away) after the service the congregation went to Mark's workshop for a picnic in the gorgeous sunshine and to see the progress on the new sacramental furniture. Apparently this project will be appearing in a future edition of Furniture and Cabinet Maker.

The Carbon Footprint

Well we've had another report back from the Eco-congregation assessors. The commendations are for both the garden and for the large number of people involved in the process. The recommendation is that we should measure our carbon footprint and aim to reduce it. At Forbury Fever I picked up a personal carbon footprint calculator and then remembered why I'd never set very much store by them - I can easily cut my footprint in half depending on which calculator I'm using! The Church of England's calculator is just about direct power consumption which is obviously less subject to different interpretations so probably where we'll start.

I did e-mail Ecotricity to ask how we should calculate emissions from them and the initial e-mail said there are no emissions. I'd love to calculate it this way, but surely this can't quite be true since the windmills etc require building: I'll be on the phone to them soon. I find myself wondering how many organisations claim to be 'carbon neutral' without taking into account the original inputs?

I'd be very grateful for any suggestions anyone has on effective ways to calculate a church's carbon footprint.

Spreading the word: Forbury Fever and Woodford Park

On Saturday 6 June Reading Borough Council held their annual environment festival in Forbury Gardens: Forbury Fever. As part of the newly formed Reading Christian Ecology Link I was there on a stall in the drizzling rain - more of a cold than a fever, my husband remarked.

We were trying to get more origami arks and petition signatures for Operation Noah and promoting the Ecclesiastical Electricity plan to get solar panels on a church roof in Reading. On display panels at the back there was various information, including advertising the forthcoming showing of Age of Stupid at the Town Hall on 30th June. We also had displays on Caversham Heights Methodist, Tilehurst Methodist and St John and St Stephen's Eco-congregations.

There seemed to be fewer things going on in the gardens than previous years and the rain certainly kept the visitors away. Nonetheless our puppet show which some girls from Reading Community Church put on every fifteen minutes was very popular, telling the story of Noah's Ark. We did get a few colourful origami arks to float in our paddling pool (before rain sank them) as well as some signatures and good conversations.

The following day my family cycled in brilliant sunshine to the Woodley Churches Together open air service marking the start of Woodley carnival in Woodford park. My husband had been asked to preach. He focussed on the Trinity Sunday reading of Jesus's baptism but wove in a message for Environment Sunday (both 7 June): lots of Biblical stories of God leading God's people into new lives through breaking waters and the opportunity for that now, including the new lives we need to lead in the face of the current climate crisis (sorry to paraphrase so brutally). So I had the posters of our Eco-congregation from the previous day up on display again, plus inviting more petition signing and lots of general info on greener lifestyles. Unfortunately the very moment the service ended, the rain began, luckily only briefly but enough to send some running for cover. I did have some good conversations with members of Woodley churches thinking of trying to follow the eco-congregation route. As so often, there was much bemoaning the seeming apathy among most of their congregation for such matters.

Eco-conversations

I was not at St John's this Sunday but have had some good green church conversations lately. Last Thursday morning I was talking with Debbie from New Hope church in Reading. She was telling me about all their recycling and how their cleaner is enthusiastic about Ecover toilet cleaner, in part because it doesn't make her feel ill to use it (not surprising I suppose when conventional toilet cleaners require 400 times more water to dilute them into a solution that's deemed safe to return them to rivers). They buy in bulk from the ethical superstore and then pump it out into their bottles. Disappointingly this works out at about the same price as buying Ecover in bottles from Tescos, although it's clearly greener.
Then I had lunch with eco-reps from two other churches. Heather in Pangbourne had just organised a talk on climate change attended by 70 people from the village and told us of schemes for the community to compost veg waste from local shops.
Finally on Sunday we were at St George's in Wash Common, Newbury (pictured above), where plans are in hand to install geothermal heating (apparently it has to be the more expensive straight into the ground type as they do not have sufficient land to do the criss cross variety - luckily there are no vaults!) and to produce the power needed to pump this heat with photo-voltaic cells. Carbon-neutral status is surely on the way.

Ecotricity and cleaning

Jeremy just forwarded this link affirming that Ecotricity is the right electricity company for us to be with, which is good news.

I've realised, as more un-green household stuff accumulates in our parish centre, that I've been delaying too long on sorting out cleaning materials etc - Reading has a fabulous True Food Co-op that sells green cleaning materials at reasonable prices, and I've been trying to work out a system that involves them so that we're as green and as cheap as possible, but not reliant on me being the go between since I've given up the car and it wouldn't be sustainable when I leave the church (a system that depends on anyone in this way would not be sustainable). I've finally realised this just isn't going to happen at the moment, so it looks like we're going to use the Christian Aid/Natural Collection scheme I mentioned a few months back. 10% of the money goes to Christian Aid so I'll feel a bit less bad about the church paying extra for cleaning stuff. Plus since it can all be ordered on-line that makes our parish administrator's job much easier than keep liaising with me.