An Old-Fashioned Barn Raising in Holland

Don Trizenberg, a Holland retiree, has been spending many of his balmy summer evenings drinking lemonade in people’s backyards. He’s not just a friendly neighbor; he’s the vice chairman of the Holland Sustainability Commission, and he’s trying to discuss the city’s ambitious Community Energy Plan with as much of the community as possible.
 
The CEP, generated at the request of the city council with significant input from international consultants Garforth & Associates, was finalized and presented in September 2011, though that was by no means the end of the story. The document, a thick stack of graphs, tables, projections and recommendations, has sparked an important conversation about the future of Holland’s energy use.
 
Mayor Kurt Dykstra says the conversation now is not only about the ways a Midwest college town could implement some of the unique recommendations in the CEP, but also about looking at both energy supply and demand going forward.
 
“For so long, so much sustainability discussion has focused on the generation question -- wind vs. coal, for example -- but this is more a question of how we can make the best use of the energy we have,” says Dykstra. One possibility is district heating, a system whereby the byproducts of heat are channeled into a series of hot water pipes that can heat buildings. It’s similar to the snowmelt system already in use throughout downtown Holland, and Dykstra notes that the “European idea” focuses on “trying to extract as much use as possible out of any energy that we create.”
 
Dykstra says the CEP also aims to increase energy efficiency in Holland’s historic buildings, including the 8^th Street business district, Hope College and the residential historic home district. “My hunch is that for many of those houses, the insulation isn’t great, the efficiency of the windows isn’t great. Those are two major energy leak sources, and there are ways to improve efficiency without losing character.” The plan calls for retrofitting of historic homes, neighborhood by neighborhood, to the tune of $25,000 per house, a number that Don Triezenberg gets a lot of questions about while he drinks his lemonade.
 
Triezenberg, also the coordinator of the more-informal Community Energy Advisory Group (CEAG), has answers -- and lots of information to share.
 
“In the first place, homeowners need to recognize that between your home and your car and other indirect costs, you’re paying $14,000 a year directly or indirectly for energy. Secondly, all of the prognoses for the future are that the demand for energy is going to double in your children’s lifetime and again in your grandchildren’s lifetime. When the price of gas goes up, you think about buying a smaller car or riding the bus; you need to have similar options for when your energy bills go up.” Triezenberg cites evidence that completing proposed retrofits will cut energy bills in half, but his endorsement of the plan goes well beyond creating a positive cash flow for homeowners, especially when he talks to business and nonprofit leaders in town.
 
“We ask them to think about the community good. It’s the same reason we invest in fire stations and pave roads. When you make a major investment in energy retrofits in a city, you reduce the demand for energy from the BPW, you raise the value of all the homes in the neighborhood and the area becomes more stable, you provide energy security for families, and you support the business owners in a town where, if energy costs double, employees will want a raise at work.”
 
Triezenberg says response from community leaders has been positive. “They say, ‘Everyone calls us to meetings to talk about stability, low-income housing; what you’re talking about would really improve people’s lives.’ The thing low-income people fear the most is having their heat shut off because they can’t pay their bills.”
 
Hope College has also been involved in the CEP community conversations from the start and continues to be interested in ways the college, a significant downtown presence, can partner with the city. Greg Maybury, physical plant director at Hope, says the college, which has its own sustainability initiative, “is a nice test bed for the district heating process” since many of the core campus buildings already use a component of district heating using its own on-campus boiler system.
 
“We want to be part of the solution because we realize energy costs will go up, so we want to be as cost efficient as possible, and partnering with the city may be one way to do that,” says Maybury.
 
Mayor Dykstra says the supportive tone coming from the college and business leaders is indicative of community response in general. “There’s general support for the idea, though the process that we’re undertaking is pretty unique in North America. A few cities have undergone similar plans, but this is uncharted territory, so we’re moving cautiously and trying to figure out what’s going to be the best solution.” Dykstra says Holland may be well suited to mapping this new territory, though, noting that “we do have a bit of an advantage in Holland given that some of these concepts have long been part of our ethos.”
 
WMEAC Policy and Community Activism Director Nick Occhipinti agrees, giving credit to the city for its “pretty darn positive, innovative” handing of this complicated issue. “In addition to the CEP, which was a big step, they did the socially responsible benefit cost analysis. They invited community leaders, the BPW, government and citizens to the table to participate in that conversation, and the fact that they did that in such a transparent and open way is an example of how things are progressing in Holland.”
 
Occhipinti, whose Grand Rapids-based non-profit organization has coordinated with the CEAG to support a robust community dialog by facilitating publications, neighborhood meetings and the website www.yourcityyourdecision.com, says the community conversation around implementing the CEP has been “understandably thoughtful and cautious,” but that the 40-year plan is “a huge opportunity for Holland to be on the forefront of energy innovation, to be a regional leader and to develop an expertise that is the envy of municipalities around the nation.”
 
In concert with the CEAG, WMEAC uses community conversations with Holland constituents to remind residents that energy efficiency is “the cheapest, cleanest and most quickly deployed source of new energy available to Michiganders.” And Don Triezenberg makes it clear that incentive plans being proposed to help historic district homeowners achieve these new levels of efficiency will need to be adopted by the majority of the residents to make a big difference. The energy plan calls for setting money aside to pay for half the expense by the city and the other half by the homeowner -- but these incentives won’t be offered to individuals, only to neighborhoods. The plan’s implementation, in other words, depends upon the whole community being on board.
 
“The plan proposes offering incentives to a neighborhood: one block with 20 houses hires a contractor, a hundred houses go together to purchase energy-efficient refrigerators. We don’t just want the small percentage of people who were already interested in doing this. We want an enticing incentive package that penetrates deeply and achieves economy of scale,” says Triezenberg.  “And I think people do sense that it will be much better to do this with their neighbors than to find their way through it alone. This will be like an old-fashioned barn raising.” They’re probably going to need more lemonade.
 
 Stephanie Doublestein writes and blogs about food, business, and parenting, among other things. She lives in East Grand Rapids with her husband and their two young daughters.


PHOTOS:


Photography by ADAM BIRD