Patrick that I was thinking of buying a
new car and I told them about some of
the features that I was considering like
leather seats premium sound system and
navigation and he encouraged me to get
these features he said something about
how they would serve me well in my
impending midlife crisis so later in the
same conversation I told Patrick that I
was that one of the cars I was thinking
of it was an electric vehicle but this
time he asked me what would be the
payback for the extra cost of electric
over gasoline in other words how long
until the savings in gas equaled the
extra cost of the electric car and that
got me thinking well I you know I
thought why does why do we apply
financial metrics to some edge to some
purchases but not others like why didn’t
he ask me about the payback for the
leather seats and it seems to me that
this often happens with purchases that
have some environmental impact and
that’s when I realized that I have a
problem with payback
you see payback measures the benefit for
the purchaser only but what about the
rest of us like in the case of an
electric vehicle there are benefits like
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and
improved air quality and they benefit
everybody not just the purchaser so that
got me thinking this is kind of like a
pay forward because these are benefits
that apply to all of us long into the
future
now both pay back and pay forward are
important pay back provides the
financial justification for the purchase
but pay forward takes into account the
benefits for all of us into the future
and I think there’s lots of examples of
purchases
that provide both the financial payback
and environmental pay forward and I’d
like to tell you about three projects
that I’ve done over the past 15 years
that have turned out to be both
financially and environmentally
rewarding and I kind of think of these
projects like bricks you know on their
own they don’t actually accomplish much
but as you’ll see when put together they
actually have turned into building
something pretty substantial so the
first project was solar pool heating
solar pool heater that was starting to
fail so I took that opportunity to
investigate solar pool heating and if
you’re not familiar with it the way
solar pool heating it through the
electric heater it pumps it up to the
roof and there’s tubes that run that the
water runs through the Sun you know
absorbs the energy from the Sun and
heats up the water it’s a great system
and on a sunny day the pool can rise in
temperature by up to 10 degrees Celsius
and it’s all free now the problem with
solar pool heating solar but the
operating cost for solar pool heated
per year so from a payback standpoint
that was six point two years and from a
pay forward the energy savings were
about four thousand kilowatt hours per
year and the that means that the
associated greenhouse gas emissions that
were saved were about 1600 kilograms per
year so fast forward a couple years and
in 2005 we decided to add on to our
house and in doing so we were going to
exceed the capacity of our heating and
cooling system so this gave me an
opportunity to investigate alternatives
and I looked into geothermal geothermal
or ground source if you’re not familiar
with it the way it works is
the the temperature of the ground about
two meters below the surface is a
constant 12 degrees Celsius and the
great thing about 12 degrees Celsius is
that on a hot summer day 12 degrees
feels pretty cool and on a cold winter
day 12 degrees feels pretty warm so what
they do is they dig a trench they lay
down tube and they run fluid through it
and it takes advantage of that
difference in temperature to heat and
cool the house it’s a very very
efficient system the problem is it’s
expensive for the upfront investment and
in this case the extra cost was $13,000
but the operating cost is very low so it
saves me $1,700 a year in energy and so
the payback turns out to be seven point
seven years and from a pay forward
standpoint the energy savings were 11
just a little over 11,000 kilowatt hours
that’s about a quarter of my energy bill
was reduced just by putting in
geothermal and the Associated greenhouse
gas reductions were over 4,600 kilograms
that’s the equivalent of taking one car
off the road so we were pretty happy
with that and fast forward a few years
more and in 2014 I actually did buy that
electric vehicle and I did get the
leather seats and all the other stuff
that Patrick suggested and in 2015 the
Ontario government had the micro Fit
program and that was a program where
they would commit to a long term 20-year
contract to buy power that anybody
produced using a solar installation so
we went ahead and we put in a 10
kilowatt rooftop solar panels and the
whole installation the cost for that was
$29,000 now that system generates 4,500
dollars per year so the payback is six
point four years the pay forward because
it generates 11,500 kilowatts a year of
energy and it the associated reductions
for greenhouse gases were four
thousand six hundred kilograms that’s
like taking another vehicle off the road
so in summary and there’s a lot of
numbers on this chart but really just if
you think of the bottom line these three
projects combined result in taking
eleven thousand kilograms a year of
greenhouse gases were that we’re not
producing and the total payback for all
three of those projects is six point
seven years now six point seven is not a
great payback it’s okay but it’s not
great but the point is we didn’t make
our decision based solely on the payback
we took into account those other
benefits like the environmental
improvements and all of those things
that pay forward and we balanced the two
of those and decided that the
combination was was the right thing to
do and made us want to proceed so here’s
a here’s a graph of our energy
consumption over the last 15 years Nick
said I was an engineer so I like to
measure things so you get the sense of
all this
so I’ve superimposed some of the key
milestones along the way and you’ll see
that starting from the left-hand side
you know in 2004 that was our first year
of full solar pool heating and then we
start building that house addition and
we start using more and more energy
because of that and then we put in
geothermal in 2007 is the first full
year of geothermal and that’s that
dramatic drop in energy consumption
that’s about a 25% drop in my energy
consumption and then we carry on pretty
flat for a number of years I buy the
electric vehicle at the end of 2014
because we charge it at home at night
the consumption starts to go up again
and then in 2015 we put in solar and so
you see that other big drop in our net
energy consumption another 25% drop in
energy consumption now compare that to
these gray bars and the gray bars are
what my energy consumption would have
been
if I hadn’t done these three projects
and you see some pretty big differences
there that by the end of it by the end
of 2017 my energy consumption is about
half of what it would have been had I
not done those things so and that’s the
energy savings as well as all of the
associated greenhouse gas and an
environmental benefits so that’s the pay
forward and you know now you see what I
mean when I say that you know those
individual projects they didn’t sound
too good but when you look at it over
time and you look at the combined effort
these are those are the bricks that I
was talking about that ended up building
something I think pretty substantial so
what’s the next project for me well
we’re starting to investigate energy
storage for the home so this would be a
residential sized battery that we would
use as backup I could replace something
like aged diesel generator in case we
ever lose power but it can also be
something that we would charge with
solar power or charge up using really
low cost power in the off-peak times and
then using that power in high peak times
where the power is more expensive so we
would save a fair amount of money but
I’m still calculating the payback and of
so what does this mean for all of us
well I know not everybody can you know
has the room to put in geothermal or
wants to spend the money upfront for
some of these things but I do think
there’s some important lessons and
sometimes some of these environmental
things can seem daunting you know that
the problems are so big what can one
person do but I do think there are some
things that we can do first of all clean
technology is advancing very quickly and
the paybacks and the pay forwards are
improving so rapidly all the time so I
encourage you to think about these
things you know do the calculations and
maybe you’ve thought about them a few
years ago but revisit them because
everything is improving very very
quickly
second if you notice two of my projects
were based were driven by replacement
decisions so my pool heater died so I
had to do something or we built onto the
house and I had to replace the heating
cooling system so it’s easy to you know
nobody’s going to you know take out a
perfectly good piece of equipment just
to put in something that’s a little more
efficient but when you have to make a
change that’s when you can make the
greatest impact so even though it’s a
little more time-consuming it requires a
little more effort to do the research
find out what the alternatives are of
course calculate the payback and the pay
forward that’s when you can really make
a difference another lesson I think is
to pay attention to how we talk about
payback and financial returns you know
when when we talk about payback we talk
about how long how long until the
savings equal the extra cost but that
kind of implies that the benefits end
once the payback has been achieved but
that’s not the case at all those those
savings continue long into the future in
the case of my projects already they’ve
generated over thirty five thousand
dollars of savings so instead of
thinking about how long until we achieve
the payback we should think about how
much the savings are going to be over
the lifetime of that piece of equipment
or that asset if we do that then our
mindset will probably be more more
positive towards that purchase and
finally if you’re talking to somebody
and they’re talking and they’re
considering you know hybrid or electric
vehicle or some kind of a clean
technology decision you know by all
means ask them about the payback but
also ask them about the pay forward get
them thinking about the benefits not
just to themselves but to everybody else
and see if you can get them to take both
pay back and pay forward into
consideration when they make their
decision because if they do that every
time that happens that’s one more brick
that gets put to words building a better
world thank you [Applause]