Climate Action Plan Update

City Council on March 10 agreed staff is heading in the right direction with proposed initiatives to reach the City’s 2020 Climate Action Plan goals, and asked staff to highlight simple explanations of proposed projects and identify costs down to the individual level. Watch a brief video of Lindsay Ex, CAP program manager, and Tim McCollough, Light and Power Operations Manager for Fort Collins Utilities, describing the Council discussion.

[ShoelessMeg]

I would have loved to have some sort of Building Energy Disclosure and Scoring deal back when we had our Old Town home remodeled. I know that's not quite how the disclosure is being looked at right now. But still, if there had been something that told us the effects of what the remodeling would have done to our energy use, it might have helped us make better decisions.

I had no idea how much the lathe and plaster in our old house served as a heat or cold sink, keeping the house cool in summer and warm in winter. When we had work done a few years back, the contractor tore the lathe and plaster off of a couple of walls as he added a stairwell where there didn't used to be one. He covered the walls with drywall when he was done and our house seems to have lost a lot of its old energy efficiency. Thankfully we still have lathe and plaster on our exterior walls and several interior walls, but I miss that heat sink factor that we used to have before.

I'm also curious, as this disclosure and scoring assessment tool is developed, how are old houses like mine going to be scored? Are things like lathe and plaster that help to keep a house more efficient going to be included in that scoring? What about wood windows that can be more energy efficient when caulked and will last a lot longer than vinyl which creates pollution when they're made and end up in the landfill faster? Sometimes I think people don't really get how much more energy efficient older buildings can be. I'd really like to see this tool used as a means of educating people about the energy benefits of living in a well maintained older home.