WASHINGTON, DC — Houses of worship in the United States now have an array of online tools for managing energy use and reducing their carbon footprint with help from the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program.
The EPA announced the availability of the Energy Star toolkit for congregations today.
With the introduction of the resource, houses of worship join the roster of other facilities and operations that have Energy Star materials tailored to their needs. The Energy Star Portfolio Manager toolkits, which are free, are available for government, healthcare, K-12 and higher education, hospitality and entertainment, real estate, retail and industry, among others.
The toolkits help users set benchmarks and track energy use and the greenhouse gas emissions that are associated with operations and activities. The material also helps users set priorities for investments and improvements and verify changes resulting from efficiency efforts.
According to the EPA, there are an estimated 370,000 houses of worship in the U.S. They spend more than $3 billion annually on energy costs, and improving efficiency by merely 10 percent would save almost 2 billion kilowatt-hours each year. Doing so would also prevent more than 1 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and represent a cost savings of about $315 million a year.
Houses of worship that use the portfolio manager and meet standards for the program are able to obtain a performance rating and may earn the Energy Star label for their facilities -- as stores, schools, government buildings, hospitals and office buildings already do.
Although the Energy Star tools specifically for houses of worship are new, the EPA has been honoring congregations that achieve big energy savings for the past 10 years. Winners of the Energy Star Congregation Award for 2008 were the Congregation Or Shalom in Orange, Conn., the Dennis Union Church in Dennis, Mass., and the Sparks United Methodist Church in Sparks, Nev.
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