By George Leposky
For the board members at timeshare-resort owners’ associations, dealing with climate change is a real challenge. Boards are more attuned to simple cost-benefit decision-making than to the total systemic-interaction analysis required to secure and sustain a modicum of climatic equilibrium.
Bringing this point home, Sustainable Electrification and Decarbonization (https://tinyurl.com/2p8cr7wa), a recent article in the electrical-industry trade journal T&D World, emphasizes that discrete actions such as switching to energy-efficient LED (light-emitting diode) light bulbs and installing an electric-vehicle charging station are mere stop-gap measures.
Decarbonize your resort
“Decarbonization,” explains author Tom Rolfson, “refers to reducing the reliance on carbon-based fuels, thereby reducing overall carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the atmosphere. Electrification is the conversion of non-electric end-use equipment to electric end-use equipment.”
Both activities must proceed hand-in-hand to accomplish anything significant. Because electrical equipment is more efficient than fossil-fuel equipment used to perform the same function, it reduces carbon emissions even if the power plant generating the electricity hasn’t changed. Improvements in generating capacity—switching from coal to natural gas, for instance—will achieve an additional reduction in carbon emissions.
Your resort can help decarbonization along by putting solar panels on its roof, and perhaps adding a windmill or several if space and sufficient breezes allow. The extra electricity generated by these technologies can be consumed on the premises, and collected in storage batteries for use on calm and cloudy days, and at night. If your local electric utility allows net metering, it will buy any excess kilowatts and will be happy to get them (although in some states the utilities see net metering as a challenge to their monopoly and fight it fang and claw).
Electrify and modernize
As for electrification, consider your resort’s heating and cooling system. If you’re burning oil, upgrade to electricity now. Even if you’re burning natural gas, which has a reputation as a “clean” fuel, you should get ready to electrify.
Rolfson points out that shifting residential consumers and other smaller-scale end users away from natural gas will make more of the stuff available for more efficient use by utility power plants and large industrial operations.
If you use electric resistance heating, you’re also behind the times. The current state of the art, an electrically operated heat pump, heats and cools interior spaces more efficiently and economically.
Feeding lawns
Decarbonization and electrification are important, but they don’t cover all aspects of sustainability. Here’s another example: If your resort fertilizes its grass and shrubbery, have you figured out what kind of fertilizer to apply, how much, and when? If not, you may inadvertently apply excess nutrients that wind up in rivers and streams that could be harmful to humans, fish and other animals.
So, if you don’t fertilize and you think your grass and shrubbery are hungry, how do you keep them well-nourished and pretty? Try composting. If you don’t know how to do that, contact your local agricultural extension office for free advice. Provide the proper containers and bins, get your resort’s owners and guests involved, and promote the effort as a resort-wide contribution to saving the planet.