Green Efforts Inspire Detroit-Area Churches to Conserve

By Tina Lam, Detroit Free Press

Jan. 23–While politicians argue in Lansing and Washington over how and when to reduce America’s global-warming gases, some Michigan churches are already doing it.

Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, whose mission is to save money, energy and carbon dioxide emissions, started in 2003. It now has 230 member congregations of all faiths across the state.

Energy calculators show that since fall 2004, the churches have saved at least a combined $2.5 million and kept 17,350 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

That’s the equivalent of taking 3,100 cars off the roads for a year.

“We need to be caretakers of the Earth,” said the Rev. David Preuss of St. Charles Borromeo church in Detroit. “How better to do that than not waste fuel?”

Since joining MIPL, Preuss’ church has put in new insulation, installed energy-efficient lightbulbs, put solar panels on the rectory roof to collect energy for water heating, and is trying to raise $53,000 for a new geothermal heating and cooling system.

For his church, Preuss said, it’s a matter of faith, but also survival.

St. Charles was at risk of closing in the late 1980s because energy costs for the 1918 building, with soaring 56-foot ceilings, soaked up 34 percent of the church’s revenue.

Now, those bills are just 10 percent of the budget, and Preuss hopes geothermal energy will cut that in half.

“Our water bills are higher than our energy bills,” he said.

“Changing the world, one light at a time,” is the motto of MIPL’s national parent, Interfaith Power and Light, founded a decade ago in San Francisco. The group promotes renewable energy and conservation as a moral issue.

The Rev. Charles Morris likes to climb to the roof of the rectory at St. Elizabeth’s in Wyandotte to show off his church’s solar panels and wind turbine.

“We’re not just talking and preaching about this,” said Morris, MIPL’s founder. “We have street credibility.”

Morris has been honored by Rolling Stone magazine and featured in the New York Times for his efforts.

In 1997, St. Elizabeth’s paid $5,000 for an energy audit and put in improvements over the next five years.

The changes have cut energy costs 60 percent, saving an estimated $25,000 per year, Morris said.

And when a massive blackout hit Michigan and the eastern United States in 2003, it took Morris hours to learn about it — from his television. That’s because the blackout didn’t affect the rectory, which mostly is off the grid.

One MIPL project is a Web site where individual members of congregations can buy discounted compact fluorescent lightbulbs, which use less energy and last longer than regular bulbs.

Members also can buy energy-efficient appliances, such as refrigerators, at 25 percent discounts from ABC Warehouse.

At Church of the Holy Family in Novi, the church’s kilowatt hours have dropped since installing new energy-efficient bulbs, motion sensors in bathrooms that turn lights on only when they’re needed, and dimmer switches, said business administrator Beth Meyer.

The church joined MIPL in 2004. A church committee held sales of compact fluorescent lightbulbs on two Sundays for parishioners, and it is considering solar panels on its roof to help supply electricity, Meyer said.

St. John’s Episcopal Church in Royal Oak has replaced 75 percent of its old-fashioned lightbulbs with energy-efficient ones, put more efficient lightbulbs in its exit signs and has a new energy-efficient air-conditioning system and office copier, said member Julie Lyons Bricker, chair of the church’s green committee and an MIPL board member.

And the faith-connected effort to save energy isn’t just at Christian churches.

Concern among Muslims for the environment has spiked in recent years, said Imam Achmat Salie of Muslim Unity Center in Bloomfield Hills, an MIPL board member.

“People realize they can make changes themselves,” he said.

The center’s goal is to build a green mosque, Salie said.

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