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SB:
-- Emily, so much, we appreciate this. Welcome everybody to
the Sustainable Operations Peer Learning Series. I’m
thrilled to see so many people on the line. I think we have
a great lineup today. We’ll be talking about “Leadership
Beyond the C Suite.” It took me a little while to figure
out the title, C standing for the, like CIO, CFO, and the
corporate level leadership. And we’re talking about
leadership from the field, which is really an exciting
thing to share. My name is Sarah Baker. I am right now the
National Business Operations Sustainable Operations Program
Manager, but when my detail ends in a few weeks I’ll be
back at Region 3, the Environmental Management System
Program Manager and Sustainable Operations Coordinator. I
also work on the Sustainable Operations Collective as a
staff member. So if anybody can remember any of this by the
end of this, there’ll be a prize.
I’d like to start this out today, we’re going to start out
with Laura Polanski, who is in Region 5, and Laura is a
Sustainable Operations Coordinator for the region. And I’ll
let her introduce herself a little more as she starts out.
Laura?
LP:
Wonderful, thank you so much, Sarah. I think this
transition is actually good for letting people know what’s
to come, as also transition from Sarah Baker to myself into
the National Sustainable Operations Program Manager role,
so I will be the Region 5 [UNINT.int.] of Operations and
[UNINT.int.] coordinator for just a couple more weeks, and
then I’ll be transitioning into Sarah’s current role. And
today I’ll be speaking to you about a community
sustainability partnership. All of this because
[UNINT.int.] traffic light. And this is a presentation that
I gave in mid-November at the Behavior Energy and Climate
Change conference that was based in Sacramento. And
primarily we reached an audience, a large audience, of non
federal partners. And so I’m excited to bring it home today
to the Forest Service and the federal partners.
Next slide please. And part of bringing it home is of
course bringing you to the site of where this happened.
You’re welcome to [UNINT.] and just a bit of this geography
and many [UNINT.] at the Behavior Energy and Climate Change
conference are familiar with the geography of Alaska. And
so here just look for that little star, that places you
right at the scene you might say. And what I want you to
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think about over the course of this presentation, if you go
to the next slide please Sarah, is whether this sign that
you see on your screen, whether this could really be
effective in reducing a community’s short term electricity
consumption by five to ten percent, just by changing the
color on this paper sign, or the equivalent in different
form. So kind of a leading question that I just want you to
think about that.
Today I’ll be speaking of rust a few minutes about the
traffic light program and background in drivers. The Forest
Service connection to this, as I mentioned it was a
partnership, communication types that made us successful,
the program results, the expansion of the concept and how
you might think about applying it in your own community.
And then some elements of success. Next slide please.
So first, why a traffic light program? For one, the
community of Sitka relies heavily on hydroelectric
generation. This is also has impact due to the seasonal
variability of water. Obviously in a rainforest environment
there’s drier periods and wetter periods. And so this
influences the level of the dam. The dam that is be--, and
the water level behind the dam, that it controls the
availability of hydro. There’s also a sole transmission
lines that leads into the community, and when you combine
these factors what you get are rolling blackouts from time
to time. Now, some citizens in the community think that
this is somewhat entertaining, somewhat funny, and they for
Halloween dressed up as a rolling blackout and what you see
there [UNINT.] on there at the front of their costumes are
the abbreviations of the street names that rotated two
hours on, two hours off, two hours on, two hours off during
these rolling blackout periods. And this couple actually
rolled around on Halloween and turned on light bulbs that
were under their light shades there. And so we can laugh
about it, but then the community you know got together and
thought, well, what can we do to be more proactive and help
guide behavior change to better deal with the fact that we
do have a limited energy supply.
The other thing I wanted to show you here is this Blue
Lake. This is the lake that is behind the dam. And here you
see it at those high and low levels, you can slightly see
the variation on the bank there. I’ll refer back to Blue
Lake later and a reservoir that’s being built, so I just
wanted to show you that visual. Next slide please.
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So we’re going to continue with why a traffic light
program. Obviously energy conservation decreases the system
load, and decreasing the system load leads to a decrease in
[gable] generation. So when the community runs out of
hydro, they’ll push over to diesel. The diesel is
incredibly expensive, and is also obviously a much higher
polluting way of getting energy than hydro. And so based on
the presence of the loads in the community, they consume
about one thousand gallons of diesel per day when they have
to switch over from hydro to diesel. So this is a
significant amount. And maybe one way to visualize that for
you is looking at these pictures next to the word green and
next to the word red. So what this means is when the
traffic light signal is green, that means hydroelectric
generation is prominent. That means the hydro can support
the needs of the community in terms of energy consumption.
You can picture the water is just rushing over the dam and
supporting all that hydro. But when that light changes to
red, that’s an indication that due to the pull on the
energy load, we need to switch from hydro to diesel. And
that’s happening in the community. Maybe the citizens
aren’t seeing that in their own homes but they can see that
visual cue in the traffic lights. And so I want you to
think of these ugly, large, diesel generators as the
connection to a red traffic light sign.
And then final piece about this is a highly engaged
community. And this is where the partnership comes in. And
it was really this [Sitka] global warming group that got
together and thought how can we work with our local
utility, the City of Sitka Electric Department, to better
engage our citizens in making their own choices about, and
try to decrease this transition to diesel. [UNINT.]
possible. But that wasn’t the only factor. And so one more
thing that I do want to point out, and it seems hard to see
on the screen I realize, before I asked you to remember
that Blue Lake? Well, if you should look in the red box
here, you see Blue Lake Expansion. This is the plan for
about 2022, and the idea for this of course is to increase
the reservoir behind that dam, to be able to create more
hydroelectricity. But to do this, the Electric Department
requires you know additional funds in some form, and so it
is one of their drivers for engaging partnership. And they
want citizens to basically purchase every kilowatt hour up
to the point where they would have to transition to diesel.
Because diesel is more expensive for them as well. And so
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you, their guiding decision to help them gain the extra
dollars to promote the expansion of Blue Lake, and then
that in turn will have a feedback loop on making the city
cleaner and greener. Next slide please.
So it’s important to point out the Forest Service
connection to this because it’s one of the drivers for
success. So as many are familiar with those who are from
outside the [UNINT.], the Forest Service mission is to
sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the
Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of
present and future generations. And one of the things about
the Forest Service as many can relate to that live near
national forests are these fire danger risk signs. There’s
different versions of them but they generally have some
type of color cue. So this means that a community such as
Sitka that is adjacent to a national forest are already
accustomed to some degree to adjusting their behavior based
on these color cues that they’re seeing. And so you’re
taking the jump from a fire danger risk sign to a traffic
light signal, like the behavior change mechanism as much as
a [jumper has to] in some areas. And that’s just something
to keep in mind.
Another thing that’s important to point out of course is
that the Sustainable Operations program embedded in the
Forest Service and linked to is mission of sustaining. And
so you see the 113 Green Team throughout the country. This
is from the Green Team map on the recently released
Sustainable Operations demonstrations site. And Sustainable
Operations Collective is connected with these Green Teams
and is this field based network of sustainability
champions, I imagine the majority on this call are very
familiar with the Collective. And the Collective
collaborates with internal and external partners. And so
this is one example where the Collective had tremendous
success with those external partners, that being the Sitka
Warming Group. Next slide please.
And so in the [ninth] behavior change program, ultimately
it come down to communication, communication,
communication. What types of communication were used in
this instance? Of course the web site, the City of Sitka’s
web site. The, and also, if you go to the Electric
Department’s web site, you see their mission statement, and
then right under their mission statement you will see the
current power supply status and that traffic light. And
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they will define what that means for the user. So here you
see green, this means [UNINT.], proceed using electric
heat, there’s plenty of hydro. Versus if we saw red, you
might see an explanation saying, you know, please cut back
and here are some ways that we promote you to conserve
electricity, here’s some tips for you. And then if you see
yellow of course, it’s caution, it’s we’re on the verge. So
I think that’s great that it’s so visible on the Electric
Department web site. Also community organizations’ web
sites, farmer’s markets, First Day fairs, the recycling
center. I really like this one. Michelle Putz, who is
really the champion for this with the Sitka Global Warming
Group and also their liaison to the Forest Service
community up there, she said, you know, we got to put this
every grocery store, because you got to eat. So no one can
miss this if it’s in at the grocery store. Newspapers,
radio spots, parade floats, et cetera. And here you see
Michelle Putz [UNINT.] in the Earth Day Fair. Next slide
please.
So the question is, ultimately, does it work? Can something
so simple as a traffic light signal on a web site or a
paper sign, can this really make a difference? Well, first
I should mention that the traffic light targets the
residential sector. It did this [UINT.] because 43% of
Sitka’s electricity consumption comes from the residential
sector. You see that in the pie graph on the last [UINT.],
with [UNINT.] electric use by class. You can also see that
it is the sector with the largest kilowatt hour increase in
the last ten years. So it’s the biggest current user as
well as the biggest growing user of electricity. So what
they saw was that when the light changed to red, they go
from green directly to red, there was an instant drop for
yellow to red, they saw a five to ten percent reduction and
[UINT.] in the community. And what that meant on an annual
basis was a savings of 60 million kilowatt hours and
approximately $6 million in electric [UNINT.] with those
savings directly passed on to the customer. So that was a
pretty impressive result for the low cost measure like
that. Next slide please.
So of course it’s important not just to celebrate the
success of one community but to think about how it expands
to [UNINT.] The city of Ketchikan has already adopted this
with some success. Of course it’s also applicable to other
communities that are powered by the more [UNINT.] And it’s
another variable, could certainly use this visual cue
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concept to engage the citizens of the community. And then
this [UNINT.] for them, so that a longer term projection of
availability of low cost hydroelectric energy. So this is a
point that I wanted to touch on. Just to tell you that this
easy color changer don’t come out of the blue. And the
color is based on the hydro operations of the community and
a model that was developed for this hydro operation. And
this projects hydro availability within 12 months into the
future. And the model inputs a multiple of variables, with
predominantly existing [UNINT.], location is projected, and
that’s based on 30 years of empirical data and projected
system load. And so because the community is able to
project out 12 months, it means that that color is
fluctuating at [UNINT.] every week, but so this isn’t going
ah, it’s yellow today, okay, it’s red tomorrow, it’s green
now. They, the color changes, they know that it’s based on
solid data and they know that that’s going to be a
sustained change for some period of time. In other words,
it makes sense that [UNINT.] engaging a behavior change to
change the thing at their house, per se, to reduce that
electric demand. Because that’s probably going to be in
place you know that warning will be in place for a matter
of weeks, if not months. And so I think that’s important to
add stability to the system too. Next slide please.
So finally, what made it successful. Certainly the
engagement in understanding by stakeholders in the
community. We all understand traffic signals. Green means
go, red means stop, yellow means slow down and proceed with
caution. So these are [UNINT.] concepts that we’re familiar
with, combine that with the fact that communities near
forests are used to responding to color cues, their fire
danger risk signs, and it’s a pretty good combination.
Also, Sitkans are geographically connected to their power,
so unlike many of us that may not see the source of our
power on a regular basis, they see those local dams, the
precipitation is a part of you know the everyday life in a
rainforest type environment, and so there was a [UNINT.]
there of how A becomes B. And this [UNINT.] of empowerment
so it’s simply, it’s our power. And that’s where the Sitka
Global Warming Group comes in. There’s also this direct
experience of intermittent power outages. How many times
can you dress up as the rolling blackouts for Halloween
until you want to do something about it. And then of course
there’s a feedback loop via the lower utility bills for the
customer. So overall you’re still going to Sitka meet
community structure on these, in other words the need to
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produce enough electricity for all, meet community
financial needs because water from rain and snow is a lot
cheaper to produce than power from diesel. And it also
helps the community meet its environmental needs and
maintain a healthy climate and healthy ocean. Next slide
please.
And so finally what I would like to do is leave you with a
video. Much of this video footage is taken with permission
from a video called “Rain Power.” And ultimately this
[UNINT.] to be a service of the conservationist society. So
if we could play that video now that would be great.
VID: [MUSIC]
MV:
In Sitka we’re faced with a very serious energy
problem. Our system load has exceeded our ability to
meet that with hydroelectric generation, so we were
forced to make that up with diesel generation, which
is very expensive and problematic.
MV:
We got all four of these going, running the town.
We’ll burn right around 900 gallons an hour.
VO:
In 2008, the Sitka Electric Department and the Sitka
Global Warming Group began working together to promote
conservation of electricity when hydroelectric
generation capacity drops below demand. The traffic
light symbol was used to promote behavior change
through familiar color cues.
MV:
I think this traffic light [UNINT.] focus, folks
understand that, you know. Green means go, red means
stop, and with the exception of my children yellow
means proceed with caution, slow down. So it kind of
gives you a way of, to modify your behavior, and time
to make a difference. You got to, the impacts of this
are, when we change the signal, we’ll see a measurable
reduction of system load. Sometimes as much as 10 or
15%, and for us that’s enough to oftentime to get us
over the, over the hump and avoid diesel. So getting a
10% demand response from a voluntary program is
extremely rare for a utility. Usually you do that by
offering some sort of a rate structure, a rate
incentive to make that kind of a change. But here it’s
remarkable, the community response to that, and it
really helps everybody out.
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FV:
But we’re all consumers, and we all have an impact and
we’re all super interconnected. But, you know, the
only way that change ever happens is one person, one
community, one state, one country, and that goes
global.
[MUSIC]
LP:
Great, thanks for showing that video and there’s just one
more slide. Perfect. So [UNINT.] I had the opportunity to
share this story with you. This is not my story. This is
Michelle Putz’s story. She was based in [UNINT.] in Alaska
and she is as I mentioned, this concept of, and with her
leadership through the Sitka Global Warming Group really
took off. So this is her brainchild. She is out at training
today so I’m presenting it on her behalf. Her contact
information is there if you have questions specifically for
her. And of course with links to our National Sustainable
Operations web site, our [UNINT.] site, and also if you’re
interested in looking at the Sitka Global Warming Group web
site that link is there for you as well. With that I’ll
turn it over to Sarah.
SB:
Thank you and I think Emily is going to give us
instructions for how to ask you questions, Laura?
MOD: If you’d like to ask a question, you can dial *1 on your
phone to put yourself into the queue, or if you’re on VOIP
you can use the raise hand button on the top tool bar.
You’ll hear a notification when your line is unmuted, at
which point you can state your name and your question. You
can also use the “Notes” tab or the “Send Note” button on
the top tool bar, and address your note to “presenters”.
And just yet I am not seeing any questions.
SB:
Okay, we’ll give people 30 seconds more or so to see if
anybody has any. I don’t actually see anything either. We’d
like to thank Laura very much for appearing today,
especially on Michelle’s behalf. Very interesting talk,
very interesting concept. And I know that Laura has to go,
so if you have questions for her at the end that you think
of we’ll have to ask them a little later. She can answer
them for us later. Thank you Laura.
LP:
Thank you. Take care.
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SB:
Okay. I’d like to proceed now and introduce to you Traute
Parrie. Traute’s a District Ranger in the Beartooth Ranger
District, and I just found out today that she started life
as an architectural engineer, so she’s one of us, yay. And
I really welcome Traute aboard, she’s going to talk to us
about her leadership in her district.
TP:
Well thank you Sarah, and we’ll start, just go right to the
next slide. I am glad to have so many people on the line
and I know there’s a couple people who are very familiar
with this topic, particularly Dee Dee Witsen and Virginia
Kelly who are on the partnership that I’m going to
describe, and so hopefully they will maybe contribute some
notes or some questions or some comments as well. But I’m
here to describe a federal and private alignment in
promoting sustainable operations that I believe is a good
model. It’s easily replicated. In fact the Yellowstone
Business Partnership on the private side is actually
modeled after the Sierra Business Council in California. So
for all I know some of you folks in Region 5 might be
participating in the Sierra Business Council in the same
way that we’re participating with Yellowstone Partnership.
It holds, the program that I’m working in holds
participants accountable, which I find is a good tool. But
it’s also at a scale of our choosing. Each of the class
participants gets to determine what the metrics are going
to be, because there’s such a variety of class participants
that there is not a good one size fits all. So even though
it holds us accountable it’s very workable.
I think that this model counts toward Sustainability
Leadership Action Item 6 of the Climate Change Scorecard,
Element 10, so we’re all supposed to be responsive to that
and this is one way to do it is the community en—. I find
it really rewarding and I will get back to that as I go
through this but I think it’s very refreshing to see and
working with private interests that are outside of our
normal sphere and see what they’re able to accomplish and
it really gets me inspired and helps me bring ideas back,
back to the office. Also it’s expanding. The UnCommon Sense
started here in the greater Yellowstone area, but in the
current class there’s at least four participants from the
greater Glacier, I guess you could call it, and Whitefish,
and, well anyway Whitefish up in northern Montana. So I
think there are opportunities at least from my peers here
in Montana to participate in this class in common. Next
slide.
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So let me get into a little bit of background. Some of you
are familiar with what the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating
Committee is. It was formed in 1964 and it’s the core
federal lands in the greater Yellowstone area. So there’s
two national parks, obviously, there’s six national forests
and I’ve listed them on the slides there, and that’s where
the Custer, portions of the Custer, Custer’s pretty spread
out, but the Beartooth district is definitely part of the
GYA, and then there’s two national wildlife refuges. And
more recently they’ve added the adjacent BLM resource
areas. And the, it’s led actually by our Greater
Yellowstone Coordinating Committee coordinator, Virginia
Kelly, who is a Forest Service employee that works for the
supervisors and superintendents of all these units. And
she’s on the call today. Next slide.
So the GYCC is structured and has subcommittees to address
various resource issues in common, such as invasive
species, or fire management, or fisheries issues, or air
quality, or climate change. As you can imagine, all those
things don’t respect state or you know federal
jurisdictional boundaries, and so it’s really been very
effective to work across boundaries. And one of the recent
issues, I think it was, well, I’ve got that in another
slide, when they started, but sustainable operations is
also near and dear to these supervisors’ hearts. Next
slide. So on the private side, the Yellowstone Business
Partnership unites businesses dedicated to preserving a
healthy environment and shaping a prosperous and
sustainable future for communities in the Yellowstone and
Teton region. So they promote scientific understanding and
form dialog and collaborative approaches to resolving the
region’s most complex, cross boundary socioeconomic and
natural resource challenges. So from my perspective, that
sounds familiar. Next slide.
So you can see here’s another similarity. On the map, on
the left hand side, I tried to outline where the Beartooth
Ranger District is in the northeast part of the forest
color on the GYA map. And over on the right hand side is
the Yellowstone Business Partnership map, you can see a few
similarities there. And there’s a little square where Red
Lodge is in Carbon County in Montana. Next slide.
So the GYCC Sustainable Operations Subcommittee was formed
in 2005 and Dee Dee Witsen was the chair of that
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subcommittee and she’s also on the call. I’m really happy
you’re both on there. So we had to do an accomplishment
report to the GYCC, the committee supervisors and
superintendents, and we prepared this report that does talk
about our background and mission. It’s a little hard to
read on your computer but I can always provide that to
anybody who’s interested. And it talks about our
accomplishments in the footprint areas of water
conservation and energy reduction, energy consumption
reduction, responsible purchasing and that kind of thing.
Next slide.
And this is more of that report, page 2 and some other more
specific sustainability efforts. You can see a solar array
that was installed over in Ennis Montana on the Madison
Ranger District on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge. And it
includes our strategic vision and it includes the names of
the subcommittee members. Next slide.
So here’s something that’s somewhat similar. This is off of
YBP’s web site, Yellowstone Business Partnership. And this
is their programs that they’re focused on. It’s in its
tenth year, and they have a, the Greater Yellowstone
Framework for Sustainable Development is actually modeled
after the lead program for sustainable construction,
reconstruction, that sort of thing. But it’ tied to a very
specific place. The next program is the UnCommon Sense
Business Leadership for a Sustainable Future and that’s the
two year leadership training program to help businesses
operated more efficiently and then build social cohesion
and measure the long term results. That’s that
accountability piece. And then they’ve also been working on
something called LINKS which is a regional transportation
cooperative that’s very innovative. And also trying to
figure out how to provide for sustainability in our gateway
communities as far as it being so seasonal. Next slide.
So, my rationale for joining YBP and then the UnCommon
Sense program is I have a strong interest in supporting
their commitment to the triple bottom line, which of course
is the environmental, social and economic wellbeing of
communities of GYA. That’s a, you know, a common concept.
They also are well aligned with our own objectives. Their
livelihoods depend on us being able to maintain the
resources and our agency needs to walk the talk as we
manage the resources. Next slide.
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Also I find that there are common goals for and barriers to
sustainable operations on both the government and the
business side. So this is just a couple of examples. I’m
sure you guys could assist me in developing this list or
fleshing out this list, but some common drivers are to
reduce overhead costs, to free up more money to do our
mission work, especially as our budgets decline. And as
taxpayers we all have an interest in reducing operating
costs. But also we have in common with both the federal and
the business side as I said, I think there’s a common
interest to maintaining our natural resources, especially
with these member businesses of YBP.
So some common challenges, and we acknowledge we all have
them, are employee capacity, it does take time and it can
take money and there’s a certain amount of skepticism to
overcome. So it helps to feel like you have somebody who
has your back out there. A unique challenge that we have I
feel is the incentive to reduce our overhead costs, our
cost pool is much more indirect and it’s hard to show how
we’re getting those savings back to the unit. And that’s
something that, you know, my friends in the Forest Service
are trying to help with. So therefore we’re looking for the
opportunities to leverage our own practices with those of
our neighboring participants including our own permittees,
and I’ll get into that in a little bit. But we have the Red
Lodge Mountain Resort and the Stillwater platinum mine are
both permittees of the Custer National Forest and the
Beartooth Ranger District. And they’re both also
participating in this UnCommon Sense program. And so we’re
identifying similar opportunities and similar barriers that
we can work on. So together we can influence vendors to
bring in biofuel and things like that. Next slide.
So what is the UnCommon Sense Program? I referred to it as
the two year leadership program. There are 28,000
businesses in the GYA so it offers a tremendous potential
to influence behavior. And the eight modules as currently
defined are the leadership module, “Leading the Way;” of
course “Waste Stream Management” which is of course mostly
the recycling and composting but also maybe we don’t need
to purchase it in the first place. We have a misspelling in
there, oops. Anyway. “Responsible Purchasing,” “Social and
Community Investment,” and that was a real interesting
module for us to go through in the Forest Service. We
realized as we went through how much we already do in that
arena, but have never really taken credit for that kind of
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thing and how much we contribute to social and community
viability. “Energy Efficiency,” “Water Efficiency,” “Fleet
Efficiency,” and then finally the “Business Response to
Climate Change.” And that’s where it’s been helpful the
[UNINT.] part of the GYA because the GYCC commissioned a
GHG, greenhouse gas emissions reduction inventory, and then
we had a follow up action plan. So that helped us be a
little bit ahead of the game when we got to this module in
UnCommon Sense. And it does require accountability. There’s
scorecards for each module with points required for
graduation, and it’s viewed as basically a regional
certification. Next slide.
So as I mentioned, these are some of the folks who are
currently in UnCommon Sense with us. Red Lodge Mountain,
Bridger Bowl Ski Area over on the Gallatin National Forest
is a participant in UnCommon Sense. Stillwater Mine is the
second largest employer in the state of Montana. So when
you’re talking about these kinds of businesses being in
UnCommon Sense, and we can reach out and partner with them,
they have in my mind at least as great an influence as we
do if not more. They can reach more members of the public
when they put up signs at the ski area like Grand Targhee
does. And so they can really expand and leverage our
influence on this message. So I listed some other UnCommon
Sense classmates, Montana State University, [UNINT.]
science, many architectural firms, City of Bozeman,
National Outdoor Leadership School, a medical center in
Idaho, newspaper over in Idaho, the First Interstate Bank,
which has branches all over, at least a two state region,
Montanan and Wyoming, and then lots of restaurants and
travel companies. So it’s just, there’s an endless variety
of businesses that every year the makeup changes a little
bit and it’s really interesting to see who’s getting on
board. And as I said it’s expanding to the Crown of the
Continent, or that Glacier National Park area, with,
there’s representatives of Big Mountain Ski Area in the
[Class] and also from Whitefish. – slide.
This one kind of says it for me. It’s a quote from Paul
Hawkins, who is a well known entrepreneur and widely
published author. But he says, “Business is the only
mechanism on the planet today powerful enough to produce
the changes necessary to reverse global, environmental and
social degradation.” And I could add to that but I think I
won’t, and I’ll let you guys interpret that and move onto
the next slide.
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And I think this may be my last slide. It’s an invitation –
oh, it’s not my last slide. It’s an invitation. Our class
will graduate in Bozeman, on April 27th in Bozeman, so you
have plenty of time to attend. Oh, my screen went away. The
keynote speaker is going to be Annie Leonard, so if any of
you have watched any of the videos that you can get on
YouTube, “The Story of Stuff,” which have been actually
very helpful or, they’re funny, animations, and they’re,
well I guess they’re documentary and there’s some animated
ones too, The Story of Stuff about the life cycle of
material goods, she’s going to be our keynote speaker. And
some of those class participants that I mentioned, the
Stillwater mine, the schools, First Interstate Bank, we’ll
all have to get up and do a 20 minute report on what we
accomplished through this program. And so it may be
inspirational to you, if you kind of want to just find out
what it’s about, come and attend the graduation. Next
slide.
Anyway, the journey continues. Obviously we won’t be done
when we graduate in April. We still have a lot of work to
do, but we’ve also expanded our network and feel like it
gives us some momentum to keep going. And it is really
rewarding, refreshing and inspirational, interacting with
these businesses outside our usual sphere and to see how
much they can accomplish. So I would highly encourage folks
that are in the GYA to look into joining YBP. Or if you’re
not in the GYA look into joining similar organizations or
starting similar organizations in your area. The idea is to
lead from where you’re at. I’m the ranger here but it could
just as easily have been promoted by our geologist who has
a similar interest here. And so, you know, take it on, from
whatever position you're in. So I think that’s really all
that I have and I would be open to questions.
SB:
Thank you so much, Traute, that’s wonderful. And we’ll have
Emily remind us how to ask questions.
MOD: Once again, if you’d like to ask a question, you can dial
*1 on your phone to put yourself into the queue, or you can
use the raise hand button on the top tool bar. You can also
“Send a Note” to “presenters”. And we have a raised hand,
one moment. Go ahead, Kelly.
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FV:
I’m sorry, I just want to get a copy of that if that’s
possible. If I can have someone send me that.
TP:
Yeah, so Sarah, will that be posted somewhere or should I
just send it?
SB:
I think we, from what I understand, these are recorded
sessions that are shared with all the participants, and
they’ll be emailed to you, but you can also feel free to
email over your presentation if you’d like.
TP:
So, I’ll get your email now just to make sure you get it.
FV:
Sure. It’s K-R-I-C-E-A-R-D at F-S dot fed dot U-S.
TP:
Okay, sure, I’ll send it.
FV:
Thank you.
SB:
Any other questions?
MOD: I am not seeing any further questions.
SB:
Well thanks, Virginia and Dee Dee on this, do you have
anything to add?
MOD: Oh, she is muted. This is Virginia Kelly?
SB:
Uh huh.
MOD: One moment, I’ll unmute her.
TP:
Dee Dee Witsen, you might unmute Dee Dee Witsen, W-I-T-S-EN.
SB:
Put you guys on the spot.
DDW: Can you hear me?
TP:
Yeah! Hi Dee Dee.
DDW: Hi, I’m just going through my computer. I’m assuming I had
a microphone. Anyway great job! I don’t really have
anything to add to it but I think you just did a fantastic
job.
TP:
All right, thank you.
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DDW: I’m actually, hey Traute, I’m actually wondering, I’ll talk
to Margaret about this, but maybe our next Sustainable Ops
Subcommittee meeting can be right before your graduation
and then we can attend it.
TP:
Great. That’d be fun.
DDW: And that might motivate some more of us to become involved
with [UNINT.].
VK:
Yeah, great job, Traute.
SB:
I believe Virginia was trying to speak too but we can’t, I
didn’t quite hear her.
MOD: Well, she’s on –
VK:
I was just thanking Traute for a great job.
[LAUGHTER]
SB:
Well, Traute, thank you so much, it was wonderful. Oh we do
have one other question. – moderator. Do you want me to
read that one off, Emily?
MOD: Sure.
SB:
Okay, it says, do you have a contact for the Crown of the
Continent group?
TP:
Hmm. I will, if you can send me, I don’t have my email, I
think it’s on that first page of this slide, so if you send
me that request via my email I will put you in touch with
Heather Higinbotham, who is working with, she’s the
coordinator of the UnCommon Sense, and then she could give
you the contacts that we’re working with on the Crown of
the Continent. So if you can send me an email I can
certainly get you there in a roundabout way.
And then I guess I should just tell you what my email is.
It’s T as in Tom, P as in Paul, A-R-R-I-E at F-S dot fed
dot U-S.
SB:
Do we have any other questions?
MOD: I am not seeing any further questions.
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SB:
All right, Traute thank you so much, if you can hang on
with us we might have more questions for you at the end.
All right. I’d like to presents, whoops, there is a
question. I’d like to present our next speaker, Michele
Parker. Michele is also in Alaska so we’re doing a lot of
Alaska today. Michele and I have worked together for quite
a few years in the sustainable operations in the
environmental engineering world so I’m thrilled to have
Michele here to speak to us about the Tongass Dream Green
Team. Phew, that’s tough to say, Michele!
MP:
Thanks, Sarah. As Sarah said, I’m Michele Parker, I’m an
environmental engineer on the Tongass National Forest.
We’re also part of the Sustainable Operations Collective
and I serve as board staff for Region 10. The picture you
see there is our Southeast Alaska Discovery Center, and
that’s one of our high performance sustainable buildings.
So next slide, Sarah.
So let’s meet the Tongass Green Team. Our Green Team is a
central part of the forest sustainability leadership. We’re
composed of dedicated employees from all organizational and
departmental roles. We began in 2007 and were chartered in
2009 by leadership. And there you can see a picture of our
two co-chairs and Michelle who you heard, from Laura, in
the first presentation, is one of our co-chairs. Next
slide, please?
So our Tongass Green Team charter, we have a vision and a
purpose. The Green Team strives to promote sustainable
operations and employees day to day activities, and to help
change their behaviors. We do this through an annual action
plan that’s developed by the Green Team and approved by our
leadership. And we do this because remember actions lead to
changes in attitudes, which then lead to changes in
behaviors. So the Team is composed of representatives from
each district. We have 10 districts on the Forest, and
members can charge up to 5% of their time using their
primary purpose job code. We form committees to work on the
different action plan items, and we meet consistently, the
second Thursday of each month, from 11 until noon. Our
charter is good for three years. It was just re-signed this
summer. It’s signed by our forest supervisor and we send it
out to all Tongass employees, and it’s posted on our Green
Team web page also. Next slide please.
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So our Green Team composition: we have a leadership team
liaison; we also have a liaison with our climate change
coordinator; we have the two co-chairs; and then we have
numerous other members from each district and supervisor’s
office. And we also have some specialty members like energy
managers and public affairs specialist. Next slide.
So this discusses some of our Green Team roles. We try and
build organizational capacity, communicate the sustainable
vision internally and externally. We work with local
schools and communities to communicate sustainability
goals. In 2010 we established the first adopt-a-school in
Alaska, with the Petersburg school district, to help
enhance students’, teachers’ and the community’s connection
to their national forest. And we have a community garden
there. As I said earlier we create an action plan and
report annually on sustainable operation accomplishments.
And we also provide updates at monthly safety meetings, at
leadership team meetings, and we inform the new and
seasonal employees about sustainable operations. We also
promote “power it down” days and sustainability challenges.
Next slide.
So this is an example of our Climate Change Scorecard
Element Number 10 action plan, which is just specific to
the Climate Change Scorecard Element Number 10. And it’s
broken down into the six different footprint areas. We have
responsible parties with a lot of Green Team assistance to
help make sure that we accomplish those items. And there
are 66 different items, and we pick which ones we’re going
to accomplish each fiscal year. Next slide, Sarah?
We also track our sustainable operation actions through the
Top Ten Sustainable Actions letter, and this just shows
where we are at, the ones that we checked and the other
ones that we still needed to work on. Next slide.
And we use LISO, Leadership in Sustainable Operations. LISO
is an online platform for employs to post or view
sustainable operation projects. And they can do this
through either self reporting or entering or viewing
success stories. And the Tongass used LISO to respond to
the Climate Change Scorecard Element Number 10, we use the
LISO report, we got a 79% on that. And we also, we got a
silver for each of the six different footprint areas. So we
find LISO to be a really great tool to help track where
we’re at. Next slide, Sarah?
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So why is our Green Team effective? Well, I think from
three different words: collaboration, communication and
implementation. Next slide.
So we collaborate with facility engineers, energy managers,
fleet and aviation managers, purchasing agents, contracting
officers, also the Tongass leadership, the regional
leadership. We, the co-chairs try and meet monthly with the
regional office Green Team, and then we meet quarterly with
all of Region 10 Green Teams. And we’re also part of the
Sustainable Operations Collective, we joined in 2010. Next
slide.
And then communication, like Laura said, communication,
communication. We have lots of educational documents that
we have produced. The first one on the left is a statement
of sustainable operation practices, and this was adopted,
it was produced by the Green Team and then adopted by our
leadership team, and it just discusses basic things like
turning off your lights, computers, thinking before you
print, printing double sided, recycling. The second
document is our first environmental footprint report, and
this discusses the six different footprint areas. It
establishes the Tongass baseline and discusses our
successes and how we want to move forward. We were part of
the EPA Climate Leaders program and completed our first
greenhouse gas inventory in fiscal year ’07. We were part
of that with the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee
also. And then the third document is our second
environmental footprint report, which we’re currently
working on, and we’ve been compiling our fiscal year ’11
greenhouse gas inventory using the GSA carbon footprint
tool. Next slide please.
The more communication, just like the Sustainable
Operations Collective has a tag line, “creating habits
today, conserving resources tomorrow,” the Tongass Green
Team has a tag line: “Putting sustainability first in the
last frontier.” And we try and use branding, the same color
scheme, the same look and feel for all of our documents
produced by the Green Team. And the first one we did was
the “why should I care about sustainability?” and we try
and model the other ones after that. The one on the right
is, “Go with 100% post-content recycled paper.” We have
numerous one to two page fact sheets like that, and we also
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have lots of trainings. The one in the middle is one that
we just developed, it’s a sustainable operations training
for managers, and it’s a real comprehensive tool that tries
to include all of our different fact sheets and training by
the footprint areas. Managers can take this training to
help the Tongass achieve its sustainability goals, to
reduce our environmental footprint, and to help lead us to
more sustainable operation. And this training is a pilot
project that can be adopted to any unit. Next slide.
So we have our monthly training topics that we use at our
safety meetings, and we follow the same footprint focus
areas as the Sustainable Operations Collective does. And so
that we have a consistent message each month. Next slide,
Sarah.
And last, implementation. We form interdisciplinary teams
to meet, [spawn], implement and track the results of our
action plan, and that’s really essential to our success.
Next slide, Sarah.
So speaking of successes, here are some of the green,
Tongass Green Team successes for fiscal year ’12. We
commissioned advanced electrical meters at all of our six
covered facilities, and we’re in the process of also
installing water meters. And this will help us to
comprehensively track energy and water usage, and will
allow us to have real-time usage data from anywhere that we
can get viewing by a web site. We also have completed
energy and water audits, since 2009 we’ve done 20% of our
facilities. And during the 2011 the audits showed lots of
different things like insulating hot water pipes, upgrading
damaged or outdated ductwork, installing digital
thermostats with setbacks, upgrading lighting. And if we
implemented all of those, energy savings would be reduced
by 22% and we’d achieve a savings of over $275,000 per
year.
We also train employees monthly, like we just talked, I
just talked about. And also have a new employee orientation
each spring. The Tongass Green Team developed sustainable
operations awards, just this fall, and we also try and have
sustainability challenges, like Power It Down, our Wrangell
Ranger District just entered the federal Green Challenge
program, and – next slide.
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We’re also going to do this “Get Your Green On Summit, Mt
Edgecumbe Footprint Reduction Contest.” This is going to
run starting on Earth Day, April 22nd for approximately six
weeks until May 31st. This is a new contest on the Tongass
to change habits and increase awareness and encourage the
adoption of green activities on a daily basis. Weekly and
one-time green actions will earn employees an elevation
gain, and we’re going to offer a $500 micro grant to the
unit that has the most participation and also prizes to the
first 50 employees to reach the summit. Next slide.
So we also try and communicate all of our successes. To
encourage sustainable practices we provide updates at staff
meetings. We post information such as the “Get Your Green
On” tips, the weekly sustainable operation tips. We post
them at the bulletin boards, we have a lot of, in each
office, a Green Team bulletin board, and those are also
incorporated into both our regions and forest regular
communications, and the “People, Places and Things”
newsletter. Also in our region we have Sourdough News, and
in there we have a sustainability series. And [last] we
share updates and highlight our successes to both the
regional leadership team and the Tongass leadership team.
And last slide, Sarah.
Plus the Tongass Green Team web site for more information
and my phone number and email and if there are any
questions now I’d be happy to take them.
MOD: Once again, if you’d like to ask a question, you can dial
*1 on your phone, you can use the raise hand button on the
top left, or you can send a note to presenters. And we have
a raised hand, one moment. Go ahead, Lis.
FV:
Hello. We have, we’ve had a pretty active Green Team on the
Beaverhead-Deerlodge but one of the things that we struggle
with is maintaining enthusiasm and getting people to
participate. What do you, it sounds like you guys have a
really good program. What do you do to engage coworkers?
MP:
Well I think it helps if you have somebody from leadership
who also attends. And we have had issues with employees not
attending at times. And so we try and encourage new
employees to also participate. It seems like we have a flux
of employees who stick with it. Sometimes they no longer
participate or they move on. So we just try and make sure
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that we keep it in the forefront so employees know that
it’s an option to them.
FV:
Thank you.
TP:
Hello, this is Traute, I might respond to the same thing.
Obviously with me being in the District Ranger role and in
order for us to exceed in that UnCommon Sense program with
all eight modules over two years, we did have to assign
Green Teams membership for – you know, it was a matter of,
there’s certain employees that it’s a natural fit. And
there are some that had a passion for it. But they all got
assignments. And it does help to have me attending the
meetings, I think, because then it gives it a little bit of
maybe gravitas. So I think it, that’s where that
accountability piece in the Uncommon Sense program I think
has been kind of valuable. And the support, you know, the
support of our FLT in, you know, it costs money to go to
UnCommon Sense, and they wanted to hear the rationale for
why we were going to join and what we thought the district
would get out of it. But, and they’re totally on board and
we report back to our forest leadership team as well. So
all those things kind of contribute.
MP:
Yeah, I agree, we try and have employees volunteer who are
passionate and interested in it, but if we don’t get them
from a district then the District Ranger will appoint
someone.
SB:
I’d like to ask a question if I may, Michele.
MP:
Sure, Sarah.
SB:
Good! Do you have participation across the staff? You said
you have participation from all the units, but is it mostly
engineers, do you have others?
MP:
It’s not mainly engineers, it’s all different disciplines
and so we have employees from the districts and the
different supervisor offices. And we have staff officers
and a couple rangers who participate as well.
SB:
Excellent, thank you.
TP:
For us it was a big deal to get our fire staff involved,
because they do have, at least when you have a project fire
on your unit, that really contributes to the footprint and
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so it’s been pretty helpful to have our fire staff engaged,
and they’re very innovative.
MP:
Great.
SB:
Any other questions out there? This is your opportunity.
MOD: Once again, that’s the raised hand button, *1 on your
phone, or send note button. And we do have a couple more
raised hands. Natalie, you can go ahead.
NL:
All right, this is [Natalie Little] in R4, and I haven’t
been on the Green Team here in this region, but I’ve been
assigned to be the R4 Green Team lead. So it’s like a big
thing I’m wrapping my head around. Something that was
curious too, this 5% of people’s time, so you’re saying all
Green Team members can charge up to 5% of their time? And
is that tracked? Is it in a different job code? And –
MP:
-- oh, go ahead. Was there another part to the question?
NL:
Well I guess, is all, is your leadership really strongly on
board with that 5%.
MP:
Yes, our leadership is on board with that 5%. The co-chairs
have a special job code that they can charge to, and then
the other employees can charge up to 5% using their primary
purpose job code. So it is not a different job code. And
part of our success is the leadership support, from Beth
Pendleton, our Region Forester, Bruce Monahan, the Deputy,
Wayne Owen, our Climate Change Coordinator, to our Forest
Supervisor, Forrest Cole.
NL:
And is that for all members, or all districts? S.O. for all
levels? Can charge 5%?
MP:
It is, it is. They don’t all fall in monthly or, you know,
there’s only probably a handful of Green Team employees who
work on the different action items, so who are charging
very much time. You know, we meet an hour monthly to share
what’s going on at their unit, and also nationally and from
the region and forests so that it’s a two way
communication.
NL:
Okay great, thank you.
MP:
Sure!
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SB:
And it’s, if I can add to that, this is Sarah Baker,
Natalie I know that we’ve done that same thing here, and
part of that effort is to sit down with the supervisor and
the employee and define how much time they’re going to
commit at the most, because it’s sustainable operations is
something that really does tap into people’s enthusiasm.
And if you get somebody who really wants to get a lot done
they may end getting swept away if they haven’t made that
agreement ahead of time.
NL:
Okay, thanks.
MOD: We have another question. Go ahead, Kelly.
FV:
How do you fund most of your projects? Where does the
funding come from?
MP:
We have sustainability job – work plans that are composed
of different job codes based on direct charges of the
employee. So we have like 18 different job codes in these
two sustainability work plans. And we can fund our projects
through that. We also fund them through facilities. If
they’re for the buildings, then we have facilities job
codes. So we have a variety. But we do have funding, so
that’s really nice, because when we conduct our energy and
water audits, we have a report that comes out of the, with
a lot of different environmental conservation measures that
are recommended, like I talked about, if we did so many
things we could save over $275,000 annually. So we are, we
are able to fund some of those projects and that helps too.
FV:
So you basically have proven the effectiveness and then
it’s gained more money to be used again.
MP:
Yup.
FV:
Okay. Now with that, I’m just a, basically I’m a front desk
person at our supervisor’s office, but is that something
that basically starts through engineering? On the
engineering side of that to plan that money for their work
budget? Or, for their work plan?
MP:
It only does for the facility part of it, is through
engineering, then I coordinate with the facility engineers
and the energy managers. The other, the direct charges, all
those different job codes depend on how many employees we
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have in timber, how many in engineering, how many in
different resources. And then those job codes are
contributed to this bigger work plan for sustainability
operations, and also our climate change coordinators are
funded through there. So it wouldn’t, it doesn’t
necessarily come through engineering, it’s something that
leadership developed.
FV:
Okay. Thank you so much.
MP:
Sure.
MOD: I am not seeing any further questions at this time.
SB:
Okay. I’d like to thank Michele, I know that the Michele
and Michelle power team up there on the Tongass has just
done some amazing things, so I encourage people to get in
touch with them if you have questions. I plan to get back
in touch with Michele about more of your publications. Some
of them I haven’t seen yet. So thank you very much for
doing that.
MP:
Oh, you’re welcome.
SB:
And if we don’t have any other questions I’d like to share
with you also, with all of you, the upcoming learning
opportunities, we have an open mic that’s on, what is it,
the third Wednesday, am I getting that right? Of every
month? This one’s December 19th, we’ll be talking about
sustainability leadership, and we’ll have a round robin,
then we’ll have our next peer learning webinar event on
January the 9th. Also want to let people know that the FY
’13 peer learning series was finalized as of yesterday and
we’ll be sending out the link with that when we send out
the recording for this session. And if we don’t have any
opportunity – any other questions, still none?
MOD: No further questions.
SB:
All right. I’d like to thank Traute and Michele and Laura
even though she’s not here right now, I’d like to thank you
all so much for sharing your experience with us. There’s so
much we can all learn from you. And I want to let everybody
know that I believe Katie Newcomb will be back for the next
series, I’m just thrilled that she asked me to take her
place as the host for today. So this is something I’m
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really interested in hearing more about. So thank you and
thank you to all who shared the call with us.