Sustainable Houses of Worship: Converting Religious Institutions Into Beacons of Sustainability

A Report on the Pilot Initiative

Michael Kriegh, RA LEED

In 2010, the Pratt Center for Community Development helped three Bedford-Stuyvesant churches conduct energy audits and retrofits, assess their potential to renovate underutilized space for income and community benefit, and assess the repair needs of their buildings’ shells. This pilot project demonstrates that assisting congregations to upgrade their buildings for energy efficiency will not only reduce the operating costs of the religious institution, thereby freeing up income for services to their communities, it can convert religious institutions into beacons of environmental sustainability, providing leadership to their congregations and surrounding community to engage in energy efficiency and environmental action.

The Pratt Center gives thanks and appreciation to Senator Velmanette Montgomery, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), ConEdison, and New York State Council on the Arts for making this pilot possible, to Friendship Baptist Church, Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church and Siloam Presbyterian Church for the privilege of working with you, and to Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and the NYC Justice Corps for your contributions.

The goals of the initiative were to:

• Create influential examples of environmental stewardship;
• Decrease energy use and cost of the houses of worship, thereby reducing the financial burden of operating these buildings and minimizing their environmental impact;
• Improve underutilized spaces for community purposes, enabling religious institutions to maximize the potential of their buildings for community benefit and income;
• Employ neighborhood residents in projects identified through energy and architectural assessments.

The Pratt Center:

• Organized and paid for energy audits for the three institutions in the pilot program;
• Worked with facilities management staff to facilitate implementation of the recommendations from the energy audits;
• Provided each institution with an assessment of space utilization and suggested strategies to put underutilized space to work to generate income and benefit the community;
• Provided technical assistance on the renovation, refurbishment, and restoration of their buildings;
• Partnered with a workforce program to implement some of the improvements;
• Identified financing strategies and resources for additional building repairs and upgrades.

Findings from the Bedford Stuyvesant Sustainable Houses of Worship Pilot:

• Pratt was able to provide meaningful assistance to the three religious institutions to reduce their operating costs and increase efficiencies. The three participating churches received audits projecting a reduction of their consumption by up to 20 percent, at an average cost of $10,000 and net savings ranging from $7,700 to $13,400 annually. When implemented, these improvements pay for themselves through energy savings in less than two years and often in less than one year.
• The Pratt Center’s assistance enabled religious institutions to take advantage of resources for energy assessments and upgrades available through the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the utility companies, as well as to to influence leadership to engage their congregations and communities to do the same.
• After experiencing the benefits of energy conservation in their buildings, religious leaders were enthusiastic about using their pulpits to promote sustainable action to their congregations and communities.
• Training is needed to support effective building operations. For example, we found expensive and sophisticated boiler control equipment that is bypassed for lack of understanding how it works. Based on site visits to ten religious facilities and inquiries from three other religious institutions, we believe these are common issues.
• Pratt Center can play an important role in helping institutions define appropriate scopes of work and find trustworthy contractors to do their work.
• There is an enormous amount of fallow space in the three participating buildings and other houses of worship we visited that offers potential for community purpose and/or revenue for the religious institution.
• There are insufficient financial resources to address the capital needs of many houses of worship. Large, old buildings require maintenance often not supported by small congregations and there is little public or philanthropic support to fill this gap.
• Generating income from fallow space is a realistic strategy that might help institutions survive and prosper. Despite numerous successful examples of this strategy, it is difficult to secure upfront capital for the needed improvements.
• The refurbishment space within houses of worship provides a potential opportunity to provide job training participants with work experience while reducing costs for the religious institutions.

Conclusions and Recommendations:

• Assisting houses of worship to undertake energy assessments and implement energy-saving improvements helps them reduce operating costs, energy use, and environmental impact, while promoting action toward home energy effiency among their congregations. The initiative also generated workforce opportunities for neighborhood residents.

The Pratt Center suggests the following next steps:

Develop flexible financing models. Such measures could include:

• Creation of a nonprofit energy services company (ESCO) that addresses the specific, idiosyncratic needs of Houses of Worship. ESCOs assume the risk of return on energy conservation measures.
• Creation of a limited on-bill recovery program through a fuel-buying cooperative for houses of worship and other nonprofit community facilities.

Test the market for the redeployment of underutilized space within religious institutions. Pratt Center will explore market demand for interior spaces often laying fallow and in disrepair, with the objective to bring them back into productive use.