CCAA Member Spotlight
George Lorefice
George Lorefice’s passion for the environment began through his career in biology. Lorefice worked in freshwater biology, microbiology and other roles throughout his career, and it was that passion for science that drove his interest in the environment and climate change.
Lorefice decided to take the CNY Carbon Challenge, which was launched by CCAA earlier this year. The Carbon Challenge is a seven-step process where people evaluate their carbon footprint and then work through different ways to reduce it. Lorefice credits Annalena Davis for laying out the challenge in a simple way, which he said made it easier for him to complete. While it felt a bit overwhelming at times, Lorefice is glad he decided to go through with the challenge because it forced him to reflect on his lifestyle.
“I felt kind of guilty not doing everything to the tee as it was laid out, but the important thing with that is that it lays out a program that makes you realize what your carbon footprint is,” Lorefice said. “It makes you look at your lifestyle. It gives you places where you can reduce your carbon footprint.”
The first step for Lorefice was to calculate his carbon footprint. So, he checked the number of miles he drove in his car, logged his most recent grocery bill and had an energy audit done on his house. After seeing his initial footprint, he decided to replace almost all of his lights in the house to LED and is currently figuring out how to do the same thing in his workshop. That may not seem like much, but LED lights use 75% less energy than incandescent lighting.
Lorefice is also planning for more eco-friendly changes with his car. Currently, he and his wife have two cars, a hybrid and a gas car, but he said when the time comes to upgrade, they’ll swap the hybrid for a plug-in or electric vehicle and change the gas car to a hybrid.
With cars being expensive and people possibly having relatively new cars, it can be tough to make that change. Similarly installing solar panels on your house may be out of some residents’ budgets. However, Lorefice found a solution to that problem by buying into community solar.
Community solar works like a subscription service. Users, like Lorefice, can subscribe to a solar or wind farm and when the system is up and running, the company will put that energy into the national grid. Residents won’t get that energy directly, but the utility companies will calculate the amount of energy produced by the farm in residents’ names and give them credit on their utility bill. That credit will lower your monthly energy bill and in Lorefice’s case, the company guaranteed that his bills would be 10% lower than National Grid and other companies.
“According to statistics, it shows that your carbon footprint is reduced, just as much by buying into community solar, as it is putting your own panels on,” Lorefice said. “The nice thing with community solar is I don’t have to do a capital investment of solar panels and any maintenance involved in it.”
Lorefice will not only reduce his carbon footprint but will also save money by switching to community solar. As he worked through the Carbon Challenge, Lorefice started researching how much it would cost to switch his furnace to a heat pump. That planning served him well as a recent thunderstorm flooded his basement and damaged his hot water tank and furnace. Lorefice replaced the hot water tank with a high efficiency power vent gas and is looking to replace the broken furnace with a high efficiency furnace or heat pump.
With all those changes to his house, Lorefice also changed his lifestyle to eat less meat, as meat is a large contributor to carbon emissions. But more than anything, he said that the awareness of the impact his everyday actions have on the environment was the most important aspect of the challenge.
“If nothing more it made people aware of their lifestyles and what they can do to cut the carbon,” Lorefice said.
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