Saving Energy, Improving Lives

Nothing connects the local to the global like the urgency of climate change. Since 1993, ISC has worked in Russia to help local communities develop programs and technologies that cut pollution, increase energy efficiency, and reduce emissions.

During those years, government and corporate leaders around the world have come to realize the reality and threat of climate change and the importance of addressing it at every level: from the individual to the community, from the national to the global.

But ISC's work in Russia also demonstrates that the climate change crisis is an opportunity to listen to communities and help them adopt cleaner, cheaper, more efficient energy policies and technologies, tailored to their needs, yet crafted to serve as models.

Because the scale of ISC programs in Russia is human and local, we can see and measure results in the freer breathing of an asthmatic child after coal burning declines; in the warmth and lower costs at a veteran's home fitted with energy efficient windows; in the ripple effect when teenagers become community organizers.

Each of these grassroots efforts also makes a concrete contribution to the growing global effort to curb and reverse climate change by saving resources, reducing emissions, and a leaving a smaller carbon footprint.

Some of the impact is quantifiable: In Pushchino, set on a high hill 60 miles south of Moscow, poorly insulated walls and leaky windows were no match for winter winds and minus 30 degree temperatures. In this town overlooking a tributary of the Volga River, ISC's program hired local teenagers who monitored temperatures in multi-storied buildings throughout the city and improved the energy efficiency of 180 doorways in 45 buildings. So far, the youth brigades have winterized the apartments of 150 pensioners, WW II veterans, and people with disabilities. They have reduced electricity use by nearly 130,000 kilowatt-hours and saved residents about $50 per apartment, about half their monthly pensions.

The Pushchino program is part of a ten-city initiative that will benefit more than 600,000 Russians and reduce energy use by 35 percent. Each community will save $100,000 and will reinvest most of it in social, environmental, or economic projects.

• In Russia's Far East town of Korsakovo, near the Chinese border, we helped the municipality replace the heating system at an orphanage, cutting energy consumption by 58 percent and giving the children their first steady supply of hot water.
• Our project in Nevyansky cut natural gas consumption by 230,000 cubic meters, and lowered carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by 20 percent. Some 75 officials and 150 volunteers participated.
• Near Moscow in Nizhny Novgorod, we converted a school boiler from coal to natural gas and lowered emission 18 times over. Improvements in air and water quality boosted tourism.
• After our project to install 36 energy efficient windows and renovate roofs in Primorski at a kindergarten and school, this Siberian town saw savings of 200 cubic meters of firewood, 230,000 kilowatt-hours of power and $21,000 a year. The project inspired students and parents alike to become involved.

While the numbers are impressive and the effect on global warming is clear, the key to ISC'S enduring success in Russia lies in creating a different kind of climate change. It comes from changing the political and social climate to one in which citizens know that they can effect change by working in coordination with NGOs, government, business, and most importantly, each other.

In Pushchino, for example, "Something else happened that we didn't expect," said ISC Project Leader Svetlana Davydenkova. "After the kids would finish their work winterizing the windows, they would stay on and help the elderly with their household chores, and sometimes just keep them company." Inspired by the experience, the teens went on to develop their own initiatives to help disadvantaged community members. And when Lev Bykhovetsky and Yevgenia Tokareva, participants in ISC's Pushchino program, presented their results to a Children's Environmental Assembly, they passed a successful model to others.

Hundreds of miles from Pushchino, in the Russian republic of Buryati, ISC tailored its projects to different local needs. In the Lake Baikal town of Barguzinsky, known as the Mongolian ancestral homeland, a staggering 93 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. After consulting with citizens, local government, NGOs, and businesses, ISC helped the community substitute cleaner natural gas for emission-heavy gasoline and to use waste wood instead of coal. The efficiency projects reduced power consumption by 363,000 kilowatt-hours and coal use by 1,015 tons; it created 14 jobs and saved $48,300, most of which has been reinvested in social projects.

By beginning with needs at the grassroots, and integrating business, NGOs, and government, ISC has initiated 427 environmental projects in Russia. A local nonprofit and our partner on this project, the Fund for Sustainable Development, continues this work today, and we're now working on bringing the model to China. Each of these efforts is a small step in the global effort to counter climate change.

Each is also a significant investment in communities that have learn first-hand that change is possible and social projects are worthwhile. Some of the savings in the Lake Baikal town of Usti-Barguzin, for example went to creating energy efficiency and heating system repairs at village's medical center and house of culture. The benefits to the town's 7,000 citizens are being replicated throughout the region in projects designed with local input and tailored to meet specific needs. Further east along the trans-Siberian railway, in Khabarovski Krai, where Russia meets the Sea of Japan, ISC helped decrease a prison's coal consumption by 21 metric tons a year, cutting ash and solid waste, and slashing power consumption by 5,536 kilowatt-hours. The energy savings inspired the town administration to invest $2.2 million in weatherizing all the city's schools.

Many now recognize that impacts of wasteful energy policies circulates the globe with the increasing speed—and that, given the scope of the problem, action at the community level is critical to creating the groundswell of support and momentum needed to halt climate change. And the impact of programs that cut pollution and wasteful energy use—even in a remote community in Russia or China, where we are beginning to work—also spread. The grassroots examples we provide of one orphanage winterized here and coal consumption cut there give communities the chance to create a political, economic, and social climate that is a model for hope and a change for the better.