As one of the country’s highest producers of carbon emissions, health care has a special responsibility in helping solve the ongoing climate crisis. What opportunities exist for health systems to make immediate improvements to their carbon footprint, and how can they set themselves up for a sustainable future?
As one of the country’s highest producers of carbon emissions, health care has a special responsibility in helping solve the ongoing climate crisis. What opportunities exist for health systems to make immediate improvements to their carbon footprint, and how can they set themselves up for a sustainable future?
Dan Misleh, co-founder of the Catholic Climate Covenant, joins Health Calls to talk about the many partnerships his organization is rallying around. He highlights the non-profit’s Catholic Energies program, lists the financial benefits of making sustainable changes, and encourages Catholic health providers to think about how climate action can be a way to live out their mission.
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| This transcript was exported on Oct 11, 2024 - view latest version here. |
Brian Reardon (00:08):
Welcome to Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. I'm your host, Brian Reardon, and joining me is our producer, Josh Matejka. Hey, Josh.
Josh Matejka (00:18):
Hey, it's Brian. How you doing?
Brian Reardon (00:19):
Good. We're going to talk to Dan Misleh here in just a minute. He's with the Catholic Climate Covenant, and we'll bring Dan in to talk about the topic of energy Technologies for climate action. This is a topic that fits with our theme for this season of technology and humanity. So I guess, Josh, to kind of set the stage here we are coming to the end of the season of creation that culminates with the Feast of St. Francis, which was just a couple of days ago. Why did you think it was important as we were developing the various episodes to have a discussion about climate change? When we talk about technology and humanity and Catholic healthcare?
Josh Matejka (00:55):
Well, I mean climate change and the impacts that it's having on society, I think anybody who's listened to health calls knows that this is a topic that is very familiar with our show. We've done a lot of episodes about climate change and why Catholic healthcare should be proactive in fighting climate action and fighting for people who are suffering the effects of climate action. We've spoken with several of our members who are doing wonderful work and not only trying to be carbon neutral, but carbon negative in their work, which I think is really, really cool that we're seeing Catholic healthcare caregivers kind of on the front lines of that. But ultimately, when we talk about technology, I think it comes back to a question of responsibility and trying not to be irresponsible. When Pope Francis released La Deum, one of the first things he said in that exhortation was climate change is a global social issue and one intimately related to the dignity of human life.
(01:49):
And ultimately, the dignity of all peoples is one of our core principles that we come back to. And as we talk about technology and the way that it's continuingly infiltrating our everyday life, it intersects with a lot of things that I think we really care about. If I could, just a few statistics and notes to kind of ground our conversation. I mean, in Spring 2023, the National Institute of Health reported that US healthcare produces 8% of the nation's carbon emissions. That's a stat we've listed here on the show before. And when it comes to emerging technologies, specifically ai, we've talked a lot about how that has become a part of our daily lives back. Even before we were seeing it in 2022 and 2023, the earliest adopters of AI technology were fossil fuel companies, and they were looking to increase oil barrel production.
(02:39):
And then another stat that I found was a single gen AI query online. So something like chat, GPT, some studies have shown it can have a carbon footprint up to four to five times out of a regular search engine. And when you start to scale that out in March, 2023 alone chat, GPT had over 1.5 billion unique visits. So when you start, do the math on that, we're looking at quite the carbon footprint just for generative ai, the basic stuff like chat, GBT. So when we expand that out to all emerging technologies, I think it is imperative that Catholic healthcare, again, we keep coming back to this idea of being reactive versus proactive. It's important that we be proactive on this issue because it's something that, I mean, we're starting to see the impacts of it, and we have been seeing the impacts of it in the last few years. So I'm excited to welcome Dan onto the show and talk about what Catholic Climate Covenant is doing and what their partners are doing to fight the impacts of climate change.
Brian Reardon (03:33):
No, really good background. And I think too, we need to recognize that as we're recording this, there is a second Hurricane Milton gathering strength in the Gulf. We don't know what impact that's going to have here in the days ahead, but again, our thoughts and prayers really go out to those folks that are in the path of it. And we have, again, healthcare is affected. I was just reading yesterday about how many hospitals are evacuating, long-term care facilities are evacuating. So climate change, it's not just real. It is having devastating impacts on humanity. And I think the conversation we want to have with Dan here is what are some proactive things like you said we can do to counterbalance that to do our part? So let me bring in again, Dan Misleh, he's founder of the Catholic Climate Covenant. Dan, thanks for joining us today.
Dan Misleh (04:20):
Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Brian Reardon (04:21):
So Dan, let's start, I guess by, could you tell us a little bit about the Catholic Climate Covenant, its origins and what type of work you do there?
Dan Misleh (04:30):
Yeah, so it started in 2006. I had been working at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and began to become concerned about the issue of climate change. So my boss at the time, and a funder came to me and said, why don't you start this organization outside the USCCB, but connected to the USCCB and help people understand and act on the issue of climate change. So five years prior to that, in 2001, the bishops had written a statement on global warming, on climate change, and too few people knew about it. So my job was to help more Catholics nationally begin to understand what climate is and what Catholic teaching has to say about it.
Brian Reardon (05:14):
And Josh, I think did a nice job of summarizing the impact that fossil fuels have. I mean, I don't think there's any scientific debate among reasonable people that man-made contributions, particularly around fossil fuels, are what's causing the planet to warm up and causing things like hurricanes to become stronger. All the issues that we could talk about in any given week. One of the initiatives that I think came to our attention as we were preparing for this episode was Catholic energies. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I think that's an interesting component of the work you're doing.
Dan Misleh (05:49):
Yeah, it's one of our best programs. I think I'm saying that very modestly, but it began in about the same time that Lato Sea came out, which was 2015, the Popes and Cyclical on the environment, and it really was an attempt to try to help Catholic building owners. So these would be parishes and schools, healthcare, men and women, religious communities, and their facilities. We try to give them a practical thing to do to reduce their emissions, to save money and to be a witness to the wider community. So we thought that if we could develop a program that could help them do that, it also makes it much easier for a pastor, a principal, an administrator, to talk about Catholic teaching on the environment. So in other words, we kind of backdoor the teaching. If they're not open to it because of whatever reason, they don't think that it's a big concern.
(06:49):
There's no Catholic teaching on it. What we're saying is there is Catholic teaching on it, but if you don't want to talk about it because you might see it as a divisive issue, let us at least help you reduce your energy, reduce your costs, and then you can use that as an example of Laudato Si what Pope Francis, Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul II have been talking about. Well, going back to Genesis, really. So that was the initiative that we began. We had our first project, it was a solar project, come online in 2019, and we've now done solar projects in, I believe 15 states and Puerto Rico. We've done about 35 projects around the country for diocese, for men and women, religious communities. So it's been quite a successful program for us.
Brian Reardon (07:39):
And how do people, walk us through a little bit of how they learn about it. How would they sign up? What are some of the, I guess, practical ways, if I'm, again, maybe let's say a small hospital in a rural part of the country, and I just heard about Catholic Energies, what would you tell them to introduce them and what type of benefits could they see?
Dan Misleh (07:57):
Sure. So Catholic Energy's website, Catholic energies.org is where you want to go. We have a company that runs it for us called mission.energy. So Mission Energy is the website for them. And what we'll do is we'll start a conversation, where is your building? What's the potential for solar? So we do all of this work ahead of time. We look at the building, we look at your 12 months of bills to see what's paying for utilities, what the time of use. So in other words, energy tends to be more expensive during the day than in the evening. We'll look at all of that. Then we'll look at to see if there are state incentives to see if there's net metering allowed, which means that if you overproduce the utility and we will buy it back. So we'll do all of this work upfront, sort of model a potential system for the facility, and then we'll also find the funding if that's required. And we'll say very clearly, you can put solar anywhere, but in some places in the country, it's going to be more expensive than not, so you won't be saving money. However, we'll be able to tell you that right upfront, financially this makes sense financially it doesn't make sense, but if it does make sense financially, then we'll again begin to model that for you. We'll go out and do bids on the project for solar installers, we'll find the financing if that's needed, and we will bring it to commissioning, and then you're off to the races.
Brian Reardon (09:30):
So it's really, it's a consultation essentially.
Dan Misleh (09:32):
It's really a solar development service for the Catholic community, is probably the better way to put it.
Brian Reardon (09:36):
Okay. Yeah, no, and I think that's a good point because all these different renewable energy options, I know wind turbines work well in some areas and don't in others, so I think it's interesting to look at what is the best fit depending on where you're located.
Dan Misleh (09:48):
That's right. And we're also seeing more and more places want backup, so battery backups, and we've even done some projects. So Mission Energy works mostly for us, but they also do other nonprofits. And I know they've worked with the Red Cross, for example, in Northern California where they're very fire prone. So they would put solar on the facility, and then they would have a battery backup system, and then they would have another backup system, which would typically be a generator to charge the batteries back up if the electricity is out for an extended period of time and the batteries run dry. So we've had some experience doing those types of projects as well. And that's particularly critical, as you know, to have energy backup systems for healthcare, for long-term care facilities and hospitals and such,
Brian Reardon (10:38):
Especially with all the natural disasters that seem to be coming with much more frequency. Let's talk costs. So we know that investing in solar energy, for example, there are some upfront costs. What would you say to, again, a Catholic healthcare provider and maybe one with limited resources that may be new to this and saying, I just can't afford it, they may not think that the investment is worth the return. What do you do to walk people through that and explain how those investments can pay off? I guess, first from a financial perspective, and then of course from a social responsibility perspective as well.
Dan Misleh (11:10):
Sure. Well, I would probably divide it into two lumps of activities. One would be the really expensive stuff replacing the HVAC system. If it goes belly up, there's nothing you can do about that. You're going to have to raise the money, you're going to have to find the capital to do that. But there's a lot of things that can be done that are much short term in terms of getting your investment back. So for example, most people have done this by this point, but if they haven't, do an LED retrofit, LED lights use much, much less electricity. As an example, my own parish here in Maryland, the pastor asked me to do an LED project for the school and the parish. So we replaced all of the lighting fixtures with LEDs. The school is now saving $6,000 a year on their electric bill. I encouraged the pastor to set that money aside once they paid that back.
(12:05):
So what happened was the utility actually allowed them to pay back the cost of that retrofit on the bill. So for a little over two years, they paid the same amount that they were paying before the LED retrofit. But once they paid off the capital cost of that LED retrofit in two years, then they realized all the savings themselves, and that was about $6,000 a year. So I said, put that money aside and fund the next energy project. Maybe it's controls for the rooms, like motion detector switches, maybe it's controls for the vents that if the classroom is not being used, there's no sense in heating and cooling it. So you can do those types of things and then that gets paid back. Hopefully the $6,000 will cover the cost of that, but if it doesn't, again, the energy savings will pay that back. Bottom line is I would encourage people to look at the easy things first.
(12:59):
Sealing up doors and windows, doing LED retrofits, doing other types of controls, using that savings to fund the next project, and basically have an in-house green revolving fund that you can use. When we come to the big capital expenses, perhaps at that time with the green revolving fund, there's enough in there to maybe be able to consider the next or the most highly efficient HVAC system. You could pay for the cost differential between that and say a not so efficient system with that savings. So there's all kinds of ways to do this. There's also a lot of incentives to do it. When we did the LED retrofit for the parish, for example, the local utility covered 70% of that cost, so we only had to finance 30% of that. So there's a lot of incentives out there, and I encourage people to look for those.
Brian Reardon (13:51):
And it sounds like utilities are a good place to start. Are there other local partnerships that you might offer in the way of, I guess, tips on how to approach this work?
Dan Misleh (14:01):
Yeah, I mean, there's a great website out there called Desire D-S-I-R-E, which lists all of the incentives that would be available very locally. It does it by zip code. So for example, in a community, you may have utility incentives that would help pay for some of that stuff. You might have a state that has a renewable energy portfolio standard, which forces the utility to provide more renewable energy and energy efficiency projects so that there's less strain on the grid and less burning of fossil fuels. So there's all kinds of incentives. I would also look to universities, if there's a Catholic university within reach of the healthcare system, talk to them. They have engineering schools. Students would love to be able to analyze buildings as a very practical thing to do. We're doing that exact thing with Catholic University right now. We have a program with them where we're helping the Archdiocese of Newark with going net zero on some of their buildings. So there's all kinds of opportunities to partner with
Brian Reardon (15:06):
People. Any other just general advice specifically for Catholic healthcare of areas they should be looking at or considering to, again, get support to do more environmental sustainability projects.
Dan Misleh (15:20):
I guess among the things that I mentioned, I think those are all good. But the other thing to think about is that this is, this is a question of faith. How are we living our faith? How are we appreciating God's creation? So I know that there are plenty of things out there. We can do education, we can do community resiliency planning, for example, so that healthcare is ready when a storm hits or when there's a fire or a hurricane. Helene wipes out most of Western North Carolina. So we have to be prepared for that. But we also just have to recognize that the more we can reduce harmful emissions in our electric grid and our utility grid, the better chance we have of stemming some of these horrific, more intense weather related events. So I think that we have to do this as a matter of faith, not as a matter of science, even though it is science and it's a matter of living up to who we are and our values as a Catholic community.
Brian Reardon (16:21):
And it's recognized that if we all do our part, we can't have an impact.
Dan Misleh (16:24):
We can. Absolutely.
Brian Reardon (16:25):
Well, so the last question actually, lemme bring in Josh, because I know Josh, we've been talking about again, emerging technologies. Josh, anything you want to ask as we'll wrap this up?
Josh Matejka (16:34):
Yeah, Dan, thanks so much for all of the practical wisdom you brought here. One of the things that I'm really appreciative about Catholic Climate Covenant is the level of partnership that y'all bring to this space and the way that you can promote other people's work, and you almost act as a sounding board for all these great projects that are going on. Would you have any other partnerships or any other organizations that do great work in this space that you'd be willing to share with us in our listeners?
Dan Misleh (17:00):
Yeah, I would recommend that people look at the website called Drawdown, D-R-A-W-D-O-W-N. It's a website that lists dozens of ways to tackle the issue of climate change from energy efficiency, things that we've talked about to sustainable agriculture, how we manage waste, the different types of renewable energy options that are out there. So I mean, I think there's a lot of ways to do this. I don't have all of those at my fingertips, but there are plenty of resources out there to be able to tap into. But again, the other thing that I would say as Catholics, we need also to examine our lifestyles.
(17:45):
We're no longer privileged to be able just buy whatever we want, use whatever we want, not recycle, not do all of the things that we know we need to do to reduce the impact and the amount of emissions. So I think all of those things need to be done, and we need to be very creative about how we are living our lives and how we are purposefully living the gospel of caring for God's good gift of creation, including spending time outdoors and beginning to understand the magnificence of this creation that God has given to us,
Brian Reardon (18:27):
And that really is the connection back to humanity. So that's a great way to end the conversation, really some great practical tips. Dan, thanks for spending time and really providing us with, I think, some useful information that hopefully those listening to this episode can take and maybe apply in the work that they're doing. And let me just have one more. URL, can you share the URL for the Catholic Climate Covenant so people can visit your site and learn more about what you do?
Dan Misleh (18:52):
Yeah, it's very cleverly called Catholicclimatecovenant.org. So all one word, three words, mushed together, Catholicclimatecovenant.org.
Brian Reardon (19:00):
Yeah. And one other program note, CHA will be hosting a webinar with another organization called Catholic Healthcare Sows Hope and Action for Creation, A Feast of St. Francis webinar that's coming up shortly here, October 29th. It'll be at 1:00 PM Eastern. Again, you'll be able to find a link to that@thechhausa.org website. Dan Misleh, founder of the Catholic Climate Covenant, thanks so much for spending time with us today. Appreciate it.
Dan Misleh (19:25):
You're more than welcome, and thanks for having me.
Brian Reardon (19:27):
And this has been another episode of Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association. I've been your host, Brian Reardon. Our show's executive producer is Josh Matejka with additional production support from the Yvonne Stroder. This episode was engineered by Brian Hartmann at Clayton Studios here in St. Louis, Missouri. You can find health calls on all your favorite podcast apps and services, as well as on our website, chausa.org/podcast. Again, the links that Dan had shared will be also posted on that chausa.org/podcast page. If you enjoy the show, please go ahead and give us a five-star rating. We'd love to hear from you. And as always, thanks for listening.
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