Climate Resilience

By Bob Buddemeier

The Complement, Viewpoints, and their contents are not supported or endorsed by, or representative of, the RVM administration or the Residents Council. Opinions expressed are those of the author(s). Discussion is encouraged, either by the ‘’Reply” function at the end of every article, or by submitted letters or articles, which are subject to review and editing.

The RVM Green Team, chaired by Gini Armstrong, has recently begun addressing conservation and sustainability needs and opportunities at RVM. In that process, they have discovered that a consortium of six Portland-area not-for-profit CCRCs (a.k.a. Life Plan Communities) have Green Teams that have been collaborating since 2019. Two of these communities are PRS organizations.

This group has prepared and distributed a document entitled Building Climate Resilience, and another, distributed through Leading Age OR, entitled Seniors Going Green: Resilient Practices for Your Communities. Leading Age is a trade organization of not-for-profit senior care and residential facilities that operates on both the national and the state level.

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to the Building Climate Resilience document:

We focused initially on sustainability because that was the language of the industry… Over time, however, we have become increasingly sobered by the dire warnings from international climate institutions concerning the impacts of unmitigated climate disruption…We think that to be responsible, elder institutions should be forward thinking in light of unknowable but unavoidable climate disruption consequences. Let us cease talking about sustainability and instead develop resilience…As a civilization we have overshot our resources and future generations may have to do with much less.

I believe that both the content and the fact of public distribution of these documents are important, and relevant to RVM and its residents.

The outcomes and duration of the efforts presented in these public Green Team documents illustrate that neither the national organization nor multiple individual institutions (including PRS) consider the topic off-limits for discussion and action by not-for-profits. This should allay the concerns of residents who have feared that discussion of climate change might violate policies of RVM or PRS, or threaten RVM’s not-for-profit status.

The consensus document refers to “…dire warnings from international climate institutions…” That almost certainly refers to mounting evidence that the rate of change of climatic variables has dramatically accelerated over the past decade or more. An excerpt from the 5^th US National Climate Assessment summarizes the expected future climate developments for the Pacific Northwest. These include more frequent, more intense, and more protracted extreme events (heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, wildfires), as well as continuing increases in temperature and sea level. Oregon temperatures have risen by 2.5^oF since 1900, and are projected to increase another 5-10^oF by the 2080s, depending on the amount of greenhouse gas emission. These changes will have both direct and indirect physical and socioeconomic impacts.

Local Issues and Possible Actions

The path to resilience will be determined by the nature of the dominant local threats and the strengths and vulnerabilities of the community. The following sections address threats facing RVM that are serious but potentially manageable and discuss some approaches to developing resilience.

Socioeconomic issues: There are no readily available estimates of effects on Oregon or local areas, However, one analysis estimates that by 2050 climate change will reduce average global income by $38 trillion per year, or about 19% of the total. Added to and partially caused by this will be sociopolitical stresses such as abrupt regime changes, uncontrolled migration, and intra- or international conflict. This cannot fail to have a systematic effect on national and local economies.

RVM is already experiencing financial stresses from rising wages and energy costs – electricity costs have gone up 21% in the last year. These are compounded by difficulties in achieving full occupancy. Although the economy has remained reasonably good, resident resources are largely based on their own or institutional investments, and are likely to suffer in the apparently inevitable economic contraction. In turn, this will reduce the resource base from which RVM meets its operating costs. How will we retain institutional vitality, resident quality of life, and also the ability to recruit our replacements and maintain the community resource base?

One possible way is to transform resident time, talent, and inclinations to volunteer into services and cost-savings at the community level. In the nine years I have been here, residents have become increasingly involved in supporting and organizing activities that serve residents, some of which were formerly supported by employees. This is particularly obvious in, but not limited to, the Wellness and Community Engagement Departments, Marketing, and in the Foundation operations. Over the same period of time, the Advisory Committees have become more effective, and organizations such as the READY Team (formerly Residents Preparedness Group) and the Technical Committee have taken on real responsibilities within the organization.

These developments could be taken much further, with residents providing services that are technically optional, but highly supportive of the quality of life at RVM. Although there are barriers based on laws, policies, and traditions, a systematic planning effort now could eliminate or work around some of these barriers. In addition to meeting economic needs, this integration of community components could greatly strengthen both sense of community and marketing appeal.

Environmental Issues Physical or environmental threats vary in the degree to which they are important in a given locale, and to whether or not they are feasible to address at the local community level. For RVM, sea level rise and direct flood impacts are in the former category. Loss or major reduction of regional water supply usually can’t be replaced locally, but conservation measures can reduce demand and help adapt. Probably the most advantageous climate resilience to pursue is that related to high temperatures. In Oregon, as in many other places around the world, heat waves have become both hotter and longer – trends that are confidently expected to continue. With the heat come more and longer droughts, and with heat and drought comes a major increase in wildfires and smoke pollution

Temperatures above 90^o F are hazardous, becoming potentially lethal as they increase. The Rogue Valley now experiences many days per year with air quality in one of the hazard levels. People become more vulnerable to the ill effects of heat and smoke with advancing age, making it a key issue for RVM. The basic need for heat resilience is access to electricity for air conditioning and purification for people, and refrigeration for medicines and food. Access to cooling in turn requires access to an adequate supply of electrical power.

There are two types of threats to electricity supply. One is economic; the cost of electricity may be high for reasons independent of temperature, but rising temperature increases power use for two reasons – the increasing number of degree-cooling and dangerous air-qualiy days, and the fact that AC units become progressively less efficient as the difference between indoor and outdoor temperature increases. The other is availability – power grids are vulnerable to simple failures, events such as storms or wildfires, and sabotage or cyberterrorism. If heat waves generate demand in excess of what the grid can provide, brown-outs, black-outs or rationing may occur.

Long-term mitigation of excessive cost, and a replacement supply to deal with an extended or permanent outage both require local generation and storage. Backup power for shorter outages may be supplied by storage batteries, with or without some kind of generator attached, but the power provided needs to be adequate for several days to a week of cooling that can keep indoor temperatures below the critical health threshold. Beyond that, or in cases where community demand outpaces supply, local generation is required. In RVM’s case that almost certainly means solar power.

I’ll discuss approaches by first outlining an intermediate-term project that can inform both prompt upgrades and a long-term vision.

A proactive project: RVM is planning to build a new block of cottages on the Quail Point golf course. I suggest that this be designed as a demonstration project to incorporate as many feasible conservation-related features as possible, with emphasis on electricity and heat resilience. This will be more expensive than conventional construction, but the units will have enhanced marketability (justifying a higher payback), and with appropriate promotion it should be possible to attract grant funding (from foundations or within the industry) and/or component discounts.

Some of the features might include:

Design for easy use of an electric vehicle (EV) battery for emergency power. These batteries can typically power a household for 2-3 days, and presumably more with careful use rationing. As EVs become more common, this would mean more and more cottages could have emergency power for such things as medical equipment as well as heat mitigation.
A solar panel power system adequate to make a significant contribution to household power use and possibly some emergency power as well (or provision for easy upgrade).
A heat pump.
A zoned heating/cooling system so that cooling could be limited to part of the house.
High quality insulation, window tinting, etc.
A reflective exterior and extended eaves to shield windows.
Motion and/or light sensitive switches and high efficiency appliances.
An interior meter readout and a power use recorder so that occupants can be aware of usage and administration can analyze variations.

In addition to these, other design features could facilitate recycling, use of a golf cart or mini-EV, and provide drought-tolerant low-maintenance landscaping, etc.

Research and planning for these designs could be substantially assisted by resident participation (in particular, the Technical Committee and the Green Team), and would yield improvements in the short-term modifications that could be retrofitted (at either RVM or resident expense) into existing living units. One of the major findings should be payback times for various levels of electricity cost, making it possible to prioritize upgrades.

There are barriers to undertaking a rapid campus upgrade. One example is that the electrical infrastructure on parts of campus is inadequate to permit upgrading the cottages to have fast EV chargers. Another is that some very promising technologies (e.g., iron batteries) are not quite fully mature. This strongly supports the idea of using a demonstration project to initiate action on developing a long-term strategic plan that relies on progressive upgrades to reach an economic and resilience goal at a reasonable cost – while maintaining quality of life and marketability.

RVM has entered into an agreement with Energy Trust of Oregon, a legislatively-mandated, public-utility-funded non-profit corporation. Energy Trust has completed data collection for an energy audit of RVM, and is in the process of developing a model to predict and assess future energy use. They will also advise on both resident and corporate energy conservation measures.

The Energy Trust relationship could prove to be a major step toward climate resilience. However, my understanding is that their modeling will use historic temperatures as a baseline for predicting power use. The 5^th US National Climate Assessment reports that the average temperature in the Northwestern US has increased 2.5^oF since 1900, and is expected to increase by about 5-10^oF by the 2080s, depending on the amounts of greenhouse gases emitted. Projecting future temperatures without considering anticipated trends will underestimate demands and overvalue accomplishments.

Experience obtained in design and construction of climate-resilient residences, and feedback from potential and new residents, will make it possible to refine ongoing programs, and to update an overall strategic plan – which might be as extensive as substantial energy independence. In order to be fully effective, probable and/or worst-case climate scenarios need to be used to establish goals.

At present, residents who wish to practice conservation measures have to opt in, often by expending money or effort. One goal of long-range planning should be to develop an environment in which people are opted in by their environment and the existing infrastructure, and have to make an effort to opt out.

As the natural environment becomes physically, and possibly socially, less hospitable, people who are in or near retirement are likely to find a forward-looking resilient community much preferable to developing their own climate resilience by themselves.

References and Supporting Information

Information: graphs, maps, tables, etc.

Heat

Economics

Emergency electricity

Various climate issues

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