Climate Action Team

Our days are getting hotter, hotter every year, and with the heat comes fire, smoke and drought.

We are inspired by our UU principles to a moral and spiritual imperative to reduce the causes of global warming and to be carbon neutral by 2050.

Imagining A Carbon Neutral World

The 2023 special appeal Imagining A Carbon Neutral World (click here to see the video appeal) launched our work to become carbon neutral. The appeal funds are bening used to reduce BUUF’s emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) (AKA it’s carbon footprint) andto educate and inspire others to reduce their GHG emissions. Click on this link to see a pdf of the foundational presentation for the appeal.

The following are the main efforts to get to carbon neutral:

  • Participate in the Green Santuary 2030 program of
    • Mitigation of BUUF’s Carbon Footprint
    • Congregational Transformation,
    • Climate Justice, and
    • Adaptation and Resilience 
  • Build strong relations with community groups involved in this work
  • Educate the Congregation and Community about responses to global warming

BUUF’s Carbon Footprint

The carbon footprint for a congregation has three parts:

  1. The carbon footprint for the congregation’s building and grounds.
  2. The carbon footprint for visits to the building and grounds, and
  3. The agregate of the household carbon footprint of a congregation’s members.

BUUF’s 2019 carbon footprint was

  1. 32.26 Mtons/yr of CO2e for the building and grounds
  2. 15.8 Mtons/yr of CO2e for visits to the building, and
  3. 10,692 Mtons/yr of CO2e assuming 324 households each with Boise’s average household footprint of 33 Mtons/yr of CO2e

See BUUF’s January 2024 Green Sanctuary Report for a short overview and BUUF’s Carbon Footprint for a detailed discussion of the footprint.

See Becoming Carbon Neutral Congregation for a presention on how the Climate Action Team used the Cool Congregation’s Congregational Carbon Footprint Calculator to find our footprint and detailed information how other congregations can use the tool to find their carbon footprints.

Reducing the carbon footprint of the building and grounds from 32.26 to 7 Mtons/yr of CO2e

The major component of the 2019 carbon footprint of 32.26 Mtons/yr of CO2e was the 23.8 Mtons/yr of CO2e from our natural gas powered HVAC system. We have replaced our natural gas HVAC with a hyprid system of electric furnaces and heat pumps in the fall of 2024.

We have a carbon offset from our landscaping of 7.89 Mtons/yr of CO2e from our lawn area and trees.

We are dedicated to using electricity from sources that do not emit CO2e. Enrolling in Idaho Power’s Clean Energy Your Way program reduces the 2.5 Mtons/yr of CO2e attributed to our electricity use.

Taking these together, we have (in theory) reduced the footprint from 32.26 Mtons/yr of CO2e to 7 Mtons/yr of CO2e. We will know for sure in the Fall of 2025.

BUUF’s Visit Carbon Footprint

The 2019 carbon footprint of 15.8 Mtons/yr of CO2e for visits to the building, is based on some guess work/estimates of the number of trips to the our site for our 2 Sunday services and evening meetings during the week and the average distance traveled.

We offered remote attendance, i.e. services on zoom over the internet, during the COVID pandemic when the building was shutdown. Since then we have increased our in-preson and decreased remote attenance. The estimates for 2023 showed a half and half mix of in-person & remote. The 2024 estimate is assumed to be the same, if not larger than the 2019 attendance, while remote attendance has declined but is still significant.

The team is exploring and experimenting with strategies and methods to reduce this footprint while keeping the benefits of in-person interactions.

Click here to see a more detailed discussion of this footprint.

BUUF’s Household Carbon Footprint

When we work together, as a congregation rather than individually or in small groups, our Personal Climate Action Plans reinforce each other.