Southface’s Dennis Creech taught that reducing CO2 emissions can start at home

Energy-efficient building guru steps down after nearly 40 years

When Dennis Creech co-founded the Southface Energy Institute in 1978, Earth Day was still a new idea, solar panels were a futuristic marvel, and energy conservation was not much of a mainstream idea. It’s the latter — helping make the wiser use of the electricity we use — that Southface has been working to do from day one.

For Creech, the realization came in graduate school, when he was studying environmental problems like acid rain and smog. The environmental community at the time was not very focused on how energy contributed to such environmental issues.

In the years since, Southface has focused on saving the environment through better building: researching and helping people understand how to plan and build places that use less energy and less water in the first place. The nonprofit’s Eco Office on Pine Street is a tiny example of it can be done: It’s oriented to catch light, but not so much heat in summer. Recycled materials are used throughout. It’s almost off the charts for sustainability.

Earlier this year, Creech announced he’s stepping down as executive director. He recently shared thoughts on where Atlanta and Georgia have been, and where they need to go.

What was it like in the beginning? What were you telling folks that was news to them?

Well certainly that there was a significant link between energy and the environment. I think one thing that made Southface unique back then and still now, we also made the link between energy and the economy, economics, saving money.

We’ve certainly gotten more sophisticated about how we deliver that message today. We’ve got better data. Whatever we call it, clean energy, energy efficiency, renewable energy, we know that per dollar invested, it creates more jobs. Especially for Georgia because we import all the traditional energy resources. That means money that hemorrhages from our state. So that when we invest in efficiency, in solar, biomass, and all the renewable forms, that’s money that can stay in our state.

... It costs us about 2 or 3 cents to save a kilowatt-hour of electricity if we do it with energy efficiency programs at scale like a utility would do. When we build a new power plant, the cheapest we’re paying now is about 6 cents a kilowatt-hour. Oddly enough, solar and natural gas are about the same price. Nukes are probably 8 to 9 cents a kilowatt-hour. And that’s without putting a price on carbon.

That sounds like the argument I always hear that you can find a whole power plant in retrofitting, efficiency, fixing things rather than actually building a new plant?

In fact, Georgia Tech did a study that showed that. It’s not just a bunch of idealists that say this. There’s hard data. The “good” news about Georgia is we waste a lot of energy in our economy because what that means is there’s so much we can do to save energy without having to rely on expensive supply options.

And then when we want to go to supply options we should look to the real cost of those options and that’s why solar is undervalued in the marketplace. But still being undervalued it’s competing quite well now.

For all the people who weren’t around in 1978, what would surprise them the most about the difference between then and now when it comes to sustainability?

I think that a lot of it we just take for granted now. You know if you go and look at lighting, you don’t think twice now about the energy-efficient lighting products that are on the market. Solar’s becoming common. We had one of the first solar installations in the state of Georgia and it was a little PV [photovoltaic] panel ... that illuminated a sign. And people would drive for miles to see it.

In the past people weren’t used to driving around and seeing a solar panel?

I think people have more trust in it now. It’s not space-age, from-the-future technology.

... Most people want to do the right thing by the environment but you got to make it easy for them, you got to make it economical for them. And that’s really the challenge that we have now is taking things to scale. We’ve got the technologies to really dramatically change the way we use energy ...

What’s been Southface’s biggest accomplishment?

Just look at where Atlanta is compared to other cities in the South in terms of sustainability. I’d like to think that Southface has been a part of that. We lead the nation in the Better Buildings Challenge — more square footage of commercial real estate signed up, over 100 million square feet. There’s not another city that I’m aware of in the U.S., and certainly not one in the South that has a program like Grants to Green, which helps nonprofits make energy-efficiency renovations.

We’ve got nonprofit organizations in Atlanta now — these are day care centers, these are Boys’ & Girls’ clubs, these are homeless shelters — they’re saving over $2.5 million a year on their energy and water bills through efficiency. That’s money that goes to feed the poor, or to do arts for the community. Nothing that we do is a solo act. The Grants to Green program is a partnership with Kendeda Fund and the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta and a hundred-plus nonprofits that have agreed to do it.

What is left undone, what are the things that need to happen in the next 10 or 15 years?

A lot. We’ve got to take it to scale. You know, I mentioned Atlanta scores well compared to Southern cities about what it’s doing from a sustainability standpoint. I think all of us recognize what we’re doing is positive. But it’s not enough and we need to do more.

Now, in 35 more years, in 2051, what do you hope will be different by then? What kind of things will be obsolete, what kind of things will be indispensable?

We’ll recognize that waste is money, money lost, so we will eliminate waste because it’s not profitable. So energy waste in buildings, water waste. Right now we treat stormwater as a pollutant. We need to change it and look at stormwater as a very valuable asset.

But it’s really all about people, I think. It’s a mistake to think Southface is just about technology. We got to look at the values side of the equation. What is it about our community that we love, that we want to enhance? ... I think we won’t continue to be the capitol city of the south and compete ... if we are not more sustainable.

Because that’s becoming an important value to people, sustainability?

Exactly. So it’s about the economics, it’s about the environment, but it’s also about the values. So to me, that’s going to be very important.

Is there anything else you would tell our readers?

Be hopeful. I mean, you know, the data is, I don’t want to sugar coat it, the data is serious about some of the environmental challenges we face, not just around energy but also around water, about how we design our communities and isolate people. So we need to recognize the seriousness of the problem but we also need to recognize that there is hope.

Most of the solutions we know. And so it’s not like we have to invent something that’s unimaginable. It’s really about good public policy, it’s about sending the right signals to the market. You know the cliché about business is the greatest force for environmental change is true. But business has to have the right signals, and that’s about public policy. It can’t be cheaper for you to throw something away than it is to recycle something. It can’t be cheaper to waste energy than to put in an energy efficient appliance. So we’ve got to get the right signals to the market.

This interview has been condensed and edited.