(00:01):
Well, I'm in over my head. No one told me trying to keep my footprint small was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head. What do I really need? Trying to save the planet over someone, please save me, trying to save the planet over someone. Please save.

(00:25):
Welcome to in over my head. I'm Michael Bartz. My guest today is Helen Corbett. Helen is the director of energy poverty at the all one sky foundation, a not-for-profit established to help vulnerable populations at the crossroad of energy and climate change. Helen has worked as a writer, editor and communications consultant for over three decades, specializing in communicating complex environmental issues to the general public, particularly the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations. Helen also spent 17 years making documentary films, researching ceiling cultures in the Russian far east in Alaska. She's received many awards, grants, and fellowships for her films and Northern work. Welcome to in over my head, Helen,

(01:05):
Thank you.

(01:07):
So in talking about the decarbonization of the electricity grid, something that came up was the idea of a just transition. This notion stuck with me and I wanna dig deeper, cuz from my perspective, it's great to tell people to install solar or geothermal in their homes to save the planet. But for a lot of people, these options are financially out of reach and they have more immediate concerns, but I think they should still be part of the solution. So today I'd like to talk about making the transition to net-zero, adjust one, your work with the all one sky foundation focuses on energy, poverty. What exactly is energy poverty?

(01:40):
Well, to be very blunt, it's that collision between you being able to pay for your energy services could be heating, could be cooling your electricity, your water, but you can't pay. You can't afford it. You cannot afford to pay your utility bills. And so it's a specific kind of poverty that sometimes has nothing to do with low income. You bought too large house. You can't afford the utilities. I think this is relevant to a lot of people right now, as they've looked at the projected increases that we did see come across in electricity and gas prices. For example, I'm staying with a friend in Canmore and per utility bill in late January was 500 a month for gas and electric. And that's like fully one third of her income as a, you know, low income senior. So that's the type of thing that we've been looking at for years.

(02:47):
The term was coined energy poverty in the UK in the 1970s. When we had issues at the pumps, people not able to afford to heat their homes. They started looking at it in the UK, not so much here where it seemed that abundant coal-based electricity and Alberta would be cheap forever, but it's now kind of catching up to us. So that's what we've been looking at. And briefly, just to tell you how that happened is I joined an organization called climate change central in 2001. And it was set up by the province of Alberta to look at how the prospect of climate change might affect the province, our economy, what things we might do to maybe even get an advantage on other provinces. I would say 2008 or nine, we started offering rebates for people say, if you needed a high efficiency furnace, we would pay you maybe $800 out of your could be $6,000 payment on a furnace.

(04:00):
So I'll never forget going to the CEO of this organization I was working for. And I said something isn't right about this program. We're missing all the people who cannot afford to pay for this furnace front. This is just not gonna work. And he looked at me, he said, well, you know what? We're not a social service agency and I'll never forgotten that. So we just carried on like so many of those early programs in giving you like a mail-in rebate, we would reimburse you after you coughed up all that upfront money. Climate change central disappeared in 2014. And we set up this foundation called all one sky because we saw that that was an area we needed to focus on is that connection between low income and the climate. And exactly what you've been looking at Michael is how do we get to be net zero by 2050? We've kind of got our marching orders. How are we gonna do this when we can't leave people behind? So that's why they call it a just transition. And that was never ever considered in early energy efficiency programs. It's only now that the just transition is equal to the environmental challenge that we have to face. They go hand in hand. So that's why the city of Edmonton has included in their climate plan. We're gonna get through energy, poverty, we're gonna defeat it. But we're also going to take fast action on getting everybody to net zero.

(05:54):
Yeah. And I think that's exactly what, what I was thinking about. Like when your example of we have these rebates for people. Oh great. We've solved the problem maybe, but then you realize that no, this doesn't help every person in every situation. Cuz there are a lot of yeah, low income people who just can't afford that. And so the majority of the alt one sky foundation is working with low income houses yet.

(06:15):
You know it is, but what is looming right now? Like we did focus on energy, poverty, so low income programs, but this latest situation with so many people and you know, we figure there's maybe 250,000, maybe max 350,000 as of 2016, living in energy, poverty in Alberta. We used to say one in six households would be affected by it, but it's gonna be massively higher because hire because of the spike in utilities. So we know that 20,000 Albertans go to seek help from the Alberta consumer utilities advocates office 20,000 a year, get disconnected and look to find some help. Just imagine what that number's gonna be this year, because April 15th is the date where you aren't protected anymore from being cut off both electric and gas. So this is like a big deal to know, you know, having looked at this from a low income perspective, how does this affect like say working poor, how does this affect folks who've gotten into too large house and cannot afford to heat it and also in the summer cool it because of our heat domes and so on.

(07:50):
And often you get caught in a spiral. I'll never forget the senior. She was probably 76 in Calgary. We went to her house cuz Calgary, senior services. She was a client of theirs. They helped low income seniors in Calgary and I'll never forget her sitting there with her utilities bill and she had taken her pen and circled over and over again. The bill, which in that, at that 0.7 years ago was like over 600 a month. And she had written in her sort of jiggly handwriting. What if I give them a hundred? What if I give them this or that? Just to reduce that terrible bill that had come in, that there was no way she could pay. So then you get caught in that spiral of loss of dignity, loss of the heating to keep you warm and healthy. It's a spiral that's often difficult to emerge from adding in utilities, arrears at with the interest. These helping programs do always expire April 15th. And that's when you have a lot of panic calls to the agencies that deal with poverty in Alberta.

(09:10):
Okay. And so with the one sky foundation, are you seeing maybe an increase in people reaching out to you for support?

(09:18):
They don't reach out to us per se. Michael, we kind of looked at this from gathering partners to work with. So we set up a group probably five or six years ago that consists of utilities like N max. We have trellis, which used to be Aspen family services. And trellis does get a lot of the handoffs from NMX of people who are about to be cut off. And they have classes to show you how to deal with this. Also on our little round table is empower me, empower me Alberta. And they help you. They can go into your house, do a bit of a diagnostic of what you need. And they are working with new Canadians people who may have a barrier with language and culture because there's so many aspects to this. No one size fits all. Once you get into a house, it's usually like a whole bunch of issues that are revealed.

(10:23):
It's not just the wind blowing in under the door. It might be that this senior is very concerned about security and needs something to go hand in hand with the energy efficiency she may want new locks installed. So every household is kind of unique in needing its own appraisal. And the other thing, Michael is not everybody who's low income suffers from energy poverty. You can live in, you know, like an affordable housing building in Edmonton or Calgary or elsewhere and not have these issues because you've got the efficiency of your apartment versus living in a home. We found about half of our clientele were living in their own homes and needing different kinds of assistance.

(11:18):
What sort of things can people do in their homes to increase their efficiency? When they're looking at cutting down their utilities, I would say to try to get out of energy, poverty.

(11:29):
We did a program in Edmonton to kind of look at how much wiggle room do you have on your bill. And we found that there's like 30% of your bill. You can impact say, if you've got a faucet, that's dripping, you might save $12 a year to fix that. Drip, if you are hanging your laundry, Michael, do you?

(11:54):
Yeah, we do. Yeah. Yeah.

(11:55):
It's like $71. If you do half of it, half of your laundry, 71 bucks a year, did you know, like if you tos a towel in your dryer that it significantly reduces a dry towel reduces the drying time annually $14. It might not seem like much, but we have piles of these tips. The largest one was that the old stand power, make sure you disconnect things like television or whatever that may be drawing on your power all the time. Standby, power, annual savings of 35 bucks. So you can affect 10% of your electricity use just by doing that. Skip your dishwashers drawing cycle. That's like $14 a year. Look at our tip sheets and realize that there are things you can do.

(12:55):
You sent me those. I will include a link there on the show notes, are there health implications related with energy, poverty?

(13:03):
There are big health implications. And those are mainly in living in a cold place that where there's mold, you can't afford to keep the heat on, you know, circulatory, respiratory, a lot of connection with that. And a lot of mental stress. There is this thing of people just not knowing exactly how to deal with this. There are organizations out there to help you, that you sometimes can get one time help to pay your bill. But the most common ways to deal with this are improve the house, you know, make the house more energy efficient so that we don't have these health issues. Every dollar you spend to improve energy efficiency reduces healthcare costs by $4. So it's one to four as a surefire way to reduce those health costs is to number one, improve the house. Number two, address the poverty. And the other way is to do things like in your rates have transfer of government funds that there can be rate paying solutions for low income people. They've done that in other provinces like BC, there are many solutions. And one thing we didn't talk about Michael is that a sort of rule of thumb is if you're spending more than 6% of your after tax income on your energy bills, you are in energy poverty

(14:49):
More than 6%. Okay.

(14:51):
Yeah. Cause like, you know, having seen my friend having to deal with hers, it was 35% of her after tax income was paying for that, that bill just in the winter.

(15:04):
Do you find there's certain demographics, you talked about some new Canadians seniors are part of that. I, I think as well.

(15:10):
Yeah. I think the it's like 30% are seniors living alone, half are in their own homes. Also affect single parents. You might have kids there and be trying to pay those bills yourself. It goes across the whole spectrum. Also of course, new Canadians. That's why there's so many ways we need to approach it. Alberta is running these programs where if you're new to the province, you can sit and have somebody talk to you about an educational thing on what does it mean to save energy?

(15:52):
This show is about empowering citizens to take action when it comes to the climate crisis. And I think those in energy, poverty should be included in that. How would you say that even people who are struggling to make ends meet that way, how could they still get involved in making sure we have a just transition and get to net zero?

(16:09):
Well, we need to hear their voices and they've been so cut off from participating in Edmonton. We had a program a few years ago called energy cafes. So we would set up a little booth outside of a library or a social service agency or say the food bank. And we figured out which parts of town were most challenged. So we just sat out there and talked to people as they wandered outta the library or out of the food bank. And we had an L E D light bulb and these tip sheets, none of them had had an L E D light bulb now like it, that to me is shocking. It was, you know, they were given out so freely in the first years of the, you know, carbon program in Alberta, but not for that demographic, not for people who were lower income. So they would look at this bulb and go, wow.

(17:09):
But what they were more interested in was these tip sheets. So they would stand there and go through every single one of the tips and go, oh, I do that. Oh, I do this, I do that. I mean, these people are far more expert in saving money than most of us are. So I think what we're gonna see now is that we're gonna be going, okay, you tell us what you need. And we are going to, we're going to like gather all our resources and we need speed right now. We need speed and we need to really listen to what people need.

(17:47):
Great. Yeah, no, that, that that makes total sense. And for people who perhaps aren't in energy, poverty, how would you recommend that they get involved to make sure that we have that speed and that we implement these changes.

(17:59):
If you're not suffering, like if you're only paying 5% or 2% of your income on your utilities, make a point of understanding the issue and be empathetic that there are people who live in this state all the time.

(18:17):
Even just having this conversation with you, I've learned a lot about energy, poverty and who it affects and how we can solve it. So that's really, really helpful. And lastly, I touched on in your bio that you were a documentary filmmaker, which I find very interesting personally, and just fascinating. Is there a place for film and even just storytelling in solving this problem as well, either energy, poverty, or the climate crisis more generally,

(18:41):
I think we'll see stories from all over the place in the future and how do we learn from each other? And the one thing I did understand is working with Calgary senior services is that very few of the seniors wanted to have their story told you know, visually they felt shame around potentially being low income. And sometimes it took us like six months to find somebody who was willing to sign a release and have it potentially go on TV or just on the internet. So it's just all of us pulling together on this. It's gonna take all of us doing this, all of us, telling stories in our innovative ways and helping each other.

(19:35):
I think you're absolutely right. I think hearing those people's voices and gaining that empathy and sharing what's going on is gonna have an impact.

(19:42):
It will.

(19:43):
Well, Helen, this has actually been very educational and I've learned a lot about energy poverty. So thank you so much for coming on the show.

(19:50):
Thank you, Michael. And keep up your good work.

(19:54):
Well, that was my talk with Helen. I think my biggest takeaway was who actually is affected by energy, poverty, and then having empathy for those who are affected and telling their stories and giving them a voice just seems like the best way to make sure that we're solving this problem. And if you're getting something outta these conversations, I encourage you to tell a friend about it because the more people that we have making change, the better off will be. Well, that's all for me. I'm Michael Bartz. Here's the feeling a little less in over our head when it comes to saving the planet. We'll see again, soon. In over my head was produced and hosted by Michael Bartz original theme song by Gabriel Thaine. If you would like to get in touch with us email info@youovermyheadpodcast.com. Special thanks to Telus STORYHIVE for making this show possible.

(20:44):
I'm trying to save the planet or, or will someone please say me.