Attending the official switch-flipping ceremony brought things full circle for me for several reasons. As a board member of our local Green Built Alliance, I was happy to see one of our flagship programs, Appalachian Offsets, make this possible. Yet the event had personal significance, as my husband, an Asheville native, attended Issac Dickson as a child, and I was able to bring our 11 month-old-son to see the switch flipping at the same school his father attended. Back when I was in elementary school, I was once given an assignment to create a design for how to make our school better. budding environmentalist that I was, I proceeded to draw school covered with skylights and solar panels. I remember the teacher said that was neat, but, probably impractically expensive–yet here today, I got to see that idea realized for a real elementary school.

This project comes full circle for Deltec, as well, because it was funded through the Appalachian Offsets program, to which we have been a contributor for several years. Appalachian Offsets is a carbon offsetting program: individuals or businesses can use the tools on the program’s website to calculate the environmental impact, in terms of tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, of their various activities. They can then purchase an offset to counteract those emissions, and those offsets deliver funding to energy efficiency or solar projects in the community that can deliver these emissions reductions. The Appalachian Offsets program has been around since 2009, and it has funded numerous other solar energy or energy efficiency improvements for non-profits, schools, churches, or low income housing communities in Western North Carolina. Nationally, as well as internationally, offset markets are growing as a way for individual and corporate citizens to make contributions to fighting climate change.

Every year since 2018, Deltec Homes has tallied up the miles traveled within the continental US by our homes packages as they were shipped to our customer’s job-sites, and used the Appalachian Offsets calculator to estimate the equivalent CO2 emissions. We then purchased offsets for those emissions, helping, along with more than 100 other businesses and individuals, to raise the funding to make the Isaac Dickson solar array happen.

Some people might ask, wait a minute, isn’t a offset just a way to pay to keep polluting as usual? Shouldn’t entities hoping to reduce their carbon footprint commit to reducing energy use to begin with? And while offsets are growing in popularity, so are criticisms of offset programs’ abilities to actually deliver what they promise. Surely, we can’t all just offset our way out of the climate challenges we face?

I would argue that the answer is not “either, or” but “yes, and.” Offsetting is one tool, a free-market mechanism to delivering energy savings and renewable energy to our community at large as quickly as possible. While it isn’t sustainable in the long run for a company or individual to eliminate their entire carbon footprint forever through offsets alone, nor is it often technologically or economically feasible for most entities to live in this society and totally cut off their carbon footprint, either. We still use energy for business, personal matters, food, transportation. We should take every step to reduce the impact of that energy through all means: investment in energy efficiency or renewable energy where feasible, policies (whether personal, or organizational) to facilitate more conscious consumption, advocating for greener sources of fuel for the electric and transportation systems we depend upon…and also giving back to the community where and when we can. Think of it less like an “indulgence” and more like a charitable contribution to your community to fund the change you want to see in the world. Plus, using a tool to calculate your carbon footprint can help you discover the most impactful places where you can make a difference in reducing it on the front end.

On the transparency end, it comes back to local solutions to global problems. While some offsetting programs promise to avert cutting down a tree in Brazil, or deliver a cleaner burning stove in Kenya, I can walk down the street and see the projects funded by Appalachian Offsets in my own community, and to me, that has clear transparency. Any involvement with a program aiming to make society better involves research to understand how it works, and checking whether it aligns with your values and goals. To me, all of these potential carbon offsetting projects could be important, and we should continue to monitor the space and participate in creating systems to monitor and verify what offsets work and what don’t–but participating is still the first step.

Appalachian Offsets is not just for businesses. Individuals can contribute as well. Last year I decided to use it to calculate and offset my family’s carbon footprint as well. Even calculating your carbon footprint can help you see a useful way to get a picture of the impact of what you do, and the impact of any potential reductions you may be motivated to make.

-by Leigha Dickens, Deltec Homes Green Building and Sustainability Manager. Also posted at greenbuilt.org

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Amid a year of record wildfires, a global pandemic, political turmoil, and new social reckonings, the imperative for sustainability never ends. In fact, it’s more important than ever.

Highlights:

Manufacturing: We maintained our commitment to sustainable manufacturing, using 100% renewable site electricity in our facility and diverting an average of 80% of our waste from the landfill.  As we did in 2018 and 2019, we also offset the carbon associated with shipping our homes to our customers through Appalachian Offsets, a local program which funds renewable and clean energy projects for schools and non profits in our region. In fact, the solar array for Isaac Dickson Elementary School was supported by our offsets and should be coming online soon, check back here for details!

Green Building:  We did a new case study of an off-grid 360° Collection model recently completed by our in-house building company.  Another recent Ridgeline project earned Zero Energy Ready Home certification from the US Department of Energy.  With the contribution of these two net-positive homes, our average HERS Index dropped from a 45 in 2019 to a 43.

Supply Chain: We expanded our pre-installed siding offerings for our 360° Collection with a Cradle to Cradle Certified(R) vertical polyash product from Boral America, which contains a minimum 70% pre-consumer recycled content.

Community: We formed a Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) task force to directly assess our company culture, hiring practices, and supply chain. Our Meals on Wheels volunteers adapted to contactless meal delivery.

Click here to peruse the whole report.

Sustainability is part science, part management, and part telling our story to customers, so that we can earn their support to keep doing it. The story of sustainability gained deeper stakes for me in 2020 with the birth of my son. The connections between how we build homes, the natural world, and the greater resilience of our community, have never felt more apparent, or more important.

-Leigha Dickens, Green Building & Sustainability Manager

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We were one of the first companies in NC to use 100% renewable electricity through our on-site solar array and purchased wind power to power our manufacturing facility.  That was 13 years ago.

But we are always looking at how to improve and leverage current opportunities to expand our sustainability leadership while better serving our customers.

With the recent announcements by auto manufacturers to their commitment to electric vehicles as well as our desire to better serve our customers—many of whom drive EV vehicles, we leapt on the chance to apply for the second round of rebates offered by the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Division of Air Quality for level 2 EV charging stations. These rebates were made available as part of the VW Mitigation Settlement Program set up to resolve allegations that Volkswagen violated the Clean Air Act (“CAA”) by the sale of approximately 590,000 model year 2009 to 2016 diesel motor vehicles equipped with “defeat devices.”

After reviewing our application, The DEQ awarded us a grant to install EV charging stations. We are one of 60 projects in NC, with 3 of them being in Asheville. We are the only private company awarded the grant in Asheville among only 29 awarded to private companies in the entire state. The DEQ will rebate us $3000 of the total cost of our each of our EV stations, with Deltec Homes funding the remaining amount.

We have just installed 4 EV charging stations as of May, 2021, in our parking lot that will be available to anyone visiting us with an EV vehicle. Our customers driving EV vehicles can take advantage of it during their visit to our headquarters without any costs (with reasonable limitations), and our employees or the public can also use it with minimal costs. We hope that this will also serve as an incentive for more of our employees to switch to an EV, giving them the opportunity to charge their cars while working.

We are excited to not only be recognized through this grant, but as another way we lead by example with sustainability.

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