Mansion defies bid to go green

By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Matt McClain / The Rocky

Colorado first lady Jeannie Ritter installed a clothesline at the Governor's Mansion to reduce use of an electric dryer. Solar cells have been added and new windows are being installed.

The governor?s historic home is no model of energy efficiency as Ritter focuses on conservation. The bills are high, but efforts to do better include the first lady?s installation of a clothesline on a balcony.

Bill Ritter aims to be the greenest governor in the nation, but he and his family live in a house that has generated more than $15,000 in energy bills so far this year.

Bill and Jeannie Ritter live in the Colorado governor's mansion, the old Boettcher Mansion on 8th Avenue in Denver, which is graced with century-old furniture from Victorian England and imperial China.

But it's also a 26,000-square- foot energy hog with single-pane windows, 12-foot ceilings, nine fireplaces that don't work, and zero insulation.

It's bigger and older than most houses in Colorado. And it's often used for large public events.

The governor's mansion uses more than double the electricity of the average Colorado home, when figured on a square-foot basis, according to information provided by the state and Xcel Energy.

It does better on the natural gas side, using 19 percent more per each 1,000 square feet than the typical Colorado home.

The power bill has averaged nearly $1,700 a month this year.

First Lady Jeannie Ritter looked at her drafty windows and said she was happy to answer questions about the utility bills.

"I don't mind being the bad guy - if it starts a conversation about what we can all do to save energy," she said.

Second-floor clothesline

Jeannie Ritter is zealous about lowering those numbers.

For a start, she has put up a clothesline on a balcony, where she dries the family's bed sheets, jeans and shirts. "Don't worry, I don't have the governor's underwear out there for all of Logan Street to see," she said.

The first floor of the 98-year-old mansion is a public space. Two or three times a week there is a luncheon, dinner or some other function. Usually, it's government related, but sometimes a private group will rent the space.

So, vacuums run until 11 at night, Ritter said. Lights are on to brighten the dark 12-foot-wide hallways, and four or five loads of dirty kitchen and dining-room linens are washed each day.

Two walk-in refrigerators and three freezers in the commercial kitchen keep the kilowatt hours spinning.

The Colorado State Patrol monitors security 24 hours a day, and leaves a light on in every downstairs room.

The first lady can only cheerlead about energy improvements on the first floor. It's on the second and third floors, where the family lives in 5,200 square feet, where she can make a difference.

"I like to think of myself as pretty frugal," Ritter said. "One of the first things I did was put in the clothesline," which is above the first-floor portico, sharing space with the Ritters' gas grill and outdoor furniture.

"The dishwasher is always full before we run it. The light switches always go out when we leave a room," she said.

Some retrofits barred

Still, every step seems like a tiny dent in the big, old, dark living quarters.

On the second floor, the bedrooms get the only natural light. The living area in the middle is dark, so a lot of light bulbs are required to brighten the mood.

They have 60 light bulbs upstairs, and have replaced 30 with energy-miser compact fluorescent bulbs. Thirty more are on back order.

The family's kitchen on the second floor has no windows, and is dark as night at midday unless lights are turned on. The Ritters used to gather in the kitchen, but now no one wants to be there. Jeannie Ritter said the best conversations are missed by whoever has to do the cooking.

The mansion was built almost a century ago, when candles and gas were the primary luminaries, and when the conventional wisdom was that the rooms where servants worked and slept didn't need any windows.

The third floor, where two of the kids sleep, is a converted attic, with the only warmth coming from electric heat, which is more costly than natural gas.

The Boettcher Mansion is a historical landmark, so a lot of retrofits are off limits.

The ceilings can't be lowered, said Lance Shepherd, the manager of design and construction programs for the Office of the State Architect. It would be costly to retrofit insulation in a way that preserves the historic nature of the walls.

New technology

On the plus side, solar panels installed last year are generating energy, Jeannie Ritter said. They'll know how much they're saving once a tracking system is installed on the solar cells.

The nonprofit group Choose Renewables named the Colorado Governor's Mansion the sixth best in the nation for use of solar power.

Engineers will drill in the east yard of the mansion to begin tests for a ground-source heating and cooling system, which would be the first such system at a governor's residence in the nation.

The idea is to take advantage of the consistently cool temperatures underground - about 55 degrees year-round is ideal. A closed-loop system of pipes would run from the mansion to an underground cavity, lessening the work of the heating systems and air-conditioners.

On the coldest days, the underground temperatures running through the house will keep it from being frigid even without natural gas. And on the hottest days, the air conditioners don't have to work down from, say 95 degrees - they'll have some assistance from underground nature.

Gov. Ritter has been praised by environmental groups for his initiatives. "He sure stacks up favorably compared to other governors in the West," said Dan Grossman, regional director of Environmental Defense.

Ritter, in office about a year, has pushed through legislation to double Colorado's renewable energy standard, has signed 15 clean-energy bills and launched the "New Energy Economy."

He issued Colorado's first Climate Action Plan, and when Ritter delivered the Democrats' weekly radio response to President Bush, he talked about Colorado's New Energy Economy, "creating jobs, revitalizing the economy, protecting the environment and helping secure our nation's energy future."

Saving state money

Jeannie Ritter is passionate about energy savings.

She knows there is more that she can do, and hopes the challenges and solutions of the governor's mansion will inspire other Coloradans who want to lower their carbon footprints.

Gov. Ritter last month unveiled his climate action plan under which Coloradans will have to drive cleaner cars, use less electricity and recycle more in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

In February, when bitter cold was working its way through all those single-pane windows at the Governor's Mansion, Ritter challenged Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to an arm-wrestling match over which is the greenest state. At a summit on clean-energy solutions, he told the gathering that Colorado will fight other states for solar panel makers, wind farms, turbine manufacturers and hybrid vehicle companies.

Next on the agenda at the mansion is to improve the windows on the second and third floors without destroying their historical character. That means removing each window, installing an extra pane of glass on the outside, using the same kind of putty and materials, then putting them back up so the historical glass remains on the inside.

As energy researcher Tom Yulsman points out, the governor's mansion is going to be inhabited for as long as there is a governor in Colorado.

"So there's an unlimited amount of time to pay back the investment in energy efficiency."

Yulsman, who specializes in photovoltaics for the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, said it's important both financially and symbolically for the Ritters to set the tone for energy savings.

He'd like to see them do more with solar heating and try harder to find a way to insulate the walls.

"Many Coloradans are already doing these things on their own," Yulsman said. "If the state government can take steps to conserve energy, or to reduce energy use through photovoltaics, they should. Many of these things also are going to save money."

scanlon@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-442-8729

Not your average heating bill

GOVERNOR'S MANSION MEDIAN SIZE HOME

SQUARE FEET OF FLOOR SPACE

26,431 2,124

KILOWATT HOURS OF ELECTRICITY

16,809 625

MONTHLY ELECTRICAL BILL

$1,122 $58

GAS BILL

$572 $43

Green mansion

Since moving into the Governor's Mansion in February, Gov. Bill Ritter and his wife have replaced:

30 light bulbs with carbon fluorescent light bulbs; 30 more are on order.

They also have:

* Installed a clothesline to reduce dryer usage.

* Installed solar panels on the Carriage House.

* Begun replacing windows with more heat-efficient ones. They plan to replace all second- and third-floor windows in 2008.

* Registered the mansion with the U.S. Green Building Council in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Existing Building program. They hope to have the residence LEED-certified next year.

* Launched exploration of a geothermal source to help heat and cool the mansion.

Not your average energy bill

COMPONENTS MANSION HOME

* SQUARE FEET OF FLOOR SPACE

26,431 2,124

* KILOWATT HOURS OF ELECTRICITY

16,809 625

* MONTHLY ELECTRICAL BILL

$1,122 $58

* GAS BILL

$572 $43

Green mansion

Since moving into the Governor's Mansion in February, Gov. Bill Ritter and his wife have replaced:

30 light bulbs with carbon fluorescent light bulbs; 30 more are on order.

They also have:

* Installed a clothesline to reduce dryer usage.

* Installed solar panels on the Carriage House.

* Begun replacing windows with more heat-efficient ones. They plan to replace all second- and third-floor windows in 2008.

* Registered the mansion with the U.S. Green Building Council in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Existing Building program. They hope to have the residence LEED-certified next year.

* Launched exploration of a geothermal source to help heat and cool the mansion.