Sustainability, more than payback?

Photo: Wiki Commons, 2012 Toyota Prius

Several years ago my wife and I bought a Toyota Prius, our personal step toward saving the planet. At the time friends and colleagues couldn’t understand why I paid the premium for a Prius in order to save a couple of bucks on gas. After all, it would take years to get a payback.

Payback – what an interesting term – it assumes the primary interest is money. Many of our clients won’t implement certain sustainability strategies in their buildings unless there is a certain payback, usually measured in years. What happened to the concept of investment?

When I bought my first Prius in 2006 I paid approximately $27,000 to drive it off the lot. That was $4000 more than the average price of a car in 2006; a 17% premium. But we were not only interested in saving a couple of bucks at the pump; we were also putting our money where our mouth was. That premium, or investment, went back to Toyota with the hope that they would use that money for R&D toward an even better Prius. Buying the average car with average gas mileage meant paying more money each time we would have filled up at the gas station and, in turn, investing in the oil companies who would go out and look for more oil, which didn’t seem very sustainable to us.

Currently we have 120,000 miles on our Prius, at an average of 45 MPG with an average price of $3.00 per gallon over the past 8 years, which represents approximately $8000 spent on gas. The average car in 2006 got 22.4 MPG, approximately half the mileage of the Prius, so we saved $8000 or 2666 gallons of gas over the average 2006 car, a payback of four years. We bought another Prius in 2010, the 2006 was passed down to our 3 sons. And yes our ‘investment’ in the first Prius paid off because the new improved 2010 model gets 10% better MPG.

So what is next? Surveys suggest that we hybrid drivers are more likely to move on to an electric vehicle than go back to a conventional non-hybrid vehicle. Many electric vehicles are rated at over a 100 MPG equivalent – save even more of the planet! How do you make that leap to a technology that is out of your comfort zone? I’m talking about range anxiety here. How do you calculate a payback? Can you even understand the investment in a fledgling market? To bracket the numerous available options you could start at the bottom, a Smart Car EV at $25,000: an existing two-seat model that has been modified for EV, or the soon to be released BMWi3 at $50,000: a purpose built city car made mostly out of carbon fiber or a top of the line Tesla S at $100,000: the car of the year designed by Elon Musk’s company.

All of these options represent a significant investment over a conventional car or even a hybrid, when you consider that the average car in 2014 costs $30,748! Maybe considering payback is not such a bad thing after all and to heck with the planet. Many articles I have read on this subject suggest that one wait until the market shakes out, see who has the prevailing technology … basically sit on the sidelines and let others be early adopters. The first Prius was available in the US in 2000 and I waited 6 years before I jumped on the hybrid car bandwagon. Alternatively, other articles suggest leasing an EV (pick your best option and try it out) and in two or three years maybe a front-runner will have emerged. Others suggest that one will always be behind the emerging technology curve and that battery research will continue to evolve. My range anxiety today will be reduced over time as more and more powerful, lighter batteries are developed. Maybe cars should have more of a plug and play setup, components that can be easily interchangeable, upgradeable without replacing the entire vehicle, allow for evolving technology. Battery swaps anyone?

So, do I make another investment in our planet’s future, be an early adopter and again put my money where my sustainable mouth is and lease an EV? Which one? However, both my Prii are still running fine and shouldn’t I run them into the ground first, use up all that embedded energy which was used to build them? Or perhaps I should trade them and let someone else nurse them until they get recycled. If I invest in an EV, I will need a charging station in my garage and potentially one at work. My commute is 30 miles round trip … how many trips before recharging? Will the cold weather decrease the range of the battery? What about those nasty chemicals in the batteries? What happens if I run out of juice half way home? Where is the electricity coming from in the first place? What about the line loss from the power plant to my house? My head is starting to hurt! Maybe I’ll wait a year or two and do some more research.

We all deal with sustainability questions every day, though usually not as complicated as choosing to buy an EV. More mundane questions arise such as, do I ride a bike, take the T or drive a hybrid car … recycle most if not all the stuff that comes into my home, maybe try not to buy as much stuff in the first place. Do I turn the heat down and put on a sweater, remember Jimmy Carter? Paper or plastic? We try to think global buy local – this one in particular is challenging in an ever increasingly global market. After all, what do we still manufacture in this country? Have you tried to buy a shirt made in the USA lately?

How do you spend your sustainability money? What are the drivers or trade-offs on your decisions? Maybe do the best you can under the circumstances. Is it what’s in it for you, first cost first or hopefully a more global view, or how is this going to benefit everyone? It can be challenging understanding the carbon footprint of everything, but just like trying to figure out whether or not to get an electric car, it’s worth the effort.