This is part 1 of our interview with Patti Sexton, who has been involved with sustainability and energy conservation in the Bay Area for about two decades. She shares with us how she transitioned from the tech industry to working with organizations like Acterra in fostering sustainable practices in her local community. More importantly, Patti focuses on sustainable practices that also save the pocketbook. She currently helps cut Americans’ monthly energy bills.

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TRAVIS:  Hey there, today we have Patti Sexton. Patti is also an energy coach in the Bay Area. She helps residents of the Bay Area save energy and money on their bills. Hi, Patty.

PATTI SEXTON:  Hi, Travis, how you doing? Thank you for having me.

TRAVIS:  Oh, you’re welcome. I’m glad to have you. Patti, we like to start our interview with this question. What was the first thing you remember wanting to be growing up?

PATTI SEXTON:  Wow, that’s a really good question. Well, thinking back, I was always interested in building things and figuring out how things work. My favorite toy growing up was a giant set of Lego bricks. I remember building little homes and to fill up a little town because the Lego set came with a board that had roads and little locks for the houses. I really enjoyed doing that as well as then I guess, I might have been maybe seven or eight year old. Then I decided I wanted to have a chemistry set. But I didn’t have a chemistry set, so, I did a fake chemistry lab setup in my bedroom where I had little bottles and jars of stuff.

PATTI SEXTON:  Then I would pretend like I was a scientist. I would pour different color liquid from one bottle to the other. Just make up these fun games. I guess I was always interested in science. By the time I got to high school where I actually could do chemistry and learn all about that stuff, I was just so thrilled. I was very happy. That’s why I knew from very young that I wanted to go into the science field.

TRAVIS:  Oh, wow, you had to make your own chemistry lab. That’s pretty ballsy. I remember getting a chemistry set as a kid. I get these little plastic bottles, and you get something turning colors or something making a spark. It was really fun. Well, that sounds good. I think a lot of people in the Bay Area start out with a big science and math interest. What do you do now, and how did you get into what you do now?

PATTI SEXTON:  Well, as you mentioned, I’m an energy coach for Home Energy Analytics. I find it to be a really fun job because I really enjoy helping people understand how their homes work using energy in its different forms. It’s electricity, natural gas as well as water. I enjoy consulting with folks to have them lower their bills and be just more efficient. This isn’t to change their lifestyle or their level of enjoyment or all the benefits that we get from having electricity and water.

PATTI SEXTON:  It’s actually to enhance all that, but not have wasted energy and wasted water. I find that to be really interesting and very rewarding to do.

TRAVIS:  Wow. Let’s talk about the rewarding part. If you roll back a little bit, I saw that you used to be with a group called Acterra. Before then, I see a lot of community involvement and a lot of jobs and activity around sustainability. Can you tell us how you got into this space, becoming passionate about sustainability and community building?

PATTI SEXTON:  Sure. I had been in the tech industry for many years. I wanted to look at something new. It wasn’t until I started taking some classes in energy efficiency to really figure out what was going on with my high utility bills that I realized that I really didn’t know anything about how my house worked, and why I was using so much energy.

PATTI SEXTON:  That really sparked me into taking more classes and getting my certifications. As I got deeper into understanding about residential energy efficiency, I realized that I could share this information with others. I started working for a couple of nonprofits and doing outreach to folks because California is really big into reducing our carbon footprint. One way of reducing carbon footprint, of course, is to use our electricity without wasting it. It really was very eye opening for me to then start working with the public and finding out how very little they knew, too. I could really identify with that and enjoyed talking to people about how my journey in learning energy efficiency and how easy it was and very relevant for other people to get on the same track as well.

PATTI SEXTON:  I got a lot of folks that would say, “Thank you so much for first of all explaining it in easy to understand terms.” And then for giving them tips on how to take action and actually make changes in their homes to enjoy the benefits of energy and water without wasting it.

TRAVIS:  It seems like you really enjoy and are passionate about helping people cut waste out of their lives. Water and energy are really important because they’re not only important for the environment, but also because of the bottom line: cutting bills that people have to pay.

PATTI SEXTON:  That’s right.

PATTI SEXTON:  I’ve also kept up with both my community involvement, and I still work part-time at Acterra, which is an environmental nonprofit here in the Bay Area. In all, it keeps me busy. In the city that I live in, Milpitas, I’m actually now on the City Commission for Energy and Environmental Sustainability. I find it very interesting to be able to investigate and use the information that I’ve got on waste reduction and energy efficiency to the benefit of the city.

TRAVIS:  Wow, that sounds good. What does Acterra do? They help people with energy waste?

PATTI SEXTON:  Yes. Well, Acterra has been in the Bay Area for actually 49 years, because next year it will be the 50th year celebration. It had different names over its lifetime. But currently, Acterra is involved with many environmental projects to reduce the carbon footprint and provide more sustainable action for local community members. It has won a business environmental award, which recognizes companies and governmental agencies that are doing really important projects to lower the carbon footprint.

PATTI SEXTON:  I work in the Energy and Climate Action department, which provides for community education, e.g. what is a CCA? A CCA is providing carbon free electricity to the area. We’re very lucky here in California that we have so many community choice aggregation organizations. CCA’s are government agencies that provide carbon free and renewable electricity to local residents.

PATTI SEXTON:  We also look at de-carbonisation projects. Such as educating people about induction cooking–using electricity to cook with high efficiency like 90% efficiency versus using gas, which only has about 40% to 50% efficiency in terms of converting the energy to cook our food.

PATTI SEXTON:  It’s really lots of different interesting projects. There’s also a major project to encourage people to change their transportation into electric vehicles instead of gasoline powered cars. The GoEV project is really big. In fact, this Saturday, we have our big GoEV ride and drive event in Palo Alto, where we have many volunteers that have electric cars that they will bring their electric cars to the Baylands Athletic Park. We will allow people to either drive or take a ride as a passenger in various electric vehicle models so that they can experience the pleasure of driving electric vehicles firsthand without having the pressure of going to a car dealership and having a salesperson try to talk you into spending thousands of dollars immediately and buying a car. Really, our EV ambassadors are really good about just saying why they chose a particular car. Why driving electric vehicles and how they proceed difficulties of using an electric vehicle as a transportation mode.

TRAVIS:  That’s a lot that Acterra has done in the past 49 years. I’m sure you’re describing the programs that’s more in effect in the past ten years. You mentioned electric vehicles just know as wells as energy efficiency, d-ecarbonisation—all really beneficial to the community and people’s pocketbooks in the long run. That’s great.

TRAVIS:  It’s not easy working with the community and sustainability. I talked to different people in the Bay Area. I used to live in the Bay Area. There’s a lot of challenges. What do you find to be the hardest aspect of working with the community on sustainability issues?

PATTI SEXTON:  Well, folks are really busy. People are very involved with their jobs, their families. They have a lot of responsibilities to take kids to school. They might have parents that need their help. So, limited time to think about energy use is really the biggest challenge. What I find is making energy efficiency accessible to folks to both understand and to make it personal for them.

PATTI SEXTON:  I talk about how they use the energy in their homes, rather than the generalized examples of “oh, a typical American home or typical California home uses X amount of energy.” It’s really making it more personal to say “Okay, why don’t we talk about how you use energy in your home.” We can even quantify it by using the Home Energy Analytics tool to desegregate and really get an accurate picture of how a home is using both electricity and natural gas.

Continue to part 2 of this interview where Patti covers energy savings lifehacks she practices herself.