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When you think about the industries driving the climate crisis, your local art museum probably doesn't spring to mind. To be fair, they aren't at the top of the list, but keeping a museum's temperature and humidity constant, rain or shine, all year long takes a massive amount of energy, and it's expensive. But as Maine Public Radio's Molly Enking reports, some museums are starting to make energy efficiency a priority.
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MOLLY ENKING, BYLINE: In the basement of Maine's Portland Museum of Art is head of sustainability Mike Brown. This is where the museum's air is heated, cooled, humidified or dehumidified, depending on the day - on the hour, really.
MIKE BROWN: The reality of it is, we only have about an hour and a half of ideal temperatures each year. So the rest of the time, we're conditioning that air. So it is a very energy intensive process.
ENKING: That high energy use is why when nearly 200 nations created the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, museum leaders came together to discuss how they could be part of the solution, too. The result? - the Bizot Green Protocol, official recommendations for curbing museum's overall footprint, including energy usage. It's been over a decade, but so far, worldwide adoption has been slow. But that's because...
ERIN DAMON: The fear when changing guidelines like that is the - is damage to art.
ENKING: Erin Damon is head of collections at the Portland Museum of Art. It's been among the first museums in the U.S. to adopt the green standards. Until Bizot, the gold standard for conservation were these really strict, what they call pristine, indoor conditions - 70 degrees Fahrenheit with a fluctuation of only two degrees allowed up or down and around 50% relative humidity. It was thought that that was best for the art, Damon says.
DAMON: So as museum professionals, you're counting a lot on those conservation guidelines, and you certainly don't want to disrupt those if those are industry standard.
ENKING: The Bizot Green Protocol recommends widening those guardrails - 40- to 60% relative humidity and 60 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. But those changes are happening slowly, so you're not swinging from spring to summer in one day, but maybe over the course of a few months. Still, by implementing the more relaxed temperature standards, the Portland Museum of Art says they saw a whopping 30% reduction in energy costs last year. Savings like these are a big reason why museums are looking to switch to the Bizot standard. And how did Portland's collection fare? No discernible damage - it turns out there's actually a lot of evidence that museum collections don't need such rigid temperature controls.
CAITLIN SOUTHWICK: Actually, the scientific evidence that we've had for updating climate control parameters has been around for more than 25 years.
ENKING: Caitlin Southwick is founder of a nonprofit that promotes sustainability in museums.
SOUTHWICK: Museums have been kind of thinking about this since the early 2000s, but, you know, it was one of those points that it was like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
ENKING: It kind of makes sense. These historical objects or paintings have weathered a lot over the centuries they've been in existence, says the Smithsonian's Amber Kerr. She notes that if you follow these new guardrails in your home, you'd feel pretty comfortable, and your stuff would be fine too.
AMBER KERR: You know, your furniture's not exploding on you (laughter). I hope not.
ENKING: That's not to say objects don't need careful conservation, but the new thinking is that it needs to be more object-specific. Wood, canvas, ceramic, homemade ink all need to be treated slightly differently, conservators tell me. There's not yet an official count of how many museums are abiding by the protocols, but there are thousands of museums across the country. If each of them were able to see a 30% reduction in energy use, that would be a significant win for the climate. For NPR News, I'm Molly Enking in Portland, Maine.
(SOUNDBITE OF NIKI SONG, "BEFORE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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