The first ever Spring Green Festival hosted by Co-op America just wrapped up Sunday, April 22. Judging by the elbow to elbow crowds shuffling by the endless rows of green products and the standing room only attendance at most of the presentations by "green" speakers, I’d say the event was a success. Held at the McCormick Place convention center in downtown Chicago, Chicagoans and a few misplaced green people from across the nation turned out to support the event and learn more about green living.
Of course, unless you are a frog, you can’t be green without some consideration to the source of power that runs your home and your computer and lets you keep up with blogs about green things.
Alisa Gravits, executive director for Co-op America talked about their 12 step program. What is it about 12 steps? Can’t we do anything without 12 steps? Gez. Anyway, Alisa laid out the 12 steps that we all need to take according to her, to save the world. Well, now that you put it that way, if we can save the world in just twelve steps , why not give it a try. Alisa’s presentation on April 21st in Chicago had a few changes to the 12 steps posted on their website, but five out of the twelve steps on both lists deal with electric energy production.
Step 6- Increase Solar Energy capacity by 700 times what it is today. Since solar or photovoltaic electricity production is estimated to be less than .05 % of today’s electricity generation mix, this will be a big step. The biggest step here includes changes in lifestyles. As the old saying about successful marriage goes, "low expectations" will be the key here. Business, homeowners and renters will have to build their awareness and skill at reducing energy use. As one speaker gleefully noted in another session, "its like tax free savings".While the Solar cheerleaders brag about the Navajo Nation’s emergence into the 21st century due to solar energy, the difference between a 1,000 square foot hogan and the rest of the housing market is substantial. It’s a good thing that Co-op America plans to take 40 years to get there. One benefit of attending the Green Festival was that solar vendors did a good job demonstrating that solar energy can make a contribution to house hold energy demands in almost every part of the nation. They displayed many examples of homes in the Midwest that where using net metering and going solar, proving that solar energy is not just a sun belt phenomenon.
Step 7 - Increase wind power by 75 times current output. This is also a big one. Questions about interfacing, scheduling and dispatch-ability, still haunt this option. Is the wind blowing hard enough to make money, or just annoy the locals. What fills in the blanks on the quiet days and how will it be scheduled? The utility industry rightfully worries that winds reputation for functioning at a 25% reliability factor does not meet the industry standards for reliability that are now enforced by FERC. Will broad adoption of wind energy even out these load supply problems? Only time will tell, but for now, utilities will still feel that they must meet demand with base load generation that is in the 85 to 95 percent reliability range. So far wind can’t do that. This means that customers maybe paying for duplicate facilities every time new wind generation facilities come on line.
Steps 8 and 9 - Phase out coal fired power plants altogether and Replace 1,400 coal plants with natural gas fired plants. Alisa implied that this option could be done by converting existing plants to natural gas fired facilities. Aside from the engineering issues, I thought we were running out of natural gas. Natural gas price increases have nearly doubled in the last five years and increases are still predicted for the future. During her presentation Alisa was very emphatic about the nation being able to do this for as little as "an extra 1 cent increase" at the retail level. She said we must resist the "scare tactics" and "foot stomping" from the utility industry. She may be right, but expect some foot stomping anyway. Most utilities are predicting annual rate increases in the 4 to 10 percent range all across the nation. A four to ten percent increase on 8 cents/kWh means rates will rise $0.0032 to $0.004. While this sounds easy enough to take, remember that doing this every year for the next ten years means that your rates will be three point two to four cents more per kWh. This sounds like a small price to pay to save the world, yet the electric utility industry will still complain. Why? Because they really believe that all the customer wants is the cheapest electricity possible. And, for most of the nation they will be right, unless we can all change our attitudes about the cost of electricity.
Step 10 - Increase Coal plant Efficiency from 32% to 60 %- Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)generation maybe able to do just that. Yet the utility industry still worries that this is an unproven technology. Today, they are right. Despite the hype, only three IGCC plants are providing commercial production today. While the environmental advocates decry the utility foot dragging on this issue, the fact is that very few of us drive experimental automobiles and even fewer fly experimental aircraft. There is of course a logical reason for this that has not been lost on utility executives and investors across the nation.
All in all I had a great time at the first Annual Chicago Green Festival and I hope they do it again. Its nice being surrounded by like minded people expressing support for causes that are important to the long term health of the earth and humankind. If my late father in law had witnessed this gathering, he would have said, "Jesus, do all these people vote?". Sadly, I would guess not.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Supreme Court Message Makes Energy Conservation Hit Home
by Mark Daily
If the recent US Supreme Court decision on CO2 and Greenhouse gas regulation is as serious as everyone says it is, energy conservation just got a huge boost. Sarah Kessinger, writing for the Harris News Service reports that the April 3rd US Supreme Court decision labeling CO2 as an air quality component will have long term planning and financial impacts on the members of the Sunflower Generation and Transmission Cooperative. That could be the understatement of the year. This impact will be felt by all generation and transmission companies as well as distribution utilities across the nation.
While several states including California and Vermont have passed laws regulating CO2 and other green house gaze emissions, the EPA and most states have refused to accept that these gases should be a part of air quality regulation. Now the verdict is in. By a 5-4 vote the US Supreme Court majority opinion from Justice Stevens says, "Under the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do."
The auto industry tipped the feds hand by challenging several states regulation of automobile emissions and CAFÉ mileage standards. Reminds me of the old saying, “ be careful what you ask for, you might just get it”. While the next move is clearly the EPA’s, executives in the electric utility industry as well as the auto industry are noticeably shaken by the ruling. With over 200 coal fired power plants on the drawing boards or in the regulatory and planning pipeline, the implications are that any company producing CO2 or any of the identified green house gases must now factor in new costs. These costs will certainly expand from energy conservation and demand side management programs to carbon sequestration, carbon taxes and power plant system modifications. For the nation as a whole and for consumers specifically, this means utility bills are going up.
Some expect the increase to hit pocket books gradually as new regulations trickle into efinto effect. Others worry that the 5-4 ruling will have an immediate impact on financing for investments and construction throughout all industries related to fossil fuels. Amory Lovin’s "Negawatt" campaign may finally get that push over the top to make energy conservation and energy management the mainstream tools saving corporate as well as home owner budgets.
So, now, what will you do? Will you get that energy audit now, or wait until your rates climb faster than today. Have your rates gone up? Do you know for sure? Why not? Experts estimate that simply becoming more aware of your home energy use will knock off 4% from your bill. So, you don’t necessarily have to buy anything. All you have to do is read, decide and act. Well, of course its not that easy is it? Otherwise we would have all done it already. The best and cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas and CO2 production is to avoid energy use. The only way to avoid energy use is to turn whatever it is that is using energy off or find similar equipment that uses less energy. There really are no other answers, no magic boxes or potions. Reducing CO2 and green house gas production requires action. Since we as a nation tend to avoid difficult decisions until failing to act becomes more expensive than acting, this will be a difficult time for everyone.
My advice is to get smart fast. Find out what eats energy at your house. You don’t have to make changes or take action or buy new appliances or burn down your house. Just, start learning about your home’s energy appetite. Find out how many kilowatt hours (kWh) hours per month and per year are used at your house. If you use gas, find out how many gallons of propane or therms or CCF’s of natural gas your house uses. Call your utility company if you don’t keep your own records. Utility companies always keep the last six months of energy use data and many of them keep longer records. Home energy auditors typically check out the last three years of energy use data before they make their report. So, try to find three years worth of data. You look at three years of data to smooth out mistakes in management (e.g. someone left the heater on and the windows open during spring break vacation last year) or unusually cold or hot seasonal temperatures. Convert your three years of data into monthly averages. This then, becomes your performance yard stick.
Now with your total average monthly electricity and gas use numbers in hand find out what appliances and equipment eat that energy. Go room by room and make an energy use inventory. List gas appliances as well as electricity using appliances. Start in the kitchen since that usually makes the longest list of energy using devices. Then hit the laundry or utility room, to get the water and space heating equipment. Then inventory the main living or family room where all of the gadgets and entertainment equipment live. Now you are almost home free. Bedrooms and bathrooms generally don’t have much to list .
Get everything. If you have a six bulb vanity light in the master bathroom check to see if all six bulbs are the same wattage and list the total watts for that appliance. Don’t worry about how much total monthly energy these pieces of equipment use just yet. Simply make a list. Why just the list? Two reasons. Figuring out how much energy things use per month can be a real pain in the neck and you don’t want to give up before you make a list of everything in the house, and you can use the same list for your insurance company if you ever have to prove what was stolen or burned up.
Once you have your list, find a comfortable chair with good lighting, grab a calculator and put on about two hours worth of your favorite music. Hey, if this was easy we would have done it during the last rate increase.
Now you have to figure out how long each piece of equipment is on in a typical month. I actually like to do this on a computer spreadsheet, even though it uses energy, just because I like to play with the numbers. I like to see what might happen if I changed every 100 watt incandescent bulb in the house to a comparable light output 25 watt compact fluorescent bulb. Or, check to see how much difference it makes if the kids watch one hour of TV instead of twenty - things like that.
Lots of equipment goes on and off without you doing anything. It is hard to estimate costs for some of these appliances. Web sites offer handy averages for a family of four or "typical" energy use figures for many of these standard appliances. Refrigeration, water wells, computer equipment, heating systems, and water heaters are just some of the more challenging appliances to quantify.
So, now add them up. If your total electricity or gas use is more than ten percent off your totals, look at your list again and see if you made any obvious mistakes, like forgetting to convert watts to kilowatts or minutes to hours. If you used a spreadsheet, you can sort by your estimated kWh, gallons, or CCF to get the big users at the head of the list. See if you agree. If that closet light bulb that is never on, ends up at the top of the list, see what you did wrong, fix it and re-sort. Keep going like this until you are in that 10 percent range. If you still aren’t there, look at those appliance for which you used national averages. If those averages are for a family of four and its just you and your cat, cut those numbers down by three quarters. If you used average family of four numbers and you live with all of your relatives in the same house, do a head count and adjust the family of four numbers to make sense to your situation. Now, look at the total again. You should be close.
I have been in hundreds of homes and always came up with an inventory number that fits the energy bill records in a way agreeable to the home owner. So, keep trying.
The reward is that you now have a feel for what you really pay for in energy use. Now you can start making informed management decisions about your house and how you use energy.
Maybe you can quit yelling at the kids to turn the lights off and start yelling at your spouse to quit turning up the heat. Or, maybe you don’t really need to keep your Arc Welder on stand buy to make that quick repair. Do you have something like a hot tub or a engine block heater or a stock tank heater that could be put on a timer? Now you can estimate your savings for every hour that you keep something off.
Don’t forget to check out your building's insulation package. Insulation levels, window and door quality and weatherstripping all determine how many hours your heater runs. The DOE recently announced grants available for weatherizing your home.
If you can’t stand the thought of your neighbors accusing you of being green or a liberal, you can defend your actions under recent homeland security issues. Or, maybe you can say you are supporting the troops by trying to avoid foreign wars over energy. It really doesn’t matter what your political or religious convictions are, the money you save could go towards anything you like, you get to chose. But, if you don’t do anything, the US Supreme Court decision means that more and more of your hard earned money is going to utility companies.
If the recent US Supreme Court decision on CO2 and Greenhouse gas regulation is as serious as everyone says it is, energy conservation just got a huge boost. Sarah Kessinger, writing for the Harris News Service reports that the April 3rd US Supreme Court decision labeling CO2 as an air quality component will have long term planning and financial impacts on the members of the Sunflower Generation and Transmission Cooperative. That could be the understatement of the year. This impact will be felt by all generation and transmission companies as well as distribution utilities across the nation.
While several states including California and Vermont have passed laws regulating CO2 and other green house gaze emissions, the EPA and most states have refused to accept that these gases should be a part of air quality regulation. Now the verdict is in. By a 5-4 vote the US Supreme Court majority opinion from Justice Stevens says, "Under the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do."
The auto industry tipped the feds hand by challenging several states regulation of automobile emissions and CAFÉ mileage standards. Reminds me of the old saying, “ be careful what you ask for, you might just get it”. While the next move is clearly the EPA’s, executives in the electric utility industry as well as the auto industry are noticeably shaken by the ruling. With over 200 coal fired power plants on the drawing boards or in the regulatory and planning pipeline, the implications are that any company producing CO2 or any of the identified green house gases must now factor in new costs. These costs will certainly expand from energy conservation and demand side management programs to carbon sequestration, carbon taxes and power plant system modifications. For the nation as a whole and for consumers specifically, this means utility bills are going up.
Some expect the increase to hit pocket books gradually as new regulations trickle into efinto effect. Others worry that the 5-4 ruling will have an immediate impact on financing for investments and construction throughout all industries related to fossil fuels. Amory Lovin’s "Negawatt" campaign may finally get that push over the top to make energy conservation and energy management the mainstream tools saving corporate as well as home owner budgets.
So, now, what will you do? Will you get that energy audit now, or wait until your rates climb faster than today. Have your rates gone up? Do you know for sure? Why not? Experts estimate that simply becoming more aware of your home energy use will knock off 4% from your bill. So, you don’t necessarily have to buy anything. All you have to do is read, decide and act. Well, of course its not that easy is it? Otherwise we would have all done it already. The best and cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas and CO2 production is to avoid energy use. The only way to avoid energy use is to turn whatever it is that is using energy off or find similar equipment that uses less energy. There really are no other answers, no magic boxes or potions. Reducing CO2 and green house gas production requires action. Since we as a nation tend to avoid difficult decisions until failing to act becomes more expensive than acting, this will be a difficult time for everyone.
My advice is to get smart fast. Find out what eats energy at your house. You don’t have to make changes or take action or buy new appliances or burn down your house. Just, start learning about your home’s energy appetite. Find out how many kilowatt hours (kWh) hours per month and per year are used at your house. If you use gas, find out how many gallons of propane or therms or CCF’s of natural gas your house uses. Call your utility company if you don’t keep your own records. Utility companies always keep the last six months of energy use data and many of them keep longer records. Home energy auditors typically check out the last three years of energy use data before they make their report. So, try to find three years worth of data. You look at three years of data to smooth out mistakes in management (e.g. someone left the heater on and the windows open during spring break vacation last year) or unusually cold or hot seasonal temperatures. Convert your three years of data into monthly averages. This then, becomes your performance yard stick.
Now with your total average monthly electricity and gas use numbers in hand find out what appliances and equipment eat that energy. Go room by room and make an energy use inventory. List gas appliances as well as electricity using appliances. Start in the kitchen since that usually makes the longest list of energy using devices. Then hit the laundry or utility room, to get the water and space heating equipment. Then inventory the main living or family room where all of the gadgets and entertainment equipment live. Now you are almost home free. Bedrooms and bathrooms generally don’t have much to list .
Get everything. If you have a six bulb vanity light in the master bathroom check to see if all six bulbs are the same wattage and list the total watts for that appliance. Don’t worry about how much total monthly energy these pieces of equipment use just yet. Simply make a list. Why just the list? Two reasons. Figuring out how much energy things use per month can be a real pain in the neck and you don’t want to give up before you make a list of everything in the house, and you can use the same list for your insurance company if you ever have to prove what was stolen or burned up.
Once you have your list, find a comfortable chair with good lighting, grab a calculator and put on about two hours worth of your favorite music. Hey, if this was easy we would have done it during the last rate increase.
Now you have to figure out how long each piece of equipment is on in a typical month. I actually like to do this on a computer spreadsheet, even though it uses energy, just because I like to play with the numbers. I like to see what might happen if I changed every 100 watt incandescent bulb in the house to a comparable light output 25 watt compact fluorescent bulb. Or, check to see how much difference it makes if the kids watch one hour of TV instead of twenty - things like that.
Lots of equipment goes on and off without you doing anything. It is hard to estimate costs for some of these appliances. Web sites offer handy averages for a family of four or "typical" energy use figures for many of these standard appliances. Refrigeration, water wells, computer equipment, heating systems, and water heaters are just some of the more challenging appliances to quantify.
So, now add them up. If your total electricity or gas use is more than ten percent off your totals, look at your list again and see if you made any obvious mistakes, like forgetting to convert watts to kilowatts or minutes to hours. If you used a spreadsheet, you can sort by your estimated kWh, gallons, or CCF to get the big users at the head of the list. See if you agree. If that closet light bulb that is never on, ends up at the top of the list, see what you did wrong, fix it and re-sort. Keep going like this until you are in that 10 percent range. If you still aren’t there, look at those appliance for which you used national averages. If those averages are for a family of four and its just you and your cat, cut those numbers down by three quarters. If you used average family of four numbers and you live with all of your relatives in the same house, do a head count and adjust the family of four numbers to make sense to your situation. Now, look at the total again. You should be close.
I have been in hundreds of homes and always came up with an inventory number that fits the energy bill records in a way agreeable to the home owner. So, keep trying.
The reward is that you now have a feel for what you really pay for in energy use. Now you can start making informed management decisions about your house and how you use energy.
Maybe you can quit yelling at the kids to turn the lights off and start yelling at your spouse to quit turning up the heat. Or, maybe you don’t really need to keep your Arc Welder on stand buy to make that quick repair. Do you have something like a hot tub or a engine block heater or a stock tank heater that could be put on a timer? Now you can estimate your savings for every hour that you keep something off.
Don’t forget to check out your building's insulation package. Insulation levels, window and door quality and weatherstripping all determine how many hours your heater runs. The DOE recently announced grants available for weatherizing your home.
If you can’t stand the thought of your neighbors accusing you of being green or a liberal, you can defend your actions under recent homeland security issues. Or, maybe you can say you are supporting the troops by trying to avoid foreign wars over energy. It really doesn’t matter what your political or religious convictions are, the money you save could go towards anything you like, you get to chose. But, if you don’t do anything, the US Supreme Court decision means that more and more of your hard earned money is going to utility companies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
