The Difference Government Can Make

I grew up in a libertarian household that was won over to the Republicans in the age of Reagan's "government is the problem" 80's. I have an innate skepticism about turning to the government for solutions. But in the late 80's I started getting involved in churches and learned a different lesson. In a church, the pastor and the board can set a direction, but people are basically going to do what they're going to do. You don't change people by yelling at them, you change them by offering them experiences that have different outcomes than they expected. What the ministers do is set up the opportunities.

Government really is the same way. People ignore rules that are unjust or impractical or no longer reflect their values, and in time the rules change. This is why my friend Alex could honeymoon with his wife in North Carolina even though their inter-racial marriage was technically illegal. No one cared anymore. So governments can't (shouldn't) make rules about things people don't care about. But governments can provide opportunities.

I live in Boulder county in Colorado. Many folks outside of Boulder refer to the city as, "The people's republic of Boulder", in part because those who live here are willing to use the government to shape a balance between corporate interests and human interests that is different from many other places. In my lifetime, Boulder has been willing to restrict its growth by imposing a greenbelt, it has become one of the most bikeable cities in the nation, and it was among the first cities to sign on to the Kyoto protocols directly, and it was the first city to impose a carbon tax.

These kinds of things can be imposed by higher levels of government, but it turns out that local governments, the kind you and I can get directly involved in, have the power to make significant progress.

Now Boulder county is doing something I am jazzed about. In the fall elections, Boulder county residents will have the ability to set up a bond-issuing authority that will make long-term loans for renewable energy installations to available to residents of the county. This is a great way to get more people to adopt solar, because it removes the barrier of having to come up with $14,000 out of your own pocket for the installation.

These are the kinds of things government can do. If you want change, get involved!

Report Card Day

I just got my utility bill for the month of March. I had really hoped that the changes over the last month would make an amazing difference in my bill. Okay, so I still hope for magic. ;-)

Here's the bottom line:

Month	KWh	Therms
Jan	583	129
Feb	892	79
Mar	814	34

So, that's a difference of 78 KWh between our February usage and our March usage. Or 8.7%. How much of that is warmer weather and longer days and how much of that is conservation? I don't have real good stats on that. But since most of my conservation has been changing to CFLs, and I've recorded my changes at One Billion Bulbs, I'm gonna use their numbers.

According to my account, I've changed 15 bulbs. They're showing estimated savings of $7.55. They're also currently using a figure of 9 cents per kilowatt hour for Colorado, which means they estimate my changes have resulted in nearly 84 fewer kilowatt hours being used. They don't have a filter that allows me to see savings during a date range, so this does include a few days of February usage.

Hmm. So, it looks like, based on very rough estimates, my 8.7% savings, or 78 KWh, can pretty much all be attributed to changing CFLs over the last month or so (84 KWh). That's pretty reassuring.

But numbers over 800 KWhs feel high to me. I got a quote on a solar PV system and the estimator said, "I'd be really surprised if you were using over 400 KWhs regularly." And yet my 3 bdrm house appears to be using nearly twice that regularly.

What I don't know is whether the estimator was commenting on one person living here or a couple or more than that.

Month	# of people	KWh/person	Therms/person
Jan	2	291	64
Feb	3	297	26
Mar	3.2	254	10.6

It is rather comforting to look at it this way. It makes it easy to see that it is worthwhile to share expenses with others, even if the bottom line numbers go up because actually the per person use is going down.

My solar estimate was $15,000 to supply 400 KWh of electricity per month off my own roof. The economics of that are pretty interesting... the system pays for itself in about 20 years assuming that KWh prices stay in the 10 cents an hour range. It pays for itself more rapidly if electricity costs go up... which is likely considering retrofitting power plants to sequester carbon and increasing demand for coal and natural gas worldwide. I am disappointed that 400 KWh isn't enough to make my household self-supporting. But maybe that's an indication that there's more to save. Hmm... how many more bulbs can I change before my roommates revolt? ;-)

Something to be grateful for: common currency

One of the books I started reading during my illness this week is Bill McKibben's new book Deep Economy. The introductory material is about establishing the need to think about the world in a radically new way... the "why you need this book" part of the book. The picture is pretty bleak:

• If the resources of the world were spread out equally, my life would look like the average Pakistani's, rather than mine (especially discouraging when Fox's new talking head is so informed about the lives of Pakistanis)
• Global Warming is the result of extracting vast reserves of energy stored in carbon from under the ground, removing the energy, and putting the carbon in the air
• We are less than 25 years from a radical change in our lifestyles, forced by any combination of peak oil, the gap between the haves and have-nots, rising temperatures, massive trauma to the biological mono-culture we've become used to eating
• and so on.

Of course, for people paying attention at any cycle rate, this isn't particularly new stuff. But ingesting a big dose of it at once can be a huge bummer.

Using the spirit of Pronoia -- challenge despair -- I have this balancing thought:
The Industrial Revolution hasn't just been about extracting what we want from the earth at higher efficiencies... it has also been about establishing a common currency for the world. It is monetary and linguistic, but it is also energetic. The Industrial Revolution has largely resulted in a world where everything we care about--heat, clean water, transportation, communication, health, food production and storage, community, entertainment, education--can be powered by electricity. And the beauty of electricity as a currency is that electricity doesn't care where it comes from.

Today the wind blows by my house, the sun beats down on the shingles of my roof, and my bikes stand largely unused in my garage. This post is powered by wind-power if you ask the accounting niceties of the power company... but the reality is 90% of the electricity came from coal.

We are stuck in Industrial Revolution ways of producing power. We are long past the time when it's made sense. (Add the cost of resource wars fought since 1950 into your gas, oil, and electrical bill.) But a new world is already living breath-by-breath with the one we're in now. I imagine we are not so far away from a day when we sign up for spinning classes not just for the exercise and the community-building, but because the power is donated to the local health clinic.

Green Energy and Carbon Credits

This is a bit of a rant. I believe in green energy. I believe in public utilities doing electricity production using renewable means. But the truth is, once the electricity goes on the grid it becomes part of one huge, indistinguishable pool of electricity. In other words, even if I subscribe to Windsource (and I did as soon as it became available) 90% of my electricity still comes from coal. This is because in Colorado, 90% of all electricity generation comes from coal.

Similarly, I like programs like TerraPass, NativeEnergy, and CarbonFund. I like places that collect dollars and oversee investing those dollars in programs that will reduce carbon. But even though I participate in one of those programs, I don't think that absolves me from concern. And no, I'm neither Catholic, Jewish, nor Scotch, I didn't grow up in a single-parent home, or a hippy home, or the child of Great Depression survivors.

What I did grow up as is the daughter of an inventor with a passion for R&D. I signed up for Windsource not so I could put a sticker on my window, but so that more wind generators could be built. I signed up for my carbon program not so I could feel less guilty, but so that we would have a better understanding of what we can do to sequester carbon. So I like these programs.

Here's the thing though... why are the prices so low? I mean, $50 to offset all the carbon emitted by generating electricity and burning natural gas for my house for a year? That's peanuts. I do know there's a limit to what these programs can put to use at any one time, but I also know that those of us who can should be putting more money into the fight.

• What about creating a fund that installs solar panels on low income houses? Say something like the Habitat for Humanity program for solar?
• What about microlending programs that allow people to borrow money to replace inefficient appliances to be paid back by the savings on their electric bills?
• What about paying the neighborhood can collector to pick up other recyclables as well?
• What about building programs at the local non-profit for installing solar?

Okay. End rant. ;-)

Efficiency & Renewable Energy

I commented earlier this week that I didn't know what it was going to take -- really -- for us to put the brakes on global warming. Turns out the American Solar Energy Society has been asking that same question. In this report (pdf) from their 2006 SOLAR conference, they conclude that it will take a combination of energy efficiency in transportation and buildings, plus renewable energy to avoid the next 1 degree centigrade rise in global temperatures.