"Earth Hour" Event to raise awareness about energy issues

The amount of energy needed to provide the electricity demands of the average American for a lifetime is equivalent to around 67,000 gallons of gasoline. Try filling that up 300 million times at today's gas prices!*

The Earth Hour event involves turning off/dimming lights all around the world in order to bring attention to electricity consumption, which for most people is a quickly passing thought that comes once per month. It is not about money, in this case, it is about preserving the natural resources that we all depend upon to survive and to produce and power all of the things we have come to love: e.g. mobile phones, cars, YouTube, MySpace, etc.

The hour is currently in progress and will happen in each time zone between 8:00 and 9:00 PM (20:00 and 21:00) March 29 2008.

The goal of the event is not to "save the world" or produce a meaningful reduction in emissions. The goal is to raise awareness and get the "grid mentality" out of people's minds that electricity is limitless, cheap, safe and clean, and flows endlessly from some golden bowl in the sky (to use the words of James Aach and Jeff Goodell). Electrical energy is produced for us using finite fossil fuel resources. These fossil fuels also provide often unacceptable environmental destruction and distress on people from their extraction to their combustion in the power plant, both today and into the future.

The beauty of electricity, however, is that we have the option of placing these distresses far out of sight from the consuming populace by stringing wires hundreds of miles to carry the energy. This acts to perpetuate wasteful consumption and ignorance. The electricity industry learned this years ago and has been operating it this way for decades.

No freedom is lost from the move away from fossil energy. It is a fact that the one big thing to be gained is freedom. Freedom from faceless greed, freedom from war over resources, and freedom from being consumed by our own consumption.

The event has received much criticism, mainly from people who do not understand it. The number "not participating" on the Facebook social network outnumbers those participating by a factor of three.

* Yes, I am very much aware that gasoline is not used to produce commercial electric power. The use of gasoline in this comparison was to produce something that the average person could visualize. Very much attention goes to gasoline as it is a tangible substance that everyone is familiar with and we now pay a lot more money for it than we used to. Not so many people can visualize a kilowatt-hour, and most people don't know the different between kilowatts and kilowatt-hours. So gasoline works as a very nice comparison.

Taking the Lead - Carbon Tax on Embodied Energy

An interesting article about the United States Republican presidential candidates bashing each other with the "L"-word (Liberal). According to candidate Mitt Romney, it would not be good for us (the world's largest consumer of energy) to take the lead in tackling the greenhouse gas problem.

You can find it at the one and only Fox News.

So who should take the lead on tackling the issue of global climate change? I have created a few visuals which may aid you in making an informed decision:

SOURCE: EIA, 2005

SOURCE: EIA, 2005

"But lowering our energy consumption would send us back to the Stone Age!"
Then how is it that Swedes, who live in a colder climate which needs much more artificial light and heat during winter, have a higher standard of living than we do, yet consume 100 GJ/y less energy than we do?

Of course international cooperation is necessary, but this "We won't do it unless they do!" concept will get us nowhere. A lot of those emissions in China we are responsible for. How much coal was burnt in an 18% efficient coal-fired power plant to make every computer peripheral on my desk (and most everybody else's desk in the entire world)? Those emissions coming out of the Chinese manufacturing sector are the responsibility of the U.S., Europe, Japan, and anyone else who uses China's land, labor, and natural resources to manufacture the goods they use. If we put a carbon tax on embodied energy, manufacturers will re-think the China game in an instant. The Chinese electricity mix has more coal to begin with, and the plants are half as efficient as our own. Then there are the transit costs on top of that with the big container ships burning that nice, thick, carbon-rich bunker fuel.

Embodied Energy is the energy required to manufacture and transport goods to the end consumer, as opposed to the energy that the product uses during its time with the end user. For example, compact fluorescent light bulbs have a higher embodied energy (it takes more to make them) than incandescents, but that is outweighed by the longer life and the reduction in electrical consumption.

Why not encourage manufacturers to set up shop right here at home, where our coal-fired power plants are at least 30% efficient! Manufacturing at home means lower carbon dioxide emissions - we have more efficient plants, and there is less distance required for shipment.

Hawaii Electricity Prices

While petroleum powers our vehicles, most of us do not rely on it for the production of the electricity we use. In Hawaii, however, oil power is the primary form of electricity production and the price of a barrel of crude oil at $100/bbl is evident in the price Hawaiians are paying for their juice.

Based on 2006 data, the average retail price of electricity in Hawaii is 20.72 cents per kilowatt-hour. Due to the increase in oil prices, it is higher now. To put this into perspective, the average price in Pennsylvania is about 9 cents/kWh (55% coal, 35% nuclear) and from PPL Electric Utilities it runs just over 10 cents for a residential user. In California it is 12.72 cents/kWh, and that is mostly coming from gas. Idaho has the lowest rates with its hydroelectric power slightly less than 5 cents/kWh.

Thankfully the climate is one which does not require the use of large amounts of electricity for heating and lighting (air conditioning is another story, but I don't know first-hand how necessary it would be, but I am sure they can do just fine without it). At those electricity prices, even photovoltaics (currently one of the most expensive alternatives) are competitive. I am sure that geothermal energy is also looking much more attractive now.

The burning of oil in power stations on Hawaii has not been regarded as a completely "bad thing" because most of them use the residual fuel oil fraction which is not usable in motor vehicles or aircraft. Only power plants and the great big marine diesel engines are capable of burning it, so if it were not used in power plants it would have to be exported. I do believe that the oil industry has come up with clever ways of cracking these heavy oil fractions into gasoline and other more useful variants. If alternative electricity production were to be established, the residual fuel oil could then be converted to gasoline and jet fuel (with jet fuel being the single largest use of oil on the Hawaiian islands), effectively reducing oil imports.

Being garbage-free

We Can be Garbage-Free - "Trash is a choice. Time for 'Cradle to Cradle' design." Read the article by Ruben Anderson at The Tyee (Go to Article).

This article takes a look at the concept of garbage - one of the most interesting, most problematic, and most prolific products of modern civilization.

I feel that the biggest issue with garbage production is rooted in the design of our economic system which requires continuous growth and consumption. With a growing stream of consumption comes a growing stream of waste.

• We produce a whole lot of useless junk that will break down in 3 months and then we will just throw it away ad buy new.
• The "Infinite Growth" capitalism economy requires that people continue to buy and consume things. Every part of our economy is dependent upon the continuous and increasing consumption of manufactured goods and commodities alike. If the growth slows or stops, people flip, and the economy goes to pot. This is a sad fact about the current way of doing things that is supporting you and I.
• Consumption and the subsequent tossing makes a lot of money for some powerful people.
• Our culture promotes a "Bigger and Better" mentality. Everyone thinks they need to have all of the latest gadgets and all seven (or how ever many) generations of iPod that have been produced.
• Change doesn't come easy. It is difficult enough getting people to properly sort their garbage and recycle it, let alone reducing the amount they produce.
• Our garbage infrastructure is mostly hidden. Landfills out in the countryside and mysterious waste-to-energy burners keep "away" out of the most people's view.
• Our culture puts a huge emphasis on convenience and increasing the number of things a person can do in a given amount of time (e.g. the drive-through, Fast Food Nation.)
• "Wash the Dishes, or just throw them away and watch them magically disappear on Monday morning!?"
• The concept of paying a lot for a high-quality item up front does not sit well with many people. They will keeping buying the cheaper, piece-of-junk versions, even if they consume more energy or have to replace them five times as often as the more expensive model.

Christmas Light Electricity Use

It appears that the Swiss are concerned with growth in electricity demand from the rising use of decorative lights. This is understandable, especially if they are looking at lights in America as an example of what's to come.

It has always been common for people in the U.S. to put up large, garish lighting displays, some with over 10,000 bulbs and using thousands of watts of power. There are also a lot of people with the big C-7 and C-9 bulbs (5 and 7 watts per bulb! ) in their lighting displays here. Just a single string of 50 C-7s will gobble up 250 watts of power.

A big craze I have seen are inflatable figures which are made of a nylon or vinyl material and are kept inflated by a constantly-running electric blower. Some houses have huge numbers of these, their lawn looks like some fairy-tale land.

The lighting display that I have up consumes about 500 watts, and is on for 5 hours per night. That's 2.5 kWh of electricity per night, equating to about 100 kWh and 200 pounds of coal (someone must have been naughty! ) over the course of the whole holiday season. This is roughly the middle of the road, as there are many displays which use less electricity and many that use much more.

Our yearly household electricity consumption with heavy heating use (no wood stove) is about 20 MWh, therefore the lights account for 0.5% of our annual consumption.

I'd say it is just a matter of common sense - either have the motivation to turn them off each night or install a timer to turn them off automatically. Don't install gaudy decorations that are tacky looking or excessive, and when buying new lights look for the much more efficient LED style. I like the look of the lights on trees and shrubs at night, but only in moderation. Those cheese plastic snowmen and Santa Claus figures also can be run with 25-watt or 40-watt incandescent bulbs. I have neighbors who have 100-watt bulbs in theirs and it glows like a second sun, needlessly burning coal and producing light pollution (since they tend to leave them on all night).

I have installed several strings of LED lights, which use ten times less energy than the incandescent mini-bulbs. It would be nice to replace the incandescent strings with LED, but most of them are in very good working order and it would be senseless to throw them away and buy new prematurely considering that they are only used for one month out of the year.

If you do decide to toss your old lights, remember that those wires are made from copper, and copper is a fairly precious metal. There are also many people who collect old lights on eBay and such. You could also donate them to someone. Save the good bulbs for replacements on other strings. All of those options beat throwing them in the trash.