Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

Cap and trade seems incredibly complex, counter-intuitive, unfair, and misguided — if that’s your view, you have it about right, but the funny thing is, it will work — here’s why. The recent passage of the American Clean Energy Security act (ACES) in the House is a big milestone for cap and trade, but it will only pass the Senate if people understand what it is, and why it’s a good thing.

The first thing to know, is that the main part of cap and trade is the cap. The cap says: no more than a certain amount of CO2 can be released in a given year — major polluters are given a limit. Every year the cap gets tightened according to a predictable schedule. We are aiming for a target, and know what we have to do to get there.

The trade part is what makes things seem complicate and strange. So if I am an electricity utility executive, and I have a bunch of coal plants, I may find that I am releasing more CO2 than my limit. What makes trade cool is that if I don’t want to lay off my work force, I can decide to buy credits from another company — I can pay to pollute. Sure, it makes my costs go up, but now I have more incentive to clean up my act.

And no, it doesn’t mean we have more pollution, just more flexibility. My competitor, who had the foresight (more…)

I while back, I reviewed the Shower Professor shower timer. I had tried an egg timer variety, but you really have to look … and it’s steamy in a shower. Cheap, but … cheap. I looked around at several other options, but they are kind of pricey. Heck, somebody has a serious issue if they need to buy one for $125 that has a password and locks the water off after a preset time period. Either that or they have a teen-aged girl (I’ll have one of them in a few years, and am bracing myself).

But if you are in the group of people who just want to do your part to save a little water, and save a fair amount of money, I am still happy with the simple $5.99 digital timer that I use, with the hokey name the Shower Professor. It beeps at the right pitch and volume: you can hear it, and it stops after five beeps so you don’t have to do anything to avoid waking up the household. And it has several reasonable preset times — it has gotten to be a habit just to press a single button when I get in — unless I haven’t had my coffee yet, I’m in and out in about 4 minutes. My wife shaves her legs, so her showers are longer — there’s a good preset for that. The kids use it, too. Because it’s easy. (more…)

Fossil fuel use has created a quickly accelerating problem in the US and world. It has already and will continue to affect our water and food supplies, our safety and health, our security. It’s impacts also compound each other, are unpredictable, not fully understood, are not reversible, and which we need to act now to mitigate or adapt to; every day we delay makes the problem less solvable.

This is how I summarize the report issued today titled Authoritative Assessment of National, Regional Impacts of Global Climate Change from the United States Global Change Research Program. All regions of the country are discussed, so pick yours and see if you like what’s coming. Here’s a link to the summary of my region, the Northeast US (pdf).

Right now Congress is considering the Waxman-Markey Bill (officially, “American Clean Energy and Security Act”, and the official summary).

Views from the right and left have taken issue with the legislation. In my book, this is a sign of a bill that is about as good as a bill can get. That’s not to say it’s “great”, but it is a start.

To those who would hold out for something more perfect, I encourage you to carefully look at the Assessment report that came out today. (more…)

This weekend I saw the TV show Wa$ted and the documentary Born Into Brothels — two entirely different shows, but I think I saw the heart of a problem we have: we have become accustomed to a way of living that will be difficult to part with.

Wa$ted is a TV show — they come into your house, find how you’re wasting energy, propose and install solutions, follow your progress for a month, give the first year’s annualized savings in cash. The episode I watched resulted in a modest reduction in energy consumption by the family, and several refusals to part ways with some of their things. Born Into Brothels is about a photographer living in Calcutta who realizes the plight of the children of sex workers, gives them cameras, knocks down numerous barriers to help get the kids raised out of abject poverty, and has both success and failure.

These are very different shows, but it helped me see that regardless of outcome, even when the result is positive, people are resistant to change. (more…)

A new device will soon be available, and if I could place a pre-order, I would — it’s the TED 5000, and it looks like a big step forward.

[Update, August -- TED 5000 Release Date: The TED is now available for order by phone from the manufacturer; I have one now, and wrote installation notes; see links for details]

I currently have a BlueLine PowerCost Monitor — it is very good device, and I still recommend it. Using this device, we have even further reduced our energy cost for electricity by a significant amount.

But there’s a new game in town: the TED 5000, set to be released this month (June 2009). It solves a whole bunch of problems that the PowerCost Monitor and its existing version do not.

Indeed, the TED 5000 may be a very reasonable alternative to the smart meter your electric utility is going to install, then configure. The difference is that your utility may take years until they get all that done and provide the kind of information you could have right now.

And the savings are big indeed — from our current real-time power meter, we have saved a great deal of money on our electrical bill, and save every month.

But while going from a dumb electric bill to the PowerCost Monitor is a big step, it certainly has its limitations. (more…)