If Only Being Green Were Easier

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The past few weeks I’ve been researching additional means of lowering the carbon footprint of my home. Over the past year or more I’ve been working with my wife to adjust our lifestyle to make incremental changes. So far we’ve done a good job. To begin with we’ve been rather minimalist in our energy consumption. We use our gas heater maybe a few days a year at he most and minimize our consumption of electricity (granted we could likely do more). At this point we’ve done all the basics except for one key thing… designating and/or buying climate neutral energy.

I had this vision that I’d look online, find a program, sign-up and notify my utility company of our choice and be done. Apparently I was in fantasy land. After a bit of research I’ve learned that no programs are in place in San Francisco. I checked the US Department of Energy web site and discovered the Green Power page that has since been removed in the past few days. I also checked the California State Renewable Energy Program web site and couldn’t find anything meaningful.

So what am I doing to further minimize the carbon footprint of my home? Two things actually…

Wind Power photo by Jim Goldstein
Wind Turbines – Altamont Pass, California

First I’ve signed up with PG&E’s ClimateSmart program. As I’ve since found out through their Carbon Calculator my home has a very minimal impact due to our current rate of energy conservation. In short the program calculates the amount needed to make the greenhouse gas emissions associated with my homeâ€™s energy use â€œneutralâ€ and allocates that money towards greenhouse gas emission reduction projects in California. This isn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but given the current PG&E Annual Power Mix report 52% of energy reaching my home comes from hydrocarbon sources. It could be worse. For now I’ll make due with this program until I can choose to buy my energy from renewable sources.

Second I’m investigating home based solar and/or wind power equipment. I doubt solar will be the best choice for me here in San Francisco, given the cost and amount of cloud cover. Given my location and the constant breeze a low noise wind turbine or two is likely to be my future choice. The idea of being able to power my own home (even if partially) and/or potentially feed electricity into the power grid is something I look forward to realizing.

So what are you doing to minimize your carbon footprint?

Technorati Tags: wind, power, renewable, energy, solar, PG&E, ClimateSmart, turbine, Altamont Pass, California, stock photo, photography

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Posted by Jim on 05.21.2008 at 12:01 am
Tagged: California, Locations, Photography, Stock Photo , Energy, Stock Photo

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Mark Zanzig

Jim, great job pointing out the difficulties of signing up for green energy in your area, and congrats on having fine-tuned your home for this. I'd just like to point out that there seems to be a BIG controversy whether there actually *IS* a link between CO2 emissions and global warming. For starters, I suggest to read Michael Crichton's gripping "State of Fear". (Please feel free to read my review). (Then again, don't let this stop you in your efforts, as saving energy/being green is certainly not a bad thing!)

Leslie

great post!

i live in a tiny apartment, so my electricity use isn't too bad. but, i still try to be conscious of how much hot water i am using, and try to cook in the most efficient way -- for example, i no longer heat up the whole oven just to bake something small. just being conscious of what we are doing is really one of the most significant things we can do, i think.

Jim Goldstein

@Mike thanks for the comment. Good to hear others are increasingly conscious of this.

@Carlos For me here in SF solar is an option but summer here is like winter in most other areas :) I'm not sure I'd get enough sunlight to truly make an impact in the heating of my water. Whereas my location is windy if not breezy almost all the time. I'm still in the research phase so we'll see how it goes. I'll relay an update sometime in the future.

@Ivan There was a great conversation about this on NPR not too long ago. Solar has definitely picked up in Europe especially in Germany from what I hear. Although the SF Bay Area is indeed quite progressive with the economy as it is making the jump to solar is a pricey proposition. I do hope more is done to help average consumers adopt this energy saving technology. I know I would pursue alternative energy sources in a heartbeat if the costs were lower.

@Mark Funny you should mention that I have a bag of empty cartridges that I've been saving to take to be recycled. Your point on paper and other printer waste is a great point. In general the amount of waste Americans create is truly a crime. I'm actively making purchasing decisions where I can that are aimed at minimizing waste. Individual wrappers are convenient, but unnecessary. Recently I've taken steps to take my name off junk mail lists which has cut my weekly waste down considerably. My wife still receives numerous catalogs unfortunately. I'm working with her to address that. Once you see the waste that you take for granted you never look at things the same way. I suppose my experience in the back country has given me an alternate perspective for sometime. These days I even go so far as to actively conserve water, as though I were carrying it on a trail. People most certainly take our resources for granted. I'll stop here before I jump into a political rant :) Thanks for the great point and comment!

Mark

As photographers, I think one of the areas that need addressing are inkjet papers. I just read a good article on them that I plan on posting about. Interesting stuff. Shades of Paper is also offering an inkjet cartridge recycling program also. (among other places) I suppose each and every aspect of our lives should be looked at and at least be asking questions on how we can reduce further.

Ivan Makarov

PS - Personally, I follow the advise of PG&E, and during the night I turn off power strips that connect my computers, TV/Cable boxes. Not sure if it's saving me much money, but it sure is draining energy when there is no need for it.

Ivan Makarov

That's a good topic. I work in consulting field here in Silicon Valley, and though I work primarily with high tech companies, recently there has been quite a few new start-up solar power companies that we began working with. They're typically based out of Freemont area, and few of them are in San Jose/Sunnyvale, but these companies see Bay area as not only a place to get venture capital, but also a place where they could start selling their equipment. We're much more alternative energy conscious here than anywhere else in the U.S.

That said, most of these companies are still mainly targeting Western Europe customers. This is where the major movement in the area of solar power is right now, but California is slowly catching up. In 10-15 years the cost of solar power will go down enough where we, regular consumers, will find it beneficial to switch to it. However, as of right now, the cost is higher, thus we don't see it used very much. But as anything in the Valley, give it a few years before it catches up with mainstream.

Carlos Manta Oliveira

Definitely Solar for heating water. In summer it is 100% covering our needs, and in winter the solar panels feed "warmer" water into the boiler, thus reducing heating costs.

Wind is a nice concept, but what happens when there is no wind? I need to see in practice how it can really cut on the power bill (and save emissions). Power companies here are enforced by regulation to buy the excess eolic energy produced (e.g. at night), but I am still doubtful abour all this switching on and off.

Mike

To be fair: nothing consciously. But I'm doing anything to get my electricity bills and fuel bills down. I guess it'll all come down to the same thing.
And I have never in my life thrown junk on the street!

Guess I don't really need a climate hype in order to act in a green way ;-)