More on energy efficiency and the White HouseLast week, I posted my thoughts on how the White House Missed the Boat on Energy Efficiency. I also posted a link to that post on the LinkedIn Green Group of which I’m a member. I wanted to share the following comment from someone in the United Kingdom:
You are absolutely right in pointing out that electricity is a poor way to provide heat for our homes and buildings. Natural gas, though, is still a fossil fuel so the emphasis would be better placed on use of solar devices (maybe coupled with heat stores and/or heat pumps) to provide primary heat source with gas very much as a back up. As for electricity generation, users in the UK can source 100% renewable electricity from just one company: Good Energy (www.goodenergy.co.uk)
I also wanted to share my response.
I support renewables too. Unfortunately, the United States is not as far along as you are in the UK with renewables. Only 7% of our electric power comes from renewable energy. See U.S. Government web site for energy information.
Our recent economic stimulus legislation provided funding and incentives to expand wind and solar and to extend thousands of miles of electric transmission lines to connect the wind in the West to our urban areas on the coasts, but it will take some time before there is enough for a significant portion of our population to purchase 100% or anything near it in renewable-sourced electricity. In the meantime, there are some practical things we can do in the U.S. to make serious reductions in carbon emissions. We can install solar on our roofs, purchase renewable sourced electricity to the extent it is available, and install efficient natural gas water heaters (preferably tankless) and natural gas furnaces. Oh yes, and it would help if people lived close enough to their jobs to bike or walk to work, but that’s another topic…
Further carbon reductions can be achieved by installing the latest technology – natural gas heat pumps that provide hot water, heat and air conditioning.
And in a few years, it will be possible to use hydrogen in fuel cells, using the natural gas grid to deliver natural gas that can be reformulated into hydrogen, and capturing the carbon as a solid that can be “sequestered” in light weight carbon fiber bodies for cars and other products. They are already installing residential fuel cells in Japan, but they are still releasing the CO2 from the reformulators.
A recent break through could change that — A company called Atlantic Hydrogen has figured out how to capture the carbon from natural gas as solid carbon black.
Pam makes an excellent point about the difficulty in the United States moving to 100% renewable-sourced electricity in the shorter term. Her response reminded me of conversations I have had with friends that opt to “purchase all of their electricity from wind” or other renewable sources by taking advantage of retail electric choice programs.
I am all for consumers choosing to purchase wind or other renewable energy (something my wife and I did until we moved into a master-metered building). But it is a common misperception that the choice to purchase “100% renewable energy” is the same thing as powering you computer, TV, and coffee maker with electrons generated from wind or other renewables. The electricity that powers your daily life comes from the same grid as it did before you make that decision.
Making a renewable electricity purchase decision does not resolve the intermittency of many renewable sources. Typically when you purchase renewable energy in retail electric choice programs, what you are actually buying is a promise by your utility to go out and purchase the same number of electrons of renewable energy that you used during the month, which might be in the middle of the night, at off-peak shoulder times, etc.
This reality does not minimize the potential benefits of making the decision, which can create a market for different energy sources and generally diversify our energy mix (something I hope we can all support). And in the longer term, many individuals making that decision can change the overall electricity mix. But opting to purchase renewable energy (or more accurately, renewable energy credits) is not the same thing as making more traditional electricity sources irrelevant (or even less important) due to the intermittency of many renewable sources.
Mike Pomorski