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There are $20 bills outside your house!
President Obama, who has been promoting the weatherization of homes and businesses as both an energy-saving and money-saving practice, was recently quoted saying, “If you saw $20 bills just sort of floating through the window up into the atmosphere, you’d try to figure out how you were going to keep them.” It is hard to disagree.
But what if you were driving or walking near electricity infrastructure and you noticed that $20 bills were oozing out of the wires and floating onto the road? I imagine that you’d try to stop and pick those up too.
If site-based efficiency gains (caulking your home or installing higher efficiency appliances) are like collecting $20 bills for yourself, then source-based efficiency gains are like society finding $20 bills laying all over the place.
After accounting for extraction, generation, transmission, and distribution (or, after adopting a source-based efficiency measure), three times more energy reaches the customer with the direct use of natural gas as compared to electricity. Put another way, if you start with 100 units of source energy, 32 of them will reach the customer if they are converted to electricity first, but 92 of them will reach the customer if they are used directly in natural gas furnaces, water heaters, etc. (for more information see AGA’s new direct-use slides here). It is a story you have likely heard before, but it bears repeating.
This is not to say that people should allow $20 bills to float through their windows. But we should all be thinking more about the $20 bills lying on the road.
Natural gas is efficient, don’t let your energy melt away
Imagine that you bought an ice cream cone — say, two scoops of Rocky Road with sprinkles on a vanilla cone, costing you $2.70 — and you then decided to walk the mile to your home and eat your ice cream cone there. So you put the ice cream cone in your backpack, trek home and pull it out to eat, only to discover that two-thirds of it has melted. In essence, you paid $2.70 for about 90 cents worth of ice cream.
Not a smart decision, but it illustrates a point with respect to energy use. Using electric appliances in your home, be it an electric water heater, heat pump or stove, is a lot like that ice cream cone. From the point of origin, whether it’s a coal mine or a natural gas well, to the place where either of them is generated into electricity — usually a central station power plant — to the electric outlet in your home, electricity loses about two-thirds of its useable energy. Most of that energy loss occurs in the generation process.
By contrast, natural gas’ journey from the wellhead through transmission and distribution pipelines directly to the natural gas furnace, boiler, fireplace or stove in the home loses only about 10 percent of its usable energy. Thus natural gas is far more efficient than electricity.
Fuel Cells Deployed in Japanese Homes
On a recent post, I mentioned that the Japanese are already installing fuel cells in homes, using natural gas that they reformulate into hydrogen.
Well, I have a little more specific information now that I have seen the Japanese Gas Association (JPA) Newsletter for October. JPA reports that their member gas utilities launched a residential fuel cell program in May 2009 under the brand name ENE-FARM. Gas utilities and other companies are purchasing fuel cells from manufacturers, and then selling the units to residential customers with subsidies to make this energy efficiency upgrade affordable.
As of July 22, 2009, Tokyo Gas bought 200 fuel cells, Osaka Gas took 500, Nippon Oil Corporation (ENEOS) took 500, Toho Gas took 100, and Saibu Gas bought 26 fuel cells. They each reported “good sales for the first year.” Leading Japanese housing manufacturers consider fuel cells as strategic products that can help distinguish their homes as environmentally sound and sophisticated.
True Blue Natural Gas Blog from the American Gas Association (AGA)- Natural gas is ahead of the curve
- Spectra Energy receives the 2009 Natural Gas Video Award
- Natural Gas Market Indicators
- Sen. Murkowski, Energy Leaders Point to Natural Gas as Large Piece of the Climate Change Puzzle
- Diversification of natural gas supply is an essential consumer protection
- From Austin to Boston in a natural gas vehicle
- Natural gas, how about zero carbon emissions
- The real natural gas message in a climate crunch
- Let’s work together to protect our seniors
- Natural Gas Market Indicators
