Following up on earlier posts (#1, #2), my real-time electric meter was installed last week.  It’s significantly different than the old one. Everything’s digital, which allows ComEd to record my electricity usage at short intervals throughout the day. The idea is simple: I pay more for electricity when demand is high, and less when demand is low.

The graph below gives you a picture of how pricing varies throughout the day. Of course, this graph can change dramatically day-by-day, largely according to the weather. Today, the temps are expected to be mild, so demand for electricity is not anticipated to be driven by air conditioners or heating appliances.

I don’t actually begin paying by the hour until the start of our next billing cycle (in a week or so). But my wife is already with the program. Last week she woke up in the middle of the night, upset that she forgot to turn on the dishwasher before she went to bed (usually a low-cost energy time).  Of course, I explained that since the weather’s been cool, there’s not much difference between energy cost at 11 pm and 8 am.

ComEd also offers email/text alerts for “day ahead” and real-time price information. Via the web, you can set a threshold price (e.g. $0.14/kilowatt hour) that will trigger a notification. This allows you to customize your energy use according to demand.

More about ComEd’s program is here.

It’s so easy to get frustrated with all of the lifestyle alterations you have to make to live a more carbon-neutral life. Recycling, remembering to turn off the lights, taking shorter showers, unplugging appliances, using alternative transportation-the list is endless. I know I often want to uncomplicated my life by having just one trash bin in my kitchen or to luxuriate in a long, hot shower. Climate change? Why do we eve care? What are we actually fighting for?

Critically acclaimed documentary director Ken Burns is here to provide us with a reminder.

On Sunday, September 27, PBS began airing its 6-part series on America’s National Parks. The documentary, entitled The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, will feature footage of some of our country’s greatest natural treasures and also discuss the history of the Park Service and the people who fought to create and preserve it.

Filmed over the course of six years, The National Parks features landscapes from all across the country, spanning from Alaska to Florida . The preview footage of the show is breath-takingly beautiful and provides viewers with a full glimpse of the natural beauty of our country.

If you need a reminder of what we’re trying to protect by fighting climate change (or even if you don’t), I encourage you to watch the series on PBS next Sunday at 8/7 central. Hopefully after watching you will become re-inspired to help fulfill the National Park Service mission to conserve the landscapes and wildlife of our country and “leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Suddenly my efforts to be carbon-neutral seem more than worth it.

For more information and sneak previews, go to pbs.org.

During the summers, I live at home (Lake Leelanau, Michigan) and work on a small vegetable farm. This fact alone should be enough to hint at the size of my hometown, but for the sake of this post, let me outline it further. There are no stoplights in my hometown. The “town” is actually classified as a “village,” and consists primarily of a gas station, a small grocery store, one small restaurant (with limited hours), one bar, and a hardware store. Doesn’t sound that small? Let me put it in a way that truly sums up the “smallness” factor: I graduated from a K-12 school in a class of 42 students. We were the largest class ever to pass through the school. This was a public school.

Needless to say, the “crowded” aspect of Friedman’s book did not really apply to my summer. (Read more…)

In Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Tom Friedman quotes Cal Tech chemist Nate Lewis:

“Imagine you are driving in your car and every mile you drive you throw a pound of trash out your window.  And everyone else on the freeway in their cars and trucks is doing the exact same thing, and people driving Hummers are throwing two bags out at a time — one out the driver-side window and one out the passenger-side window.  How would you feel?  Not so good.  Well, that is exactly what we are doing; you just can’t see it.  Only what we are throwing out is a pound of CO2 – that’s what goes into the atmosphere, on average, every mile we drive.”

Whew, that’s evocative!  And disgusting.

Are things really this bad?  (Yes!)  And what should we do?  (That gets interesting…but the answer is actually simple.)

Most things that we do are purely private, that is, they involve us and other consenting people.  If I want to eat a butter-cookie and Al’s Deli is willing to sell me one, then that’s it.  However…there are times when there are spillovers from our actions that affect unwilling third parties.  If I bike the five blocks from my office to Al’s, no one in Bangladesh really cares.  However, if I drive an SUV, then I’ve put some CO2 into the atmosphere that will be raising temperatures and thus sea levels, making Barisal City more and more like Atlantis.  So…now Bangladeshis have an interest in whether I want a cookie.

Such effects on third parties are known as “externalities,” which is a form of “market failure.”   (Read more…)

Among the current government initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, few have been more public than the recently completed “Cash for Clunkers” program.  While the motivation for this program was shared with the goal of stimulating the economy, I am not writing to discuss the political pros and cons of the program, i.e. was it economically successful, did it spur foreign vs. American vehicle sales, etc.  What I would like to focus on are the statistics that relate to climate change and oil consumption, issues addressed in Thomas Friedman’s “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”.

Here are some of the basic facts from the program: (found here)

• 690,114 total cars were traded in
• The cars traded in had an average of 15.8 mpg
• The cars purchased had an average of 24.9 mpg

From these figures we can calculate a number of things.  Firstly, we note that there is a difference of 9.1 mpg between the two sets of cars, a great improvement.  Based on the estimate that Americans drive an average of 12,000 miles a year (a great website from the EPA does a similar calculation from where this number is taken) we can determine that the program could save 192 million gallons of gasoline a year.  While driving patterns may increase as a result of having a new and more efficient car (see my blog that discusses the “guilt-free purchasing” behavior) the general magnitude of this number should not be greatly affected.  This equates to 4.6 million barrels of crude oil annually that are no longer imported.  This may seem insignificant compared to the ≈10 million barrels per day that the US imports, but when one considers that the program only lasted a month, this is quite a significant accomplishment.  In dollar amounts, using today’s average values of $2.60 per gallon of gasoline, this is a savings to the consumer of $498 million.

The carbon dioxide emission savings are just as significant.  Using a figure of 19.4 lbs of CO₂ per gallon of gasoline, passenger cars will emit approximately 1.9 million tons less of carbon dioxide each year.  That is equivalent to taking ≈350,000 average American passenger cars off the road.  Again, this is small compared to the ≈7 million tons of CO₂ emitted from cars per day, but every bit counts.

As Steven Chu likes to say, “Energy efficiency is not just low-hanging fruit; it is fruit that is lying on the ground” – it is the easiest and fastest objective to implement.  Let’s do what we can, where we can, while we continue to search for solutions to the more fundamental problem of where our energy comes from.

Long-distance travel poses a huge problem for the carbon-conscious. Sure, it’s easy enough to hop on a bike or a bus for quick errands, but unless you’re Lance Armstrong it’s unlikely that you’ll be taking your Schwinn on a cross-country trip. That basically leaves only car or airplane travel as options. Both will add a few shoe sizes onto your carbon footprint.

That’s why I’m eagerly anticipating a decision that could bring Chicago thousands of jobs, billions in economic stimulus, and large-scale infrastructure changes. No, I’m not talking about the 2016 Olympics. I’m referring to the possibility of the Midwest receiving billions in economic stimulus money to go toward the creation of a high-speed rail system, with Chicago as its central hub. The train would offer service to cities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio. (Read more…)

As it turns out, interest in Northwestern’s early leadership on the environmental front wasn’t the concern merely of college students. On the contrary, in July 1970, Playboy, offering its self-advertised “entertainment for men,” published a substantial article on Project Survival, Northwestern’s all-night “teach-out” that predated the first Earth Day.

The article, by Geoffrey Norman, describes the chaotic beginning of the event, which thousands attended, and analyzes the arguments of the featured speakers (which included – among others – Illinois Attorney General William Scott, Senator Adlai Stevenson III, Lieutenant Governor Paul Simon, and notable environmental activist Paul Ehrlich). Norman’s article concludes by underscoring the irony that, by the end of the teach-out, the students had thoroughly littered the Technological Institute, where the teach-out was held.

This article was published later in a book of environmentally-concerned essays titled Project Survival, published by Playboy Press in 1971. Avid readers may find the book in Northwestern’s Science and Engineering Library (301.31 P9647). The magazine can be located, by request, at the Special Collections Department (L 051 P722) in Deering Library.

So, Northwestern does have a precedent for making headlines on environmental fronts. With the continued conversation and action of One Book One Northwestern, our legacy as a leader in this field ought to be well maintained.

Want to learn more about the answers to the problems blogged about here?  Understand more about green technology and how it applies to your own life and home?  Increase your awareness of “green” options and impacts?  One local resource is the Chicago Center for Green Technology.  From self-guided tours of the facility itself, on-site demonstration projects and extensive programming, the CGT offers a host of resources.  Check the fall brochure for upcoming sessions.