Al Gore’s robot factory fails to meet EPA guidelines
by Ross Catrow
Recently a release from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research scooped Al Gore on his giant Tennessee mansion that is basically made from the burning carcasses of dinosaurs. In 2k6 he ran up an average monthly electricity bill of 1,200$ and an average monthly gas bill of 1,080$ (so says the i-nets, ymmv).
The inventor of the internet’s big thing is carbon neutrality. So to offset his enormous carbon expenditures he participates in a Tennessee Valley Authority program called Green Power Switch. This program allows you to pay a couple extra bucks a month (really 4$ per 150-kilowatt-hour block) to subsidize the power company to collect electricity from renewable resources (solar, wind, and methane gas). The electricity then gets fed into the same grid everyone else uses:
TVA has the capacity to provide as much as 97 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually. Physical laws determine where electricity is ultimately used, so power from these sources will go into TVA’s electric system as part of the Valley’s total power mix, rather than to individual homes or businesses. When the green power resources aren’t operating — for instance, when wind speeds are too low to generate energy — TVA’s other resources will continue to supply reliable electricity.
While it is great to be carbon neutral, isn’t it better to be carbon neutral at a lower level of usage? Spending 500$/mo. on natural gas to heat your pool seems like a ridiculous and non-essential expenditure — both of dollars and carbon — to me. Wanton consumption is as much of a problem as anything.
It would be great to see Al make some changes in his personal life as a result of this latest brouhaha.
Also, does Virginia have an equivalent to Green Power Switch?
yes they do actually.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/buying/buying_power.shtml?state=VA&print
i looked into this a while back and i think back then there was actually an additional option. it might have just been buying credits or something.
anyways the “landfill gas” is pretty crazy, they farm methane gas from landfills created by rotting garbage, and then burn it for electricity. i think it is more renewable than it is carbon free, although i guess the gas would seep into the air if we didn’t burn it, so who knows.
the other one is wind, which is totally sweet i think.
they give you the option of going 50% or 100% “green,” where in the 50%, the other half comes from coal or what have you (it is cheaper). they used to have a breakdown on their website of what exactly is in there, like 12% gas, 25.3% coal, etc. kind of neat.
then you can always just buy carbon credits, but that is less fun.
also one thing is that there are i think a lot of nuke plants in va. like i know there is one at lake anna and then one somewhere around wmsbrg. which indicates to me that a lot of va power might come from nuclear? i dont know any numbers though.
anyways the point being that nukes are carbon neutral, as much as anything else (besides not using power in the 1st place). probably more than landfill gas anyways.
you will definitely want to check this out:
http://www.vaenergychoice.org/
also, i think dominion offers something where you still get a bill from them and you can elect to pay (more) for green sources. then i guess they just buy more power from these other suppliers to add to their grid. i think you can pick a percetage? start here maybe:
http://www.dom.com/customer/vapower/renewable/index.jsp
i think there are only those 2 nuke plants in VA. surry across the river from jamestown and on lake anna. both are dominion, but dominion is pretty huge, with other nuke plants in wisconsin and connecticut.
i kindof thought if you were on the grid, you were on the grid, so your power is from whatever percentages the grid is from? and if you buy green energy, it just means that you are upping the percent of grid power that comes from green suppliers? i could be wrong about all of this…
I think you are right about the grid, that is why it is kind of like you are just subsidizing the power company to use more green power. I mean if everyone did it, it’d be neat.
Thanks for the links guys, I will look into this.
as a side note, people in “the media” say that gore has piled up enough money just from apple and google that he could run for president on it with basically no fund-raising required. i don’t know if that’s true, but if so, that’s pretty crazy. maybe he should just buy us a new planet to move to when we’ve destroyed this one?
yeah i read that too. it is pretty crazy. i feel like losing in 2000 was probably the best thing that ever happened to him.
I did a bit of research on what kinds of green power are available to Richmonders and I think this is all we can do:
100% Green Electricity
And
100% NewWind Energy™