Seriously lower energy bills: A philosophy of Air-Conditioning

Despite the risk of sounding like a braggart, I feel impelled to boast for a minute about my last electric bill. For the month of June we used only 575 kWh, down from 630 kWh in May and 759 in April. For the month we hit what must be our lowest daily average ever, 18 kWh per day. That is less than half our average of 38 kWh/day from last June. I should add that I was working from home that month and we were not away on vacation.

In case you have no idea what your own usage is, the average American household uses 800 kWh per month. According to the EIA, the middle-Atlantic region, which includes my home city of NY, averages about 650 kWh/month; presumably that number is higher in the summer because of A/C.
How did we cut our electricity use by half? Since I started boning up on all things electrical, I have made the following changes:

1. I have continued to switch our remaining incandescent bulbs to CFLs
2. I do not leave any lights on in rooms I am not in or when I leave home
3. I avoid turning on our halogen sconces (450 watts) as much as possible
4. I have become much more careful about turning off things like fans in rooms that are not being used
5. I set my computer to go to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity
6. I set up surge-protectors so I can easily turn off my computer, modem, and printer at night
7. I replaced our oldest (12+ years) air-conditioner with an Energy Star model
8. We were lucky with the weather--I don't think there were any days in June where the temperature went over 90.
9. MOST IMPORTANT: I DID NOT USE THE AIR-CONDITIONER UNLESS IT WAS REALLY HOT--during that billing period, I think I only turned it on twice and only for a short time.

There is no question that the final three made the biggest difference.

If you are serious about cutting your electricity use, the quickest and most dramatic way is to rethink your air-conditioning. In my case, this is not about suffering for a good cause. There is a reason people love air-conditioning. I can't stand feeling hot and sweaty, and when I overheat, my productivity and sense of well-being take a dive.

Here is the Green Factoids environmental philosophy in a nutshell:

we are going to have make changes, but I prefer not to think of them as sacrifices; I genuinely see them as improvements.

So with air-conditioning here is my new philosophy:
1. fans work amazingly well, especially ceiling fans in your bedroom and T.V. viewing room; I rarely feel uncomfortably warm with a fan blowing directly on me

2. if the temperature is below 85, you probably don't need A/C--again this is not martyrdom; you will adjust to this a lot quicker than you think

3. 75% of the air-conditioned homes or stores I spend time in are much too cold--(I think we should complain--it is one way to get businesses to be more responsible; congratulations to Starbucks for leading the way by seriously rethinking the appropriate use of air-conditioning)

4. when you do use A/C, blast it for a few minutes and then turn it to the lowest possible setting and hit the energy-saver button--usually when you turn the A/C on, you are overheated; once you cool down, you don't need it on high, or sometimes even at all

5. test how high a temperature setting is comfortable for you

6. this one should be obvious, but never leave the A/C on when you are not home; there is absolutely no efficiency advantage to running it all the time--quite the opposite it is a massive waste that luckily is simple to eliminate

7. if you feel you must leave it on for a pet, keep it to one room, with the door shut, on the lowest possible energy mode--your dog does not need it set to 68; the low 80s should be fine; make sure your rooms are shaded and that your dog has access to plenty of cold water

8. don't beat yourself up for using it when it is really hot

As far as the final point goes, instead of feeling like we have to quit A/C like some sort of evil addictive drug, I think we should be looking to change our assumptions about when and how we use it. The closest parallel I can think of is seat-belts. When I was growing up, I don't think my parents ever once told us to wear a seat-belt. They would do things like ride with a baby in their lap in the front or let me and a bunch of friends smush into the front passenger seat--no one ever wore a seat belt. Now, seat-belt compliance in the U.S. is above 90%--far higher than Europe by the way. My kids have never ridden in the front seat. I don't even back up my car without a seat-belt on. Attitudes change. 20 years from now, I may be marveling with my grandchildren about how you needed to wear an overcoat in the supermarket in July because they kept the temperature so darn low--now we know better.

Green Investing

This is in no way meant to offer investment advice, but my husband and I discovered a "green" fund called New Alternatives Fund a few years ago that has actually done quite well (7% return over 10 years; 33% last year -- according to their web site). "Green investing" seems to be the talk of brunch in LA -- like IdeaLab, which has started investing in green technology.

New Alternatives is actually an old fashioned mutual fund, run by two guys in upstate NY (father and son) who saw the need, were "personally interested in liberal, social and environmental matters," and gave up their law practices to commit themselves to it. My favorite part is the Shareholder reports, printed on recycled paper -- and written in language I actually understand.

Here's some information:
New Alternatives Fund

Carbon Taxes -- the great solution

I have followed the carbon tax murmurings for several years -- and the past month has been almost an explosion in the number of people taking the idea seriously. Al Gore's movie (“An Inconvenient Truth”) jump-started the conversation: what do we do about the environment? Most people landed quickly on "control consumption" as the only realistic solution. But how? And the next wave seems to be "tax consumption" -- because the truth is, the best way to lower the demand for a product is to raise the cost.

Carbon taxes are also known as "green taxes," "tax shifting," "ecotaxes" or "Pigovian Taxes" (a phrase coined by Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw, named after the economist who came up with the idea of externalities), and the idea is simple: tax what you don't want (pollution, smoking, green-house emitting behavior) and you will get LESS of it. How much to tax? An easy answer is to calculate the cost of the behavior to society, ie, the “externality.” Smoking causes billions in health care costs; the taxes on cigarettes should reflect that so that users are "paying their way."

The elegant part of tax shifting comes when you take that tax revenue and cut taxes on things you want more (ownership, work) or cut taxes that are regressive (payroll taxes).

According to the book "Tax Shift" by Alan Durning, if we taxed the entire cost of pollution to society, we could eliminate (are you ready?): ALL Federal income taxes; or ALL payroll taxes; or ALL corporate taxes. Granted, gas would probably double in cost. But since you'd be paying no income tax, you can afford to buy that new hybrid.

For More information:
Durning’s book Tax Shift – a great, quick read:

Two articles from the New York Times discuss the idea:
EDITORIAL; Global Warming and Your Wallet

Counting on Failure, Energy Chairman Floats Carbon Tax:

discussing a bill before Congress (put up as a joke, but hey, you have to start somewhere):

You might also look at:

Wikipedia on Greg Mankiw

What is a green tax shift?
http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/green-tax-shift.html

The Danish blog EnergyHack notes that Denmark is adopting a plan to tax cars based on their gas mileage, lowering the cost of cars like the Prius and raising the cost of cars like Hummers and Porsche Cayennes.

Understand Your Electricity: which appliances use the most electricity?

Here are some numbers from the Energy Information Administration. They are from 2001, the most recent available.

The two biggest components of household electricity use are heating, ventilation and cooling, which go by the catchy acronym "HVAC," and kitchen appliances. HVAC accounts for 31% of the total household use and kitchen appliances account for another 26%.

Air-conditioning is the single biggest electricity user in American households, totaling more than 182 billion kWh. More than 85% of that is for central A/C.

Space heating alone accounts for more than 10% of U.S. household electricity use, more than 115.5 billion kWh; space heaters account for more energy use than either lighting or home electronics, even though space heaters are found in only 43% of all households.

After A/C, refrigerators are the biggest electricity users, requiring 156 billion kWh per year. The average fridge uses 1239 kWh per year. Current Energy Star models use between 400 and 500 kWh per year.

Stand-alone freezers use a remarkable 3.5 % of the household total, even though they are found in only 34% of all homes. Dishwashers, which are found in 56% of all homes, account for only 2% of the household total.

Lighting accounts for 8.8% of the U.S. household total, about 100 billion kWh.

All home electronics account for only 7.2%, or 82.3 billion kWh.

Not surprisingly, TVs are the most common household electronic item, averaging more than 2 per household; they account for about 33.1 billion kWh. or 2% of the total.

Way down on the list, cordless phones and answering machines each account for less than .2% of the household total, or about 4.4 billion kWh between the two of them.

Understand Your Electricity: Sleeping your work Computer

From the Alliance To Save Energy

New Report Highlights the Power of Powering Down

A new report on personal computer usage and power consumption released this month suggests US business could be saving billions of dollars simply by shutting down machines at night. The survey, commissioned jointly by the Alliance to Save Energy and power management software company, 1E, found that nearly half of all corporate computers (roughly 31 million PCs) are not regularly switched off at night. According to the study, this lack of inactivity is costing US businesses $1.72 billion annually and adding over 14 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per year.

Comment: pulling out my handy calculator, and borrowing a few PC numbers from Mr. Electricity, we can estimate that an average workplace computer uses about 100 watts just sitting there. The Alliance estimates that as many as 31 million PCs are left on at night. Forgetting about weekends, let's assume each of these is on instead of off or asleep for 10 hours every day, four nights a week; each one would thus waste 1 kWh per day, or 208 kWh per year. For 31 million computers that adds up to more than 644 million kWh per year, or a year's electricity for 586,181 homes. (Using my 11,000 kWh/year average). Each computer that is left on for 60 hours over the weekend wastes another 312 kWh per year. If 15 million of these were left on over the weekend year round, they would waste more than 4.68 billion kWh, or enough electricity to power more than 4.25 million homes.

Let's hope that these companies are sensitive to the other green, cost: according to the EIA, the average commercial cost for electricity this year is 9.28 cents/kWh. Using my numbers, each computer left on overnight during the work week wastes about $19 a year and each one left on over the weekend wastes another $30 a year.

Understand your Electricity: Vampires Part 2

I just read yet another site that recommends that we unplug our electronic appliances: this writer claimed that 75% percent of household energy use goes to power items in standby mode—the site credits the Department of Energy of all places. Considering that according to the most recent Energy Information Administration figures available (2001), all household electronics—TVs, stereos, computers, peripherals, everything—accounted for just 7% of U.S. household electricity use, that number is not just incorrect but utterly insane.

The writer may have wanted to claim that 75% of the total power use of our electronics is used to power items on standby—that could be true: is your printer on all day? how much time do you spend printing? Is your VCR on right now? Is anyone watching it? So we could probably cut a significant proportion of that 7% by shutting these items down.

But let’s get a little proportion. Here are a few numbers from my trusty Kill-a-watt to cut through the green haze we are living in.

The computer system I am currently writing at includes the following components all plugged into a single power strip:
Apple desktop
cable modem
HP printer
external hard drive

That entire system uses between 90-115 watts of electricity, including when I am printing. Starting up, the whole system draws about 105 Watts. The printer draws 21 watts on standby and 27 watts when it is starting up. The cable modem, which many people leave on all the time, draws 7 watts.

That is to say, my whole computer system uses about the power of a single 100 watt bulb or 1.5 60 watt bulbs.

My Energy Star Air-conditioner uses between 700 and 1000 watts whenever it is cooling. It saves energy by alternating its cooling mode with a 0-watt low-energy mode.

As I noted in my previous "Vampire" post, unplugging standby appliances might save you about 72 kWh a year. Turning off your window air-conditioner could save you twice that each week. A central system running at full blast uses 3.5 kWh every hour.

The problem with the internet is that this misinformation tends to take on a life of its own: how many internet start-ups were funded because of the widely repeated but utterly baseless factoid that the number of people on the internet was doubling every three months?

Standby power is a problem on a national not a household scale. Its real solution is efficiency standards. It makes much more sense for the government to revise the codes to minimize standby power draw than for individual consumers to have to research the power use of a dozen electronics that use only a few watts each, or for them to have to walk around turning them off--something that only a small number of people are ever going to do.

Understand Your Electricity: Why Light Bulbs Matter

Leaving a 7-watt cable modem on 24/7 for a year uses about 63 kWh---.6% of the typical household's yearly total of 11,000 kWh.

Leaving a 60 Watt bulb on for a year uses 547 kWh--about 5% of the typical yearly total.

Our house has two modems and 50 light bulbs.

Understand Your Electricity: What is a kilowatt hour (kWh)

What is a kilowatt hour (kWh)?

Glad you asked. We measure the electricity we use at any given moment by watts: a 100 watt bulb is using 100 watts continuously while it is on.

We buy our electricity by the Kilowatt hour or kWh. A kilowatt hour is not a period of time but an amount of power. The dictionary definition of kWh is: a unit of energy equal to the work done by one kilowatt in one hour.

I find this a bit abstract; it is easier to make sense of via equivalences. A device's wattage determines how long it must run before it uses up 1 kWh's worth of power.

1 kWh = the amount of power a 100 watt device uses in 10 hours
1 kWh = the amount of power a 10 watt device uses in 100 hours
1 kWh = the amount of power a 1 watt device uses in 1000 hours

From another perspective:
1000 ÷ wattage = the number of hours the device must run to equal 1 kWh

To calculate how many kWh a device uses in a year, you must know its wattage and how many hours a day it is running.

For a 50 watt device that runs 4 hours a day:
1000 ÷ 50 = 20 hours to make 1 kWh
4 X 365 = 1460 = the hours the device runs in a year
1460 ÷ 20 = 73 kWh per year

As usual, Mr. Electricity has a helpful discussion of the wonders of the watt and kilowatt hour.

Understand Your Electricity: Sleeping your Computer

One of the most common tips on the “save the planet" lists is to change the settings on your computer so it goes to "sleep" when it is not being used. How much electricity does this save?

Getting out my handy "kill-a-watt" meter, I discover that my Apple Desktop uses about 60 watts for regular functions. I should add that I am not what the tech writers would characterize as a heavy user, no “hard-core gaming” etc., just the usual word-processing, surfing, and email.

While sleeping, my computer’s power draw drops to about 4 watts, just a smidge more than it draws when turned off. Using these numbers, sleeping produces a power savings of about 56 Watts. For simplicity's sake, let's round that to 50 watts.

Assuming a 50 watt savings, every 20 hours that the computer is sleeping rather than running saves 1 kWh of power.

Let’s say that the sleep function was reducing power use 4 hours a day throughout the year. What then is the yearly savings?
4 hours X 365 days = 1460
1460 ÷ 20 = 73

That would save 73 kWh a year. Again using our average American household use of 11,000 kWh per year, eliminating 73 kWh would save about .66% of the year’s total.

Okay, so that is not so impressive from the household perspective. But from a nationwide perspective the numbers are more meaningful.

Again using my Apple numbers, every 50 computers that sleep instead of run for 1 hour save 1 kWh. Every million computers that sleep instead of run for 1 hour save 20 megawatt hours of power. Every 25 million computers that sleep instead of run for 1 hour save 500 megawatt hours of power, or the generation capacity of the typical coal-fired plant.

The most recent census data (2003) put the number of home computers in the U.S. at about 70 million.

If each one of these computers slept for 3 hours a day instead of running, we would save 1,533,000 megawatt hours per year, or 1.533 billion kWh: that's the yearly power use of about 139,000 typical American homes--I would be impressed by that.

A Caveat: Before we all get too excited, I should note that lap-tops use less electricity than desktops so they also save less when they sleep. My husband's Dell uses about 30 watts for normal operations and 2 watts when asleep. Hence, sleeping only saves 28 watts, and the computer requires more than 35 hours in the sleep function to save 1 kWh.

The Bottom Line: this one wins the no-brainer award. Resetting your computer sleep function takes about 30 seconds and will save energy as long as that computer is operating. It is definitely one of the easiest ways for the average person to help the planet.

Beginning this year, a group of technology companies has joined forces to form Climate Savers: Computing to increase computer efficiency. Their goal is admirable as well as achievable:

By 2010, we seek to reduce global CO2 emissions from the operation of computers by 54 million tons per year, equivalent to the annual output of 11 million cars or 10–20 coal-fired power plants. With your help, this effort will lead to a 50% reduction in power consumption by computers by 2010, and committed participants could collectively save $5.5 billion in energy costs.

Take a look at their statement of their initiative.

Understand Your Electricity: Unplugging Vampires

Every "save the planet" list these days tells you to use CFL bulbs, unplug “vampire” appliances (those that draw electricity even when they are off), and sleep your computer. However, I have yet to see one that tells you the different impact of these activities.

So here it goes, thanks to the “Kill-a-Watt” watt-o-meter, a device that every would-be environmentalist should own. (See the previous post for where to buy this miracle device).

Unplugging Vampires: the only appliances in our house that draw measurable power when "off" are the DVD/VCR player (4 watts), the printer (11 watts), and the computer (2 watts). The toaster, mixer, food processor, TV, stereo, and lamps draw no power.

What then is the impact of unplugging these “vampires”? Rounding our total up to 20 watts and assuming that these guilty appliances would otherwise be off and plugged in 24/7, unplugging them for a month would save about 12 kWh or 144 kWh for the whole year. Respectable, certainly, but equal to about 1.3% of the average U.S. household's 11,000 kWh yearly usage. Obviously, in a more realistic scenario, if we consider our vampires as "off" only half the time, and running the other half, the savings goes down to 6 kWh/month and 72 kWh/year or a tiny .65 % of household usage.

Changing light bulbs: assuming a given light was running 6 hours per day, changing a 60 watt incandescent light bulb to an 18 watt CFL would save 7.5 kWh per month or 90.7 kWh for the year--per bulb. Multiply that number by 40, the number of bulb sockets in the average house, and you are saving 300 kWh/month or 3600 kWh/year, or 32% of the average household's yearly electric usage.

As I noted in an earlier post, changing half of our bulbs and being careful about turning off the lights immediately cut our electricity usage by 20%.

Simple Advice for saving the planet: Change those bulbs and get aggressive about turning out your lights.

Setting Priorities #1: Understand Your Electricity

The recent Live Earth concert series was an inspiring attempt to raise public awareness of global warming and help educate people about reducing their impact. The main problem is still these "save the planet" tips, which though full of our beloved factoids, do not actually help individuals understand where their carbon footprint really comes from.

Americans have become fixated on driving because we are so dependent on our cars and because of the evil “foreign oil.” You will get no argument from me about cutting our oil usage, for security and environmental reasons. But as far as global warming is concerned, coal-generated electricity is the bigger problem: coal pollutes much more per unit of energy than oil or natural gas. In 2006, more than 2.1 billion metric tons of emissions came from coal, or 36% of the total.

As a society, more of our emissions come from oil, but

for the average individual, the energy used in our homes is responsible for more than twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the energy used by our cars.

So first thing’s first: for Americans reducing electricity use should be the top priority, and to do that we need to understand the following:

1. where we use it
2. where we can cut it
3. where it comes from


Over the next few days, Green Factoids will take a look at our electricity use with the help of a handy device that every household should get: the “P3 International Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor.” You simply plug your Kill-a-Watt into the outlet and plug your electric device into the Kill-a-watt to learn how many watts the device is drawing.

The device will also tell you the appliance’s kWh, volts, amps and other cool information.

Amazon currently sells the Kill-a-watt for about $23.

Thanks to our favorite blog, Michael Bluejay's Mr. Electricity, for recommending the Kill-a-watt.

Wind in Europe

From the Earth Policy Institute:

Europe continues to lead the world in total installed capacity with over 40,500 megawatts, or two-thirds of the global total. These wind installations supply nearly 3 percent of Europe’s electricity and produce enough power to meet the needs of over 40 million people. The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) has set a target to satisfy 23 percent of European electricity needs with wind by 2030. EWEA also notes that Europe has enough wind resources to meet the electricity demands of all of its countries.

Germany, the country with the most installed wind-generating capacity, now gets 6 percent of its electricity from its 18,400 megawatts of wind power. Spain, in second place with over 10,000 megawatts of capacity, gets 8 percent of its electricity from wind.

Denmark’s 3,100 megawatts of wind capacity meet 20 percent of its electricity needs, the largest share in any country. It ranks fifth in the world in installed capacity. Denmark is also the global leader in offshore wind power installations, with 400 megawatts of existing capacity. Globally, over 900 megawatts of offshore wind capacity will be installed by the end of 2006, all in Europe.

Comment: Denmark obviously deserves enormous admiration for managing to produce 20% of its electricity from wind, but as a country of only 5 million people, it is hard to see it as a model for the U.S. That Germany, with its population of more than 82 million, gets 6% of its electricity from wind is far more striking. However, according to Greenpeace, the average European household uses 4,667 kWh/year whereas the average US household uses 11,209 kWh/year, so unless we make some progress tackling our efficiency problems, we will have a very hard time achieving European percentages of renewable electricity.

How much does wind energy cost?

From the American Wind Energy Association:

Over the last 20 years, the cost of electricity from utility-scale wind systems has dropped by more than 80%. In the early 1980s, when the first utility-scale turbines were installed, wind-generated electricity cost as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, state-of-the-art wind power plants can generate electricity for less than 5 cents/kWh with the Production Tax Credit in many parts of the U.S., a price that is competitive with new coal- or gas-fired power plants.

Worldwide Wind Energy in 2006-2007

According to the World Wind Energy Association:

In 2006, 14,900 MW of wind power were added, bringing the global installed capacity to 73,904 MW by the end of December. The added capacity equals a growth rate of 25 %, after 24 % in 2005.

WWEA is predicting that another 16,000 MW will be brought on line in 2007, bringing the total to 90,000 MW, followed by another 19,000 MW in 2008.

Based on the accelerated development, WWEA has increased its prediction for 2010 and expects now 160,000 MW to be installed by the end of 2010.

More numbers for 2006: Five countries added more than 1000 MW: the United States of America (2,454 MW), Germany (2,194 MW), India (1,840 MW) and Spain (1,587 MW) were able to secure their leading market positions and China (1,145 MW) joined the group of the now top five markets and is now number five in terms of added capacity, showing a market growth of 91 %.

Five countries added more than 500 MW and showed excellent growth rates: France (810 MW, 107 % growth), Canada (768 MW, 112 %), Portugal (628 MW, 61 %) and the United Kingdom (610 MW, 45 %). The most dynamic market in 2006, Brazil, faced its long expected take off and added 208 MW which equals a sevenfold increase of installed capacity within one year.

Wind Energy in 2007

The American Wind Energy Association estimates that more than 3000 MW of wind power will be added to the U.S. market in 2007, a 20% increase over last year’s 2400 MW of added capacity. Wind power will generate about 31 billion KWHs this year, or enough electricity to power about 3 million homes, impressive but still less than 3% of the U.S. total.

Using a common conversion rate, each MW can provide the power needs of about 200 homes. At its current rate, wind power is adding generating capacity for about 600,000 homes a year. BUT that is still less than 0.5 % of the more than 113 million households in this country.

Wind Energy Growth

From The Union of Concerned Scientists:

As wind power costs become more competitive, demand is growing exponentially all over the world. Global wind power capacity rose from just over 6,000 MW in 1996 to more than 59,000 MW by the end of 2005–almost a ten-fold increase. Growth has recently been most significant in Northern Europe, Spain, and India, but markets in Asia and the Pacific region are emerging as well.

Comment:
Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, designers of the stabilization wedge for the Princeton University Carbon Mitigation Initiative, recommend that we increase our reliance on wind by 50-fold by 2054 in order for wind power to provide one of their wedges. Each wedge = 1 billion tons of emissions avoided; they believe we need 7 wedges to stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels. A 50-fold increase would mean adding world-wide wind capacity at the rate of about 61,000 MW every year.

Wind Energy in The U.S.

Wind Energy Today is:

* Able to power the equivalent of 3 million homes in the US: 11,603 megawatts installed
* Providing less than 1% of US electricity today, while public support remains high
* Second largest new source of power generation in the US, after natural gas
* Saving emissions by 19 million tons of carbon dioxide per year
* Saving water by more than 600 billion gallons this year

Some Companies getting their power from Renewable sources:
Wells Fargo, Whole Foods, Johnson & Johnson, Starbucks, Pepsico (100%), Sprint Nextel, Nike, Staples

Wind Energy Works!

Wind vs. Coal #2: Water

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

A typical 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant draws about 2.2 billion gallons of water each year from nearby water bodies, such as lakes, rivers, or oceans, to create steam for turning its turbines. This is enough water to support a city of approximately 250,000 people.

Wind power generates electricity with...

* No cooling water
* No water pollution

Coal vs. Wind

Coal generates 54% of our electricity, and is the single biggest air polluter in the U.S.

Wind Week: Wind vs. Coal Emissions

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:

Burning coal is a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxics. In an average year, a typical coal plant generates:

* 3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary human cause of global warming--as much carbon dioxide as cutting down 161 million trees.

* 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid rain that damages forests, lakes, and buildings, and forms small airborne particles that can penetrate deep into lungs.

* 500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility.

* 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), as much as would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs, burning through lung tissue making people more susceptible to respiratory illness.

* 720 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and place additional stress on people with heart disease.

* 220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.

* 170 pounds of mercury, where just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe to eat.

* 225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.

* 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.


Wind power generates electricity with...

* No air emissions


Coal vs. Wind

Comment: A typical coal plant produces about 500 megawatts or electricity for about 100,000 households. There are about 600 in the U.S.

For a discussion of this year's victory in halting the construction of 8 new coal fired plants in Texas, see the following article from Environmental Defense.

http://environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentID=5983

For some spectacular photos of off-shore wind farms check out:
Dark Roasted Blend's piece on wind-power-in-stormy-waters.