Looking to install a chimney balloon since I don’t use my fireplace at all and it’s a big source of coldness.

Of course, one can also buy LED bulbs if they are inclined to avoid mercury completely. They aren’t as bright as CFLs or incandescent bulbs, so be prepared for less light output. They are quite sufficient for most tasks, and I light three rooms in my house with them. The rest of the rooms are CFL (high service areas) or incandescent (utility/never on bulbs).

The mercury content of the CFL is only released if the bulb breaks. Since lot of these bulbs are in fixtures out of the way of accidents, I can’t see the argument of contamination risk. Basically, the process is to open a window for 20 minutes since it is a vapor.

Progress energy now plots usage history. Squee! Click to embiggen

I think the results for July/August are due to the laptop I purchased last month. My main system sits idle most of the time, and is of course powered off during that time.

So -312 kWh year-on-year is a great result.

And really, isn’t that the problem with the “environmentalist” movement? Instead of telling people that we could do something in our own rational self-interest, we instead say that we should do it because it is right. But is it right? Is it right to waste a perfectly good 60 watt light bulb in a closet that gets turned on an hour a month in order to replace it with a more efficient, but toxic compact fluorescent?

When replacing a 60 watt bulb with a 6 watt LED solution, do we use the bulb as often? or do we use it 10 times as much? These are important questions to ask ourselves. It’s about the attitude to the goals, and it’s about having an underlying cause behind your actions.

My underlying cause is to use less energy in order to save my money. I work for money, and I want to spend as little as possible on my energy bills because I can better use that cash savings to do other things. I can invest, I can make more efficient decisions for appliances and save even more money, or I could on something I want to improve my standard of living.

It’s a matter of personal choice and the values I hold. I’m not a leader, you are not a mindless follower; I can’t think or decide issues for you, and I won’t guilt trip you either.

So let’s be honest with each other: Why do you want to be more efficient? Or maybe you don’t. If so, why?

First, white roofs are catching on from the NYT. It turns out that most new Wal*Marts for the past 10 years have gone white. I wonder if a lot of them don’t have low ceilings to trap the heat up high.

Also, life without air conditioning, a piece on people going without A/C. This is a difficult way to live, as the article points out, but some people save thousands a year. My heating and cooling is nowhere as drastic, even before replacing my windows.

Of course, if you have a programmable thermostat, you can turn it up during the day in the summer or down in winter. It saves some bucks and prime electricity for those with a tiered price structure.

In 1857, the city of Pittsburgh burned 22M Bushels of coal, or 880,000 tons. for each short ton (2000 lbs) of coal burned, 2.76 pounds of CO₂ are released. 2.4 million tons of CO₂ was released in one year during this pre-car, pre-electricity age. This is a drop in the bucket to today’s power production, but this is only the number for the factories in one city.

In 1880, Coal used for manufacturing coke only (not producing mechanical power via steam engines; just making coke) was 3.36 million short tons, or 9 million tons of CO₂.

This was the beginning of warming. It doesn’t take cars and electricity to do the damage we’re doing. Since coal releases CO₂:raw material ratio of 2.76:1, we can tell that coal is not the answer.

1910 was the peak of coke production, consuming 17 million tons of coal. 44.6 million tons of CO₂. By 1910, Pittsburgh had full electric power, consuming coal at a much higher rate.

So you can put your head in the sand and say the 1 degree Fahrenheit since the 1850s is normal and non-anthropogenic, or you can see that it coincides with beginning of industrialization on a large scale, and precedes electricity and cars.

For all its benefits in convenience, the industrial revolution put us on a path that we must get off if we are to survive the next century with any sort of dignity.

Sure, I’m assigned a laptop for work. It gets about 3 hours on extended battery, is unwieldy in both shape and size, and has a case I’d much rather not use. It’s the opposite of cool, and the opposite of portable.

I’ve been using my iPhone for a year now, mainly for email and light web browsing. I sweep my RSS feed content to Read it Later List and do my reading in places where I’d otherwise just be waiting.

But until I got a personal laptop, I didn’t notice how much I used my desktop computer. There’s a lot of disadvantages to the situation. You never have what you need at arm’s length. You have to sit upright instead of relaxing. You can’t work whenever the mood strikes.

A laptop is like having your home office with you. The iPhone is nice, but you can’t type up a long email on it. Your desktop is nice for applications that need a lot of horsepower, but you don’t always need the power. The laptop is just right, sitting in-between the two extremes.

With a laptop, you have an always-on 99% of desktop computer available to you. You can sit on the couch, on the porch, or in a coffee shop and work on things in comfort. No more desk chair and static seating.

The best thing about laptops is they consume far less energy than a desktop systems. My MacBook Pro can live about 7 hours “off-grid” and if you turn off wireless and stick to writing, you can continue uninterrupted for almost 9 hours. It charges in about an hour on an 85w plug. It is also Energy Star 5.0 compliant. It also consumes far less than the 310w my desktop does with all its accessories running.

Plus, it’s made of real materials: the only plastic is in the Apple logo, the Keys, and the plug. Everything else is aluminum and glass. After being embarrassed by Greenpeace for being “uncool, man”, they made many improvements in the “eco” field.

Laptops: highly recommended.

I hate hearing those two words. Even without considering the burning of coal, they set off alarm bells in my head when they come together. “Clean Coal”. Pure carbon. Clean. Right.

Yes this is a site about efficiency, and conservation is a big part of efficiency. But even while conserving, consider the source of your energy. Coal is dirty, burning it releases more CO2 than any other source, and ‘gasification’ is an water-intensive process that pollutes just as much but in a different form. They can ’sequester’ the CO2, but is that even safe? Sweep the dirt under the rug?

There are too many questions, and far too much doubt surrounding “Clean” technology, and like the video says, harnessing the power of words is pretty much all they’re doing.

I say conserve. Simplify! Simplify! Consume less energy, burn less coal. Put pressure on manufacturers to track and save on energy use. It’s good for them too — reducing demand saves them money, and reduced demand means less power plants to build. Less power plants means less carbon or nuclear materials or rivers dammed up, etc.

Spot created by the Reality Coalition.

July 2009 vs 2008

Comparison of July bill to June bill

It seems my conservation efforts are paying off. Once I have the new A/C and/or heat pump installed and my ducts sealed, I think these numbers will drop further (if I go with heat pump they will go up in the winter, but I’ll be able to drop my natural gas bill to compensate slightly)