Environmental Defense Fund - Green Power: the Basics

[kristopher]

Green Power: The Basics
What it means to buy it, and a rundown of power sources

Traditionally, utilities sold us just one "brand" of electricity, and unless you were one of the largest electric customers, you paid one price. No negotiations. No choice. Today's electricity landscape is different. Now there are options.

In 1998, some 30 million American utility customers began choosing their power suppliers. Customers in California and parts of New England could decide which company to buy their electricity from, which brand to buy, and what prices to pay. In other states, utilities offered "green pricing," allowing customers to direct some of their electric bill toward clean, renewable energy, like solar and wind power.

Today, about 75 million electricity customers in 42 states have the option to buy green power through their utility or an alternative power supplier, according to the government's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. (To find out if green power is available in your area, visit the Department of Energy's green pricing page.)

Suddenly, we Americans have new responsibility and opportunity of choice, but not a lot of information. Unfortunately, reading our electric bills does not tell us where our electricity comes from, how much it really costs or how much pollution it causes. The green power revolution arrived quietly, without much education and preparation. It's time to get caught up....

http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentid=5350

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Interesting -- it's more pro-natural-gas than I thought it would be

I'm used to thinking of the EDF as a conservation group working to prevent extinction and protect natural habitats.

The energy section contains the usual hypernegativity about The Devil's Lightning. That's the "money shot", no? But I expected it.

But it also has a consistently http://blogs.edf.org/texasenergyexchange/category/natural-gas/">supportive treatment of Natural Gas (Dr. Ramon Alvarez seems to be the exception). That, I wasn't expecting.

And the information is nearly five years old:

Posted: 19-Jul-2006; Updated: 28-Dec-2006

In 2006, solar energy for grid electricity was nearly non-existent, and wind energy was about one-quarter as available as it is today. Several statements are simply out-of-date. (What is it with all these old articles being posted in the last couple of days?)

Natural Gas is going to be energy's Next Big Thing; I'm (sadly) confident of that. It wasn't so apparent in 2006, but today, it's inescapable. Late Paleozoic shale is very common continental deep-crustal rock, and it's loaded with methane. Now if only it didn't generate 50-55% of the CO2 that coal does! And require hydrofrac technology to liberate the gas. And pose a serious, frequent, but under-reported risk of well fires and explosions.

Disagreements over nuclear energy aside, burning Natural Gas may merely be a slightly better way to produce electrical energy than burning Coal or Petroleum. Extensive Natural Gas exploitation seems to be a quick and efficient way to destroy many habitats. But EDF does seem to have an actual scientific "culture" in-house which will hopefully prevail.

--d!

[joshcryer]

4. With the US in particular conventional natural gas has peaked, this is direct support of fracking.

Conventional natural gas has peaked.

[canoeist52]

2. We've been with GreenStart in MA for years.

http://www.massenergy.org/renewable-energy/negs

costs a bit more, but it's helping clean energy get a start.

[OnlinePoker]

3. Numbers don't add up if everybody switched to green electricity

In 2009, total electricity generation in the U.S. was 3.95 Billion Megawatt Hours (BMWH). Of this, only 143.8 Million MWH were generated from renewables (I'm not counting conventional hydro because the link in the OP doesn't). That 143.8 MMWH represents 3.6% of the total. I have an issue, however, in calculating biomass as a green energy source. It still is the result of burning material which releases GHGs and doesn't take into account the production of GHG in transporting the burning material to the incinerator. This would give only 89.7 MMWH produced from truly green energy sources of Wind, Solar, and Geothermal. This is only 2.3% of the total production annually. The article says 75 million Americans have the option to buy green power. If even half that, or 12.5% of the American population, decides in the next couple of years to switch to green energy, where is the extra electricity going to come from? I'd be curious to know how many people have already signed on to the higher rates of electricity to date and what checks and balances there are with power companies to ensure they aren't ripping off the consumers with green power they can't provide.

Edit for link
http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/epa/epates.html

[kristopher]

5. Do you expect everyone to sign up?

That is a strange objection, but IF half of the eligible consumers signed up for green power then we would largely solve our energy related CO2 problems because it would provide an unmistakable market signal to investors by providing a huge cash stream that would finance a rapid and massive build-out for renewable energy infrastructure.