Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Switch to green electricity

One of my problems with Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is that it didn't focus enough on possible solutions (some suggestions are given during the credits while people are leaving the theater). One of those suggestions is to switch your electricity to renewable sources. If you live in a blue state, this is likely an option. According to some rough figures, the average American produces about about 19,000 kg carbon yearly. If we assume that the average energy usage is 500 kilowatt hours/month, this turns out to be about 3,636 kg carbon yearly, or about 20% of the average American's footprint. At a small premium (about 10-15%), my apartment's electricity comes from renewable sources and hopefully helps grow the renewable energy market to make it more affordable. This is a very easy and fairly cheap way to lower your carbon footprint, though I haven't checked to see if it is actually the most affordable or best footprint-decreasing-value.

See GreenUp if you use National Grid in New England (MA, RI) for more information. If you're curious, my GreenUp provider is Community Energy with 50% wind, 50% "small" hydro.

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