Life A Small Environmental Quandary
posted by on April 23 at 15:58 PM
When I got my most recent Seattle City Light bill, I received an invitation to join the Green Up program, through which I can pay a bit extra for my electricity in order to assure that some (or all) of the energy I consume at home is coming from clean, renewable wind power.
This sounded nice. It would only cost $12 extra a month for me to power my place using blowing air.
What’s $12 a month if it means zeroing out my home emissions? Also, I think wind turbines are pretty:
But then I remembered this New York Times Magazine piece by Thomas Friedman. In it, he writes about how the biggest problem facing the planet right now is figuring out how to produce clean energy “at scale” — that is, at a cost that is cheap enough for the average person to afford. When the average person experiences no adverse economic consequences from switching to clean energy, the thinking goes, everyone will switch. Until then, it’s unreasonable to expect anyone but the most wealthy humans to switch.
And here begins my quandary: Obviously, wind power is not currently cheap enough to be sold to City Light customers at the same cost as normal power. Otherwise, City Light wouldn’t be asking its customers to pay a surcharge for wind power. But if the goal is to get wind power to become cheaper as quickly as possibly, am I actually working against that goal by signaling that I am willing to pay more for wind power now? Doesn’t this offer something of a disincentive to wind power producers who might otherwise be moved to innovate more quickly in order to bring the cost of their product down?
Or am I thinking too hard about my measly twelve dollars?
No, paying the $12 does help make green energy cheaper for everyone. Projects like wind farms cost lots of money and the best way to make them cheaper is to increase the market for them, thus increasing competition for that market. If no one is willing to foot the bill for increasing the market, then there will never be an opportunity for it to become cheap.
The problem is not just the environmental impact of one's emissions. That's a tiny blip. The problem is the system that allows folks to emit and pollute without paying for the damage they do to everyone, including those who don't.
You'd be better off taking that 12 dollars a month and putting it into contributions for groups working to fix the real problem: an economy that subsidises private capital by providing nearly free abuse of public resources.
It's twelve dollars. If you can afford to pay twelve extra dollars a month to power your apartment by Wind, then you may be one of the more wealthy humans(whatever that means).
Also, if we prove that Wind power is a viable product we will have more producers thus lowering the cost.
ditto. currently wind power isn't being produced “at scale” (though it's the fastest growing source of energy in the U.S.). Your 12 bones will help it to grow "to scale". additionally, wind power is getting cheaper and cheaper to produce in the last few years/decade - because of the very innovations that the market is making. carry on.
Eli,
Others may give all sorts of arguments for not giving the $12 even if they support wind power, but your Friedman-ian argument doesn't work. For one, you have no reason to believe that by withholding the $12 you are sending the power company the message that they need to bring the costs down quicker. The only message they get is, "Another customer isn't signing up for the wind power program, and we have no idea what his motivation is or what it would take to get him to sign up."
Also, I reject the implicit claim that producing clean energy at a price the "average person" can afford must mean that the "average person" experiences NO adverse economic consequences for making the switch. NONE!? Why is it unreasonable to ask the average person to make at least some economic sacrifice for something worthwhile? This hugely stacks the deck against environmentalism by assuming a strict Pareto optimality condition that a traditional stick in the mud like Friedman might accept but that a progressive person should not.
It is not true that the only reasonable environmentalist requests to ask of each other are ones which cost us absolutely nothing.
Remember too that most other forms of power were/are heavily subsidized by the government. Private entities did not build dams, oil pies, fight wars, etc. If the government is going to directly subsidized alternative energy then it is up to us as to do it. I happily pay my 12 bucks a month.
Or look at it in a purely rational consumer model: If you get $12 more happiness because you're doing something you believe to be good for the world then it's worth it.
Yes, your $12 does keep green energy more expensive. Think about organic produce or fair-trade coffee, the reason stores sell them is because they can charge more. You letting "green" energy producers get off the hook from making their energy at the market-clearing rate.
WORSE YET, you are not even stopping the "dirty" energy from before from going away. Think about this, if half the people in seattle started to pay the $12, then the price of the dirty energy would in fact GO DOWN, then the producer might sell MORE dirty energy, because the price would go down, and the dirty producer would have to sell more energy to raise the same money as before. So you might actually harm the environment by buying that energy.
read this analysis for more detail:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/02/
Sorry for my bad copywriting, but my point is basically, you are not giving incentive to the green person to make market-clearing price for green energy because they can still go and make money without being green, and you not even gauranteeing the dirty energy won't be used by someone else, because, presumably, there is someone else willing to use your dirty energy if it were a bit cheaper, which is what the dirty producers will be forced to do if you don't buy it.
Puget Sound Energy has a similar program (http://www.pse.com/solutions/businessGreenPower.aspx). that can cost as little as $4 a month. basically we subsidize the company to allow them to buy renewable energy and add it to the grid. they won't gaurantee that the renewable energy i pay for will go back to my house, just onto the grid.
I was all for this program when i first heard about it. but after looking into it it really pissed me off. PSE just raised rates (again) and took huge profits (again). yet they want me to give them free money so their bottom line isn't hurt by doing the right thing.
but i think the more people that join in and start demanding renewable energy (whether they pay extra for it or not at the moment), the price will come down.
ddv
Andrew, not really. While price plays a role in energy use it is pretty minimal. The electric bill is not a huge concern for most families.
Also the number of consumers is fixed. Seattle City Light cannot add customers. Neither can most power companies. Unlike other industries in power there is no choice. You have to use the power company that serves your region. Even on a large scale the number of power consumers is limited to the number of people and that market is tapped. I don't know someone without electricity and I doubt that there are many.
Therefor if half the people used green power the result you are talking about would not occur. Instead the other half would continue to use dirty power at about the same rate as before. I suppose there are some who would see lower prices as a reason to heat their homes to 90 degrees and leave their lights on 24/7 but their impact would be minimal.
So go ahead and help subsidize green power and achieve an good economy of scale.
Fairly simple. Invest in higher prices now to create economy of scale. Or wait until energy prices go up and feel sorry you didn't invest earlier.
Who would have thought that gas would be at $3.50/ gallon after being close to $1 in the late 90s? But if you had talked about a 10 cent/ gallon gas tax then, people would have accused you of being communist. In fact, they still will.
You also might be able to offset the increased cost by switching from regular light bulbs (aka mini-space heaters) to CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) and use less electricity. CFLs contain some mercury so must be disposed of properly, but coal power (what they have here) emits more mercury.
I live somewhere where you can choose to buy windpower from a different supplier, which I signed up for. I have not gotten my first bill, but I am curious what the cost will end up being. A question I have is: If I use CFLs to limit my energy consumption, am I not decreasing the demand for wind power and thus slowing the growth of that technology?
Renewable energy is only more expensive if you fail to take into account externalities such as the price of global warming. Since that's going to run into the trillions, it would be cheaper to go with wind even if the mills were built of gold.
"Even on a large scale the number of power consumers is limited to the number of people and that market is tapped"
Sure the number of consumers is tapped, but the VAST majority of electricity is used by industry, and they make decisions about how much energy they used based on its price, just as any sensible business would on any factor of production.
Think about why in India it's cheaper to buy hand-stitched clothes than ready-to-wear. The important factor (labor) is much cheaper than the expensive factor (land & and capital for inventory that might not sell). In the US, it's the opposite.
Same with energy. Internap, whose (or whatever hosting company) server farm that runs thestranger.com, will not be as motivated to switch to energy efficient computers and cooling systems if half of seattle switches to more expensive green energy. Amazon.com will make the same choice, Safeway won't switch to flourescent bulbs, and so on. The effect will be that just as much dirty energy will be used, and possibly more if the energy market's price is forced down enough.
I'm sorry, maybe I'm not understanding the argument. Can you not afford the $12? I mean, if I'm getting this, the goal doesn't have to be having all energy cost the same-- it just has to be having clean energy be "cheap enough". Well, twelve bucks a month extra seems cheap enough to me. What's the problem?
How do they know which power they send to your particular apartment, Eli? Do they have special solar-power wires or something?
It's impossible to tell if any of the previous comments are from authorities on green energy or have any basis of understanding of how the power companies manage the money they collect from their customers for renewable energy. I'm not complaining, because honestly, I don't have a clue myself. How about an article for an upcoming issue investigating how our local utility companies are allocating our contributions, and how much of the energy we're paying for is coming from renewable sources? Sounds like we all want to know the truth.
@ Savage @ 17:
You know, I don't know. But it sure sounds like they're offering to send different power to my place if I pay more:
My understanding is that most of Seattle Light's power is already "green" hydro-power, even though I'm not sure what percentage of Seattle's electricity is bought off the grid. And how many users are opting for the surcharge? And does a voluntary surcharge have to be approved by WUTC? 'Cause WUTC would definitely have to approve an across-the-board rate hike, no matter how tiny, right?
an article in the stranger is a great idea. definitely an interesting topic.
Dan: I can't tell if you're joking, but the fact is they don't send green power to your house. What they do is order green power onto the grid in the amount of your monthly consumption, which therefore means they need to order that much less dirty power.
It doesn't matter who "gets" the organic electrons; the effect is the same.
You are sending them a signal that consumers are interested in environmental issues, otherwise no way would you pay more.
Also, if there were actually an energy crisis or something, everyone would be paying a fuckload more than 12 extra dollars per month, you're actually underpaying.
Finally, your money createes a (marginally) larger market for green power production, adding to financial incentives to invest in green power.
Basically I think the market will eventually make it better for all power to be green, but until then it will always be an extra thing that conscious people will pay for. Also, if you live in Seattle, you're way too rich to even be slighted by $12 a month. Hold that up next to your rent check. I'm pretty sure even thoroughly poor people could handle a $12 sticker shock.
Is hydro power "green" if it kills salmon?
I am part of both Green Up and Green Power programs from the City of Seattle's City Light, which means my electricity costs twice as much as someone not getting either.
It pays for building MORE infrastructure - more solar and more wind power.
We already use it.
It's to accelerate the program, and make up the difference between what true green power would cost and what it costs for all the energy sources.
Yes, wind is cheaper than most forms, but it does require large up front capital investments.
As to hydro, yes, it is green. But the salmon are being killed more by runoff from the blacktopped malls we build, the pesticides we use, the development of the streams they spawn in, and the impact of global warming. To you, a 1 degree increase in temperature is not too bad - to salmon, it means large problems.
We'd be better off migrating fish stocks north.
Dan,
Not only do they not special deliver your green power as promised, but they take it right back!
The electricity you "buy" is just electrons going around and around in a big circle called a "circuit." They're basically selling you the same electrons over and over. You write them a check and your hard-earned dollars are theirs forever, but those electrons go right back in the warehouse at the electricity factory, ready to be sold again to another sucker. The only time the electricity factory has to order new electrons is when they build a big new subdivision full of more morons ready to "buy" them, or after a big storm when the wires fall down and the electrons spill out all over the ground.
The electricity biz is the biggest scam since fertilizer.
Elenchos, you sound like you know a lot about electricity. Can you answer a few questions I have: I've heard that some electrons are organic and some are not. Are there health effects (e.g. traces of pesticide, mercury, etc.) on dirty electrons? Also I have been buying high-octane electrons for years - do they really provide better power? Thanks in advance.
Jude
Some of the economic discussion here hurts my brain, but one thought occurs to me. If we get cheaper power by burning dirty coal plants (or whatever) then that cheaper price is an illusion. If the dirty power results in climate change, and that climate change gets bad enough that it causes rising sea level, mass migrations of populations of lower elevation areas, and wholesale revisions in where farming gets done on the planet, and all the rest, then the costs to future generations for our currently "cheap" power might be enormous. Coal might be $12 a month cheaper in the short term, today, but we and our children are going to be paying for the damage we've done for the next century.
SDA in SEA, you are exactly right, it is an illusion. The difference between the cost buying coal and the social cost of burning coal is called an "externality". In this case, it's a negative one, as opposed having a beautiful building in the city which would be a positive externality compared with building an ugly box like the press condos or the future pike & summit building.
I buy green power in NYC because ConEd is 40% gas, 11% coal, 35% nuclear and 7% oil and the rest renewables. I pay 1 cent per KwH extra for 75% micro hydro and 25% wind. Huge difference in CO2.
City Light is 86.45% hydro, 5% gas, 4% nuclear, 3% wind, and less than 1% coal and oil. Economically, it makes no sense to pay $12 to eliminate that last 6% of CO2.
It does help build wind capacity, though. Hydro and wind go together like peanut butter and jelly, since unlike thermal plants, hydro turbines can spin up or stop at a moments notice, letting you 'shape' the variable wind output.
$12 worth of clean energy and clean conscience is a great thing for anyone to do. But right now, groups like WashPIRG and Sierra Club are working to pass legislation that would put the whole state into the renewable power game. Donating that $12 to an environmental lobby groups shows legislators that Washingtonians aren't satisfied with piecemeal steps- it's just way more bang for your buck.
Oh, I got an idea! Let's let the narrowminded, solely profit driven market whose own ideology is inescapably built around the merciless explotation of resources (be they human or environmental) fix the very problem it created! Thanks Tom Friedman!
Jude Fawley I'm glad you asked.
Many serious audiophiles insist on a good line conditioner to clean and refresh their electrons. While little conditioning can go a long way, nothing produces that clean, pure sound in your speakers like new electrons. This is why many with a sophisticated ear are nostalgic for the days of was records and vacuum tubes. It isn't really the equipment that was better back then. It's just that they were using electrons that were 30 years younger, and it showed.
Remember too that in the spring, the electricity factory switches over to summer electricity, much the same as gas stations reformulate their fuels for the changing seasons. If your computer is running a little sluggish, it could be unseasonably cold where you are, yet the power company is already giving you warm weather electrons.
The easiest solution is to ask your friends in colder latitudes to email you some of their electricity. You can supply your own 0s, so just have them send off a few week's worth of 1s. If you have left over 1s and 0s, you can print out hard copies and save them for next year.
And by the way, don't fall for online hucksters that want to sell you plans to make your own 1s by dividing 0/0.
That's a well-known logical fallacy.
Dear God, I can't believe so many people can have such a long discussion with so little insight. Let me keep this simple:
City Light won't do a damn thing different if Eli sends them his $12. They have, as Dan points out, no control over which power goes to his house. City Light already gets 90% of its power from renewable sources. As long as less than 90% of their customers sign up for this program, they can claim that those customers are getting the renewable power. Only if more than 90% of their customers signed up would they be required to adjust their sources.
This program is just a way to extract money from people rich and fatuous enough to pay an extra $12 to feel better about themselves.
Dear God, I can't believe so much assholery and condescension can fit into such a small comment.
While it's conceivable that they're lying to us, a quick perusal of Seattle Power's Green Power FAQ page:
http://www.cityofseattle.net/light/Green/greenPower/faq.asp
. . . tells you that the additional money you pay for Green Up is used to directly fund development of new wind power sources.
While I agree that their couching it in terms of percentage of your power coming from wind power is stupid, it's not like they're lining their pockets with the extra $12. Jeeze.
elenchos @33: "but those electrons go right back in the warehouse at the electricity factory, ready to be sold again to another sucker."
Funny. Since it appears some people here are actually taking you seriously, some clarification. Yes, there is a circuit, but you pay only for the electricity you use. The rest goes back to the grid.
Want to do something green? Put some solar panels on your roof. If you use less electricity than you produce, you will actually get a credit rather than a bill.
Did you steal this from here: http://www.theblogblog.net/?p=239 ?
The $12 does send a market signal to invest in wind and solar. Most technologies aren't profit-making from the start - biotechs lose a lot of money their first decade or so, but have made a case for considerable investment by people that believe it's going to result in a marketable product. So your money will lead to renewables being economically competitive sooner rather than later. If you could add an additional $1 billion or $10 billion, of course, it'd happen sooner. I know you reporters at The Stranger make a lot of money, so that shouldn't be a problem.
It'd also happen sooner, if, as others have mentioned, fossil fuels were taxed to reflect their actual costs, such as pollution, including health costs from asthma, cancer and the like. Also remove the subsidies for fossil fuels. That'd make renewables competitive sooner. (Hydro also has environmental costs, although it won't make the earth bake like an oven.)
And yes, please do an in-depth article on this, or even a periodic series.
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