I love the language here. But the site and the trailer are a little rocky. Or maybe it is my 5 year old computer. Who knows. But in all its glory here it is.
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More tomorrow
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These guys are so cool. Because they are public, or nonprofit, I could probably put the whole thing up here BUT go see them for yourself.
http://www.nppd.com/My_Home/Product_Brochures/Additional_Files/electric_usage.asp
Energy Efficiency – Information, Calculators, and Recommendations
There Are Many Ways You Depend On Electricity
As your electric supplier, we’ve developed this brochure to help you determine your electric usage. We hope this will help you use your electricity as efficiently as possible.
This graph shows how energy is used in an average home with four family members. Your use may vary depending on your lifestyle, the size of your family and the size, age and efficiency of your appliances. The amount used also varies with the weather and the amount of insulation in your home’s walls and ceiling.
Appliances that are manufactured today are typically much more efficient. As appliances age, their efficiency decreases. Knowing the age and life expectancy of your electric appliances can help you understand your electrical use.
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Average Life Expectancy In Years
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| Air Conditioner | 18 |
| Clothes Washer | 8-10 |
| Clothes Dryer | 14 |
| Dishwasher | 11 |
| Electric Range | 12 |
| Electric Water Heater | 10-12 |
| Freezer | 15-20 |
| Heat Pump | 16 |
| Refrigerator | 15 |
| Television | 11-12 |
Replacement
If your appliances are at or nearing the end of their expected life, you may plan ahead. When replacing old appliances pay particular attention to energy efficiency. In most cases, the energy-efficient choice will save you money.
Look for the energyguide label
To promote conservation, the Federal Government requires manufacturers of large appliances to display energy information. The ENERGYGUIDE is designed to assist you in deciding what appliance would be less expensive to operate over the lifetime of the appliance.
Note: These figures are based on an electric price of 8.14¢ per kWh
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More tomorrow.
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Save Energy – Save Money. That is the mantra of Communty Energy Systems.
http://www.powerscorecard.org/reduce_energy.cfm
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| Reduce Your Energy Consumption | |
Twenty Things You Can Do to Conserve Energy
Conserving energy, by taking actions like insulating/weatherstripping your home and purchasing Energy Star certified (high efficiency) appliances, is usually the smartest, most economical and most potent environmental action you can take. Cleaner, greener energy supplies may provide the cleanest supplies of needed electricity, but minimizing the energy we need is still the first step to take before selecting the cleanest, greenest supplies.
Whenever you save energy, you not only save money, you also reduce the demand for such fossil fuels as coal, oil, and natural gas. Less burning of fossil fuels also means lower emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary contributor to global warming, and other pollutants.
You do not have to do without to achieve these savings. There is now an energy efficient alternative for almost every kind of appliance or light fixture. That means that consumers have a real choice and the power to change their energy use on a revolutionary scale.
The average American produces about 40,000 pounds of CO2 emissions per year. Together, we use nearly a million dollars worth of energy every minute, night and day, every day of the year. By exercising even a few of the following steps, you can cut your annual emissions by thousands of pounds and your energy bills by a significant amount!
Home improvements
Consider some of these energy-saving investments. They save money in the long run, and their CO2 savings can often be measured in tons per year. Energy savings usually have the best payback when made at the same time you are making other major home improvements.
Insulate your walls and ceilings. This can save 20 to 30 percent of home heating bills and reduce CO2 emissions by 140 to 2100 pounds per year. If you live in a colder climate, consider superinsulating. That can save 5.5 tons of CO2 per year for gas-heated homes, 8.8 tons per year for oil heat, or 23 tons per year for electric heat. (If you have electric heat, you might also consider switching to more efficient gas or oil.)
Modernize your windows. Replacing all your ordinary windows with argon filled, double-glazed windows saves 2.4 tons of CO2 per year for homes with gas heat, 3.9 tons of oil heat, and 9.8 tons for electric heat. Plant shade trees and paint your house a light color if you live in a warm climate, or a dark color if you live in a cold climate. Reductions in energy use resulting from shade trees and appropriate painting can save up to 2.4 tons of CO2 emissions per year. (Each tree also directly absorbs about 25 pounds of CO2 from the air annually.) Weatherize your home or apartment, using caulk and weather stripping to plug air leaks around doors and windows. Caulking costs less than $1 per window, and weather stripping is under $10 per door. These steps can save up to 1100 pounds of CO2 per year for a typical home. Ask your utility company for a home energy audit to find out where your home is poorly insulated or energy inefficient. This service may be provided free or at low cost. Make sure it includes a check of your furnace and air conditioning.
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There are many more tips at that site. Please go there and read more. Get going today. More tomorrow.
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Mayor Tim Davlin died today. No speculation about why or how here. He was the most green Mayor Springfield has ever known. His accomplishments included expanding recycling in Springfield, the consolidation of green energy services into the CWLP’s Energy Services Department, the building of a new power plant, the signing of a wind power purchasing agreement , signing the Cool Cities Agreement, creating a Cool Cities Advisory Council, creating a Bike Advisory Council and much much more. He will be missed.
http://www.springfield.il.us/mayor/Bio.htm
Mayor Timothy J. Davlin
Tim Davlin has held the office of Mayor of Springfield since April 2003. Since taking office he has overseen great change in downtown Springfield, including the opening of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Tourism efforts have accelerated to the point that Springfield has hosted nearly a dozen auto shows, the Cadillac of which is the highly successful Route 66 Mother Road Festival.
Improvements to the city’s infrastructure have been accomplished along with expansion of programs to help small businesses grow and prosper. Mayor Davlin has instituted inner city redevelopment known as the Old South Towne Redevelopment project, revitalizing a neighborhood retail center.
Mayor Davlin has worked closely with all schools in Springfield by creating the position of Education Liaison. Through it, the city has helped stimulate education programs and worked with community leaders to find solutions to eliminate the learning gap. Davlin regularly spends time in classrooms under his “Talks and Tours” program. It has become a major source of information because it gives students opportunities to ask the mayor questions.
Mayor Davlin has instituted the mayor’s Book Club, a program which highlights selected books for reading and group discussions. The program, which is gathering sponsorship across the community, is in its second year.
Recycling efforts have gotten a shot in the arm when Mayor Davlin sponsored a student driven recycling program within the city’s schools. The pilot program kept hundreds of tons of recyclable materials out of area landfills, instead, making them available for reuse through recycling.
Recognizing the plight of the homeless, Mayor Davlin formed the Mayor’s Task Force on Homelessness, which is continuously working on a 10-year plan to assist the homeless and put an end to chronic homelessness. He began a feeding program called “Springfield Restaurants United Against Hunger.”
One of Mayor Davlin’s most successful programs is “Springfield Green,” a city wide environmental improvement program which not only promotes planting trees, flowers and greenery, but also stimulates cleanliness through an Adopt-a-Street program. When two tornadoes struck Springfield on March 12, 2006, Mayor Davlin marshaled hundreds of workers and thousands of volunteers to get the community back on its feet. Within a week nearly every home and business had power restored, all streets were opened and everyone was nearly back to normal.
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More tomorrow.
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Yesterday I put up a pitiful page from wikipedia about household consumption probably in the USA or maybe even for the “Developed World”. They were not real clear about that. But what a diference it makes being in a country that has adequate (though old) eletric and natural gas distribution systems.
http://iapnews.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/rural-household-energy-consumption-in-bangladesh/
Md. Danesh Miah, et al.
, Energy Policy, Volume 38, Issue 2, February 2010, Pages 997-1003, ISSN 0301-4215, DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2009.10.051.
Energy is one of the most important ingredients required to alleviate poverty and realize socio-economic and human development, which is directly interconnected to the prominence of life in rural areas. An extensive survey on household energy consumption pattern interrelating socio-economic and demographic factors was carried out in the disregarded villages of Bangladesh using stratified random sampling technique of 120 households.
This paper focuses on household energy consumption, various combinations of fuels and their expenditure in the study area. Biomass, kerosene, electricity, LPG and candle were found as the energy carrier used in the rural households in this study. The study shows that 92% households use biomass, 28% LPG, 89% kerosene, 78% electricity and 27% candle as fuel types. It was found that 56% households collected biomass from their own homesteads and/or agricultural lands. Bamboo, branches, cow dung, firewood, rice husk, leaves & twigs and straw were found as the biomass for household energy use.
Average monthly household expenditure for total energy was US$ 9.67 (SE, 0.31) per month while the total monthly income of the household was US$ 123 (SE, 2.53). The ratio of the total monthly energy expenditure to the total monthly income was 7.86%. The study will be helpful to understand the energy consumption system and its expenditure in the rural areas of Bangladesh and to the policy formulation for energy production, consumption and utilization
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More tomorrow.
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http://www.facebook.com/pages/Louisiana-Environmental-Action-Network/103828312998455
Join your friends and family at the LEAN office for LEAN Fais Do Do 2010. Let’s say a goodbye to 2010 with conversation and cheer.
Food, Fun, Drink and Cheer.
Perhaps even a few reindeer games!
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More next week.
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MY favorite quote that I shall only paraphrase is, I could just jump in the car and go to the store for a lot of this stuff..but.
http://www.straight.com/article-357270/vancouver/peak-oil-spurring-locals-selfsufficiency
Brennan Wauters believes that the world has reached peak oil production, and that learning how to do things such as grow your own food and fix household items will help you take care of yourself.
What if you woke up one day and found that the world as you knew it had ceased to exist? It’s a thought that has probably crossed the minds of many and perhaps been quickly dismissed by most as silly.
For Brennan Wauters, this prospect is real. That’s why he’s preparing for what he describes as a “collapse”.
From Wauters’s perspective, the game changer is peak oil. He believes that in the past five years, the world has reached the point of maximum production of oil, and that the supply of this fuel source is on the decline. One day, the pumps may run dry.
But the 42-year-old Vancouver man is not the type to hunker in a bunker. He isn’t storing food, buying gold, or stocking up on weapons to survive in a post-oil world.
“I’m more a survivalist in the sense that I think we have to be psychologically prepared,” Wauters said. “I concentrate on being able to do things with as little as possible. It’s also an exercise to me, like there’s many things that I could just go to the store for. But I deliberately take a harder route just to test my own capabilities, to give me confidence that whatever happens, everything will be fine.”
Learning to grow food is one of those things. Peppers were ready for picking when Wauters showed the Georgia Straight the vegetable plots at the East Side house where he lives with a number of other people. There were also chickens and honeybees out back.
“If there’s a general economic collapse, people are not going to have jobs,” he said. “So they’re going to have time on their hands. And that probably means growing food so that they don’t have to depend upon some larger infrastructure. That’s the clear objective.”
Wauters is also collecting books on edible and medicinal plants. That way, when the Internet is no longer working, he’ll have something to rely on for farming information.
He’s also learning “wildcrafting”, or methods of gathering food from the wild and living off the land. He likewise considers knowledge of canning and smoking food to be important.
Wauters builds sets for movie productions for a living, and that partly explains why he has a large collection of tools. He particularly values hand implements—drills, saws, and sets of screwdrivers—which he said will all be useful when power devices can no longer be plugged into wall sockets.
He can also fix a bicycle, noting that this human-powered conveyance will eventually become more valuable than the automobile.
According to Wauters, neighbours come to him to repair various broken household items. The house where he lives has a shed that stores numerous tools, such as pickaxes, shovels, and rakes.
“The survival aspect is really two things,” he said. “It’s a mental exercise which helps you cope with adversity, and then the other thing is that it prepares you to be creative. You have to be creative to solve those problems that we’re going to face. We can no longer run to the store to buy something to solve our problem.”
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More tomorrow.
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Sorry no Post today. I was helping a Vet and his family today.
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More tomorrow.
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Oil People are nothing but proven liars. There is always “oil down there” they tell investors. But only 10 or 20 of the holes they drill actually produce any oil, so is it any wonder that they are unprepared when they come in? Especially in the case of the Gulf Spew if they come in violently.
http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7696-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-leading-edge.html
| The Peak Oil Crisis: The Leading Edge |
| By Tom Whipple |
| Wednesday, November 03 2010 01:01:22 PM |
Do you remember the furor over drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge a few years back? The whole country was up in arms. At various times some 50 to 60 percent of Americans favored drilling in the area as they were told this would result in lower gas prices.
Last week the USGS lowered its estimate of the amount of oil that could be extracted from the region all the way from 10 billion barrels down to less than one billion, making drilling in the area uneconomical. By the way, the amount of crude being pumped down the Alaskan pipeline now has fallen from 2 million barrels a day (b/d) when the pipeline first opened back in the 1970’s to about 600,000 b/d in recent weeks. The trouble is that when the flow of oil falls below a quantity estimated to be 200-300,000 b/d (some say 500,000) the line will have to be closed as there will simply not be enough hot oil being sent down the pipeline to keep it from freezing in winter.
Last week an organization in California, The Post Carbon Institute, released a new book, “The Post Carbon Reader,” which draws a much broader picture of the serious issues facing mankind. With 30 authors, each specializing in some aspect of the multiple troubles we face, the scope of the book touches on nearly every aspect of our civilization that is out of balance, unsustainable, and headed for a fall. The basic proposition of the book is that the world has reached the limits of growth in terms of its population, economic activity, and the ability of the atmosphere to absorb more carbon emissions. Either the world’s peoples must transform themselves into a sustainable number living in a sustainable manner or there will be many dire consequences right up to the possibility that the human race itself could become extinct. Clearly, this is serious stuff.
As long as a problem is perceived as being decades, or even a few years away, it is not a concern.
Some hold that our sustainability problem started when we first started planting crops and domesticating animals 10,000 years ago. This thesis says if we had stuck with hunting and gathering as a race we would have been able to sustain our act indefinitely, but then we would never have had enough surplus energy to learn reading & writing, and to build cities, the Internet and space ships. Our immediate problem, however, started in earnest with the industrial revolution about 200 years ago when we first started digging up prodigious quantities of coal and feeding it into steam engines. It wasn’t long before we struck oil and the rest is history. The world’s population went from an estimated 5 or 10 million when we first started farming, to a billion when we started serious coal digging, to about 7 billion today. We also got incredibly richer in terms of material goods and could sure get around much faster.
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More tomorrow.
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Energy Policy Is On The Line.
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More tomorrow
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