I’m happy to announce that after about a year of lobbying my parents, we have finally made the switch to green power! If there is one thing I’ve noticed so far in life, it is that the older you get, the less friendly you are to change. Perhaps people get screwed over so much in life that by the time they hit, let’s call it, “chronological maturity,” one becomes skeptical of anything out of the ordinary. Anyway, the fact that I’ve convinced them means there is hope.
What exactly is green power? Put simply, green power is an alternative source of power for your home or business which is created in less environmentally-damaging ways. Popular methods of power generation include coal or oil plants, natural gas, nuclear, or large hydro facilities. Each of these is very detrimental to the environment in their own way. Don’t let those nuclear energy commercials (coincidentally paid for by Canadian Nuclear Association) deceive you–nuclear waste is a huge threat to the environment.
On the other hand, green power sources include methods such as wind farms, low-impact hydro, solar, and wave power among many others. These methods result in less emissions and environmental damage. Once manufactured and in place, these methods are practically self-sustaining. I say practically, because there are always negatives to any technology. This is different from most other power sources which rely on a continuous consumption of non-renewable resources and emission of damaging chemicals.
So how does one go about obtaining green power? This varies country to country and region to region. I was surprised that it was easier to find information on green power in Canada than in the US–at least through Google. For information on green power utilities by province in Canada, you can visit this polutionprobe.org page. For information on the top 10 green energy utilities in the USA, you can visit this Treehugger.com page.
Basically, there are two ways to buy green energy. First, you can buy your energy from a “bundled” source. This is the method our house will now be using. With this method, there is no change to your actual electrical hookup, but the money from your monthly bill goes directly towards putting green energy into the main power grid. For example, my city is supplied by London Hydro. Every month we would pay money to London Hydro and their less-friendly energy sources. Now, our money will go to Bullfrog Power who puts that money into green power sources that feed clean energy into the London power grid. We still get our power from the same grid but our money goes towards putting green energy into that grid rather than dirty energy. In places where companies like Bullfrog don’t exist, you can use the other method of buying green energy–the certificate method. Here you would buy green power certificates that put the money directly into green power sources.
Are you confused? Well, if you are, it is probably because I chatter too much. The process for us was really simple; we put in our name, our current hydro account number, and pushed submit to make our switch to green power. All-in-all no hooks-ups or changes need to be done to our house and we will still get power exactly the same way as before. The only difference is that our money now goes towards green sources.
One minor downside to purchasing green power is cost. Using newer technology, it is more expensive to put the infrastructure in place and build the consumer demand needed to lower prices. As time goes on, these prices will lower (actually, Bullfrog already lowered our rate yesterday from 9.1 to 8.9 cents/kWh). London Hydro charged us $0.053/kWh for the first 600kWh’s used and $0.062/kWh for every kWh after that. Bullfrog offers a constant rate of $0.089 per kWh. After averaging out our household’s power consumption over the past year, Bullfrog will cost us $299.14 more per year–about 82 cents per day. This really isn’t that much, taking into consideration that installing just one compact fluorescent light bulb can save you $45 over its lifetime. Install 7 of those in your house and you’ve just saved more than what it costs to use green power for a year.
I think people look at dollars and cents too much when considering green options, so I also did a calculation on the amount of emissions we will be saving this year by switching to Bullfrog. Using their emissions calculator, which looks at the average emissions per kWh of Ontario’s power sources, I came up with a number for our household. Our house uses an average of 22.1kWh of electricity per day. Over a year, that is 8066.5kWh. By using green energy we will be saving 5.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), 20kg of sulfur dioxide (SO2), and 4.8kg of nitrous oxide (NO). These savings on CO2 alone are enough to offset the emissions caused by 15,000km (average kms driven in a year) of our gas-guzzling SUV (something my lobbying efforts haven’t been able to get rid off). The savings and the fuzzy feeling I get knowing that green power is better for our environment is well worth the 82 cents per day extra that it costs.
I hope that provides some information and motivation for switching to green power. It is a great way to clean up our energy consumption and perhaps watch that consumption more closely. For more information, you can visit some of the many links above or browse the many options Google provides.
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2 Comments
I think the utility companies will also give you a break on your energy rate. My brother installed large solar panels on a barn to create energy. The state (New Jersey), paid for a portion of the hardware cost and now the utility company gives him a big break on the rate. He pays almost nothing for all the electric in his home.
Hmm, that’s interesting. These are some of the benefits that come with having state-run services. Although many people associate such services with “communism,” it can be very helpful in situations like these. I couldn’t imagine a private company doing something like that. It is incentives like these that will help speed the greening process.