Who Can Help Get Energy Clean?

Now there’s a question with anywhere between ten and ten thousand, maybe a million, answers.

The easy answer is, “All of Us.” The complications begin under the category, “Some of us more than others.”

Energy we all understand. Dirty is also pretty clear. But Clean can come in many different packages including, but not limited to, burning things and Waste.

How does waste enter the picture? On thinking about it we can see that waste also comes in many different packages.

Consider leaving your hot water running longer than it’s needed. That is waste of the water itself and waste of the energy needed to heat the water and if that energy happened to be fossil fuel based – additional air, water and ground pollution.

Say that hot water was running 1 gallon per minute and it ran one minute longer than needed. Also say that the same thing happened in every American home once during the month. With over 112 million households that would be 112,000,000 gallons of hot water wasted.

Now what does it take to heat a gallon of water from 45 degrees as it comes in from the street to 120 degrees in a storage tank? OK enough math!

Beginning to see the picture?

It always seems like such a little thing. Turn the light off, it’s only 75 watts. So it’s on for an hour. That’s 75 watt-hours or 0.075 kilowatt-hours. And in those 112 million homes that’s 8,400,000 kilowatt-hours. Nothing small about the little consumer!

So who can help?

We’re back to that “easy answer” – All of Us.

It’s actually a matter of getting rid of some old habits and starting a few new ones. And that’s not easy – it takes a concentrated effort over a period of time until what used to be considered a simple truth – power is cheap and endless –is replaced with a real truth – we cannot afford to spend (use) a single watt that is not absolutely essential.

Turning off that light, not using the air conditioner during peak weekday hours, doing the wash at night can be learned. And lots of chores that must be done, can be done at hours when the utility and grid system is not at peak demand. Again habits that can be learned.

And We can Do It – All of Us.