[NCLUG] Re: "Green" power.

[John L. Bass]

The amount of almost purposeful disinformation is almost alarming.

Fluorescent bulbs save 70-85% of electric use over incandescent bulbs, 
which is huge, not the insignificant as claimed by others. When the 
average percentage of all household use for lighting is roughly 8.8%, 
that translates into a huge savings. Inside retail and service sector 
businesses, lighting can be as much as 90% of the electric bill, which 
is why 4' and 8' fluorescents dominate commercial and industrial 
lighting. When you get up into the northern US, Canada, and Alaska, the 
percentage goes up dramatically because shorter days and cold weather 
force people inside much of the year. This is why Canada is forcing 
incandescent bulbs off the market, because it's a lot more than 7% 
savings for them ... as much as 35% in the winter months in some areas, 
which is very noticable in peak generation costs.

The whole argument about china is very interesting, and equal 
disinformation, as few tungsten bulbs are produced in the USA ... so the 
manufacturing pollution, and transportation costs are both products 
about equal for a typical consumer. In the grand scheme of things, 
fluorescent lighting in business dwarfs lighting needs by residential 
anyway, so using this argument to attack CFL production is far more 
emotional than factual.

The mercury emmisions from coal generation for tungsten lighting are 
higher on average than what is contained in a typical CFL (especially as 
super low mercury CFL's are available which greatly tip the scale in 
favor of CFL's for this argument). At least with CFL's we have a chance 
to recycle that properly, rather than have it dumped on the folks around 
coal fired plants. Google this if you need other sources to confirm. The 
arguments that recycling are poor today, is NEVER and excuse to start 
and do better, expecially when the alternative is dumping the mercury 
emmissions on the poor souls around coal powered generation plants. Why 
does someone worry about China polution, then advocate that we use 
incandescents to increase the mercury polution for those around power 
plants? Absolutely clueless idiot arguments.

Power generation policy in the US is a total disaster because competing 
environmentalist have failed to do their homework and compromise on a 
solution which impacts our society the least. Hydro, which is by far the 
cleanest solution in many areas of the US, is completely off the table 
because of concerns about it impacting down stream eco systems.  Large 
solar and wind generation facilities are also attacked for similar 
reasons. Nukes are also off the table, because of anti-war sediments 
that spill over into power generation. This do-nothing stalemate, 
results in excessive coal use, where some folks mistake "cleaner" as 
clean after pollution scrubbing legislation.

In Calif, these mixed environmentalist forces came together with unions 
to breakup the several large energy companies (PG&E, Southern Calif 
Edision, etc) and produced a bigger disaster resulting in wide spread 
power shortages. The environmentalists wanted to bring these big 
companies down to size so they could stop additional/new hydro and nuke 
generation with litigation expenses, and in the process made it 
difficult to build coal/gas plants too. Likewise, the Unions were unable 
to strike, when it ment shutting down most of Calif leaving millions of 
Calif residents angry, but restructuring a breakup so that they could 
strike individual components of the industry without a wide spread 
shutdown in services greatly leveraged their clout. So these special 
interested, funded the Dems to make this huge change. It didn't take 
that many years, before natural growth outstripped existing production, 
and higher prices with shortages developed.

Before that tight PUC regulation had forced long term capital 
investments by PG&E and S. Cal Edision which completely insulated their 
customers from price variations other than changes in Labor costs and 
inflation. The PUC demanded that the energy companies invest a portion 
of their income for long term growth so that shortages, outages, and 
service distruptions from failures did not impact their customers. After 
the breakup, all these controls were lost, and environmentalists and 
unions created one of the worst public policy blunders in US history.

John

Matt Taggart wrote:
>> Chad Perrin wrote:
>>     
>>> Brian Wood wrote:
>>>       
>>>> I always used those as much as I can, but lately I'm wondering about the
>>>> energy to produce and transport them (in China, with whatever
>>>> environmental rules they do or don't have), the possibility of toxic
>>>> materials in them (mercury?) and other such considerations.
>>>>
>>>> Am I really helping by using them?
>>>>         
>>> Not much.
>>>       
>> I think the they hurt more than they help.  Every one is labeled
>> "dispose of properly".
>>     
>
> I read somewhere that with the average mix of power in the US, the extra 
> power consumed by an incandescent over what a CF would use results in the 
> release to the environment of more mercury due to coal emissions than is 
> contained in the bulb itself. So even if it does get landfilled it's a net 
> gain, although you get the polution in one spot rather than spread across 
> the planet (I'm not sure which is better...).
>
> I think in Colorado you still have a higher percentage of coal power than 
> the national average. Here in the Pacific Northwest we have less so it 
> might be a wash or maybe even worse. But if you are truely able to recycle 
> the bulbs (or at least sequester) then it's a win everywhere.
>
> Waiting for cheap high efficency LED bulbs,
>
>