Saving Energy for Practical People — Part 1
Table of contents for Practical Energy Saving
Electricity Costs
Fossil Fuel Costs
Water Consumption
Ok I promised a lot here. trying to organize in my mind how I will put this series together and I don’t know if I have it figured out right … but times a wasting so I will take my best shot. For anyone who feels I am being too simplistic, feel free to comment, but be a little patient with those who need some catch-up information. For anyone who feels I am going over your head, feel free to holler, I’ll explain more. I also, by necessity have to aim this series mainly at fellow Americans because you are the majority of my readership. I’ll add in tidbits that I know based on living in other countries, as well as some interesting things I have learned recently from Australia … who I find has a TV industry who is refreshingly energy conscious … would that the US networks would wake up someday soon.
First of all you are going to have to accept a fact or two. Essentially you have \been lied to for generations by both government and industry. Perhaps not always lied to directly, but certainly brain-washed and misinformed.
The US runs on oil and coal (a lot more coal than many people realize, too). Wyoming and Colorado coal travels all winter long in mile-long purpose built coal trains from California to Arizona to New Orleans to Florida to Chicago and all points in between. The Navajo Indian Nation owns a huge mine and gigantic, haze producing generating station almost on the edge of the Grand Canyon that’s’ feeding the grid from Arizona to northern California (conveniently, as a semi-sovereign nation they don’t have to follow the same environmental rules as the USA … and the air quality shows.)
A few areas of the US are heavily hydro-electrified … much of the Pacific northwest (why Google and others are building huge server plants next to dams in Washington state … cheap power to essentially waste). Parts of the southeast burn hydro power from the network of TC\VA dams. A few nuclear plants are capable of producing more than they consume and an even smaller number of successful wind generation farms and one commercially-viable geothermal plant that I know of are on grid … but all these are a drop in the bucket compared to fossil-generated sources.
And fossil fuel is where the money is. We’ve had essentially 20 years of presidents with with either no energy policy or a big ‘drill we must’ big oil policy. I don’t want this to sound like a conspiracy theory, because it isn’t that intelligent. It is just what we are used to since childhood, and what we are taught in schools,especially colleges funded heavily by energy-based business is what we believe to be the norm.
As a result, the US has been essentially on a free energy ride for the past century-plus. We are only now starting to feel a bit of the gas and diesel costs that others have paid for years, and electric costs are so low that we have developed a hugely wasteful way of building houses and become used to burning energy in our homes as if it were free.
Welcome to the Philippines. Here we have the second highest electricity costs in the world … only Japan trumps us, and the system itself is broken. Much of the infrastructure is antiquated, much of the generation comes from coal (in the most recent request for bids on coal exactly no suppliers responded) and in general I’d say the future doesn’t look bright.
So the first thing I am going to cover regarding electricity costs and ways to save on electricity here in the Philippines is to give you a homework assignment. Find out how much electricity you have consumed in the past year (if you don’t save your bills you utility company will probably provide you a nice little printout that shows consumption and costs for free), figure out what consuming devices you have today that you are going to need in the Philippines and see what you can do to determine what the ones that are ‘keepers’ are costing you today.
I’ll give some hints on this next time and also tell you about an eye-opening series I have been watching on ABC that can teach us all a lot (That’s an ‘A’ for Australia in the ABC, not American).