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Op-ed Series - Scott Sklar: What is all this "Green" stuff, and does it matter to me?Scott Sklar, President, The Stella Group, Ltd. This article is next in the continuing summer op-ed series which asks leaders in the renewable energy and sustainability industries to speak about where we are today, and where we will be going tomorrow.
By: Scott Sklar, President, The Stella Group, Ltd.
In August of 1993, without anyone’s knowledge, a tree limb fell in Ohio which
knocked out the electric power in 12 States and parts of Canada. Electricity outages ranged from days to
weeks for millions of people. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the southeast and knocked the electric grid
and natural gas pipelines down in six states from Florida to Texas. Intense weather patterns tied to an aging
electric and natural gas utility network and the result is outages, higher costs, and loss of
reliability.
While American’s fixate on the upward and downward trends of gasoline, the same is true for natural gas. Uranium and coal costs have also increased significantly, and State electricity regulators have been slowly allowing electricity rates to reflect the ‘real’ price of fuels. Maryland and Virginia have seen electricity prices spiral upward and no one thinks it will abate. In fact, if the region’s electrical utilities have their way – upgrading transmission and distribution lines along with substations – and then adding new electric generation plants – whose billions of dollars of new costs will have to be embedded in the electric rates by all customers for decades to come. Not only do we face increasing power costs for our homes and businesses but we must pay for the lack of reliability and electric power quality ourselves. According to an Environmental Defense Fund report, stationary diesel engines are used in many applications including: compressors, back-up electricity generators, and to power pumps. There are more than 900,000 of these engines in-use nationwide and at the same time, the exhaust they emit is among the most dangerous and pervasive sources of air pollution. The US market for UPS and other backup power systems has grown over seven percent annually through 2005 with a $6.5 billion US uninterruptible power supply industry in 2007 in the US alone. I am here to tell you what you know already, and I will be willing to proclaim it on a stack of bibles – “electricity and natural gas costs will go up, not down, in your lifetime”. Energy efficiency is the fastest, most cost-effective and quickest payback set of applications, you as a business owner or homeowner or renter, can do. For quality lighting, aside from compact flourescents, lighting timers, you can also move to LED lighting and solar light tubes and daylighting. Nearly a third of your energy is for lighting and it is the easiest to address. Make a visit to area specialty stores AmicusGreen in Kensington or EcoBeco in Silver Spring, or jump on the web to area vendors www.betterbulb.com or www.huvco.com or www.newtech.com. Maybe you don’t know what to do, call in an energy audit for a low cost review. You can reach them at the stores above or contact TerraLogos in Maryland. They’ll also recommend water saving shower heads, programmable thermostats, and caulking. Cut your energy loads and vampire losses – insulate your walls. your water heater tank and your attic. Replacement windows should be triple pane with lowE coatings and thermal barrier paints should be added in unimproved attics. Photovoltaic attic vent fans should be used in summer and ceiling fans in both summer and winter to improve comfort but seriously lower heating and cooling bills. Did you ever ponder that we heat the top third of the rooms in buildings while we spend most of our time in the bottom third? Ceiling fans at slow speeds drive the warmth downward in winter and at higher speeds move and cool the air in summer. Put chargers for power tools, cell phones, PDAs, toys, and appliances with remotes on power strips with switches. Vampire losses use ten percent of our nation’s electricity while drawing electric power for NO reason. So turn them off when you don’t need them – from the TV in your guest room to the chargers for your cell phone in the kitchen – they draw power when not in use. And finally, reacquaint yourself with EnergyStar appliances – washers and dryers, refrigerators, and air-conditioners use mucho power. My new high efficiency washing machine not only uses 67% less electricity than a standard washer, but 40 percent of the water of a regular washer at its lowest setting. I save electricity and water – and here in Arlington County, that’s big money. Once you’ve shrunk your energy appetite – you can think energy production. The easiest is solar water heating when your existing water heater dies. My solar water heater added $8 per month to my second mortgage and saved me $25 per month in energy costs, Now it’s paid for and I have a 15 year old daughter, so my savings have doubled !!! Contact the local Solar Energy Industries Association for referrals www.mdv-seia.org . Make sure you buy an SRCC-certified solar system. By the way, solar for pool heating is also cost-effective with an 18-month payback whether you use electricity, propane or natural gas for extending your swimming season. For space heating and cooling I am a big fan of ductless heat pumps which not only use less energy to heat or cool, but being ductless lowers respitory diseases. I have the Sanyo system in my VA office building for the last 10 years. The most efficient way to heat and cool a building is ground-coupled heat pumps, also known as geoexchange or geothermal heat pumps. For new construction, a loop of water tubing circles the building or yard 10-feet underground. For existing buildings, small bore holes are drilled slanting down from 100 – 400 feet underground. The static underground temperature of 55 degrees requires so much less energy to heat or cool, you wonder why the US only has it in 900,000 buildings. Note the water never the leaves the tube and can be integrated into radiant floor systems or radiators. And the newer direct-exchange heat pumps use greenhouse gas friendly refrigerant in special air handlers on the walls, which is what I use in my home. There are three great GCHP companies that I have met in the Washington, DC region: SKS of Bethesda, Geothermal Options of Fairfax, and Harvey Hottel in Washington, DC., among others. Geothermal is cost effective, but be very selective of your drilling or ditching companies, which can the biggest cost of any geoexchange system. Get multiple bids from drillers and contractors and references – and call the references and possibly meet them in person. Now for renewable energy electric systems, I wish to point out that I have photovoltaics on my DC and VA office buildings and also on my home. I have a small wind turbine on my VA office building with a smart, web-enabled batttery bank by GridPoint. My home photovoltaics (solar electric) system also has a larger battery bank and is web-enabled by Locus Energy. If you have a building off-the-grid, photovoltaics or small wind make sense. If you live in the Caribbean or have high electric rates for your business (expressed as demand charges, peak or seasonal charges, or ratchet rates), an appropriately-sized photovoltaics system can surely be cost-effective -- especially if you you do not need surge protection (for power sags, surges and transients) for digital equipment such as computers or back-up power UPS or generator systems. In fact, a small-wind or photovoltaics/battery system could be the most reliable, least expensive option for you now. For most of us homeowners though, PV will cost more than standardized electricity from the electric grid. Now my $15,000 PV/battery home system (installed in 1985) now would be eligible for a 30% tax credit ($4,500) and the remainder on a 15 year second mortgage at 8.5% interest would cost my $98.47 per month, which due to the energy efficiency measures I described above, meets most of my electrical needs. So while a solar PV system is capital intensive, it does not have to be seen as a giant black hole. The electricity price does not increase, maintenance is minimal (especially if you web-enable), and of course you add no pollution or greenhouse gases to the planet.. If you are able to zone for small wind, wind energy is half the cost (if you have wind). My wind turbine spins reliably at night. Could it be the hot air generated on Capitol Hill? (there seems to be some disagreement by some of the experts on this issue). I have used almost every model by SW Windpower which has over 100,000 turbines worldwide including one at the base of the US Capitol at the US Botanic Gardens (www.wind-energy.com). But the question I posited at the beginning is “Why does it matter?” The extraction, conversion and use of energy is the single largest contributor to emissions causing changes in our global climate. And Boone Pikens is right, that importing energy (petroleum, natural gas and uranium) is causing the single largest transfer of wealth in history (and in many cases, from those who wish to harm us). Energy costs will rise, and energy efficiency and renewables are stable, reliable, long term investments. Emissions from energy not only emit greenhouse gases and level mountain tops and ruin streams and farmland, but emit regulated emissions (sulfur oxide, NOx and particulates) but also mercury and carcinogens. Whether your concerns are national security, economic stability, environmental survivability or just good ole common sense – it’s time to put your money not only into being green, but in being smart.
For more info: You can
leave your questions in the comment section, or forward them to me at DCGreenExaminer@gmail.com.
About the Author: Scott Sklar is President for the last 10 years of The Stella Group, Ltd..a strategic
marketing and policy firm for clean distributed energy users and companies, and Scott Sklar, the Group's founder
and president, lives in a solar home in Arlington, Virginia and his coauthored book, A Consumer Guide to Solar
Energy, was re-released for its third printing. Scott Sklar is Chair of the Steering Committee of the Sustainable
Energy Coalition and serves on the Boards of Directors of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, and the
Renewable Energy Policy Project, and CoChairs the Policy Committee of the Sustainable Buildings Industry Council,
Sklar was also appointed in April 2007 onto National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy & Technology
(NACEPT) of USEPA.
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