So, about 6 weeks ago we changed our old 40 gallon tank gas water heater for a tankless unit.  It cost roughly 3 times as much as a new tank heater.  The energy bills are coming in, and results are being tabulated.  It appears to be using about 58% of the gas as the old tank heater.  So, you’d think the gas portion of the energy bill would be 42% less, but thanks to the increase in gas costs, we’re only saving about 25% in actual dollars.

This is way cool!  My father sent me some Power Point slides of this thing in action, but I’m going to just provide the Wikipedia link to Scotland’s Water Wheels. 

First, it looks cool.  What modern feat of engineering doesn’t look cool these days?  As the marketing folks are fond of saying, it has to have the ‘Wow factor’. 

Second, I’m sorry I didn’t see this a few years back when it first opened.  Kind of makes me feel behind the times.  What can I say?  I’ve been busy since 2002.

Third, it moves 600 tonnes — yes my American brethren that is metric tons or roughly equivalent to 80 African elephants – in 5 1/2 minutes each time it turns and yet it only consumes 1.5 kWh in the process.  So, even though it is functional and looks cool, its easy on the environment.  Okay, okay!  For the Americans in the crowd that is 661 tons or short tons, but whether you measure it in tonnes, tons, or African elephants that’s a lot of weight, in a short time with very little power consumption.

Ah those Scotsman, always being practical.

Here is another interesting concept.  Just in case we continue to mess up this little rock we like to call Earth, we’ve got a stock pile of plants to rebuild with.  I guess it’s better than nothing.  In the event of war, or some sort of meteor from the sky, we should be able to rebuild some of the flora around this rock to allow the fauna to eat.  But, what about fauna (I guess those stockpiles are called zoos)?  In the event of such a disaster, wouldn’t most of the animals be extinct anyway?  Well, except for maybe the roaches.

Here’s a novel idea, what about fixing some of the problems so such stockpiles are no longer necessary?

It would appear that biofuels aren’t the silver bullet everyone thought they would be.  This isn’t really new.  People have been talking about what it takes to create the biofuels for a while.  It’s just that mainstream media hasn’t been talking about it. 

What’s interesting is the 2nd last paragraph on the 2nd page.  It’s a shame the writer didn’t dive into that statement more fully.  Because it’s that statement and statements made in other articles that offer the real promise of ethanol as a fuel and will prove whether or not it’s a viable alternative.  People have previously stated that grain based ethanol wasn’t any better than gasoline, but sugar cane was better.  Better yet is the promise of switchgrass and waste based ethanol.  It’s making that promise and hope a reality that folks need to focus on.

The real shame of not diving into that statement is that there will be those who forever more will dismiss ethanol completely as an alternative.  To them I say, just what.  Technology always gets more refined as time goes on.  I fully believe that switchgrass and waste based ethanol provide a much better alternative to fossil fuels. 

Although, if you’ve read my posts in the past, you’ll notice I was very quick to jump on the ethanol PR bandwagon.  Perhaps a bit too early, but my reasoning wasn’t completely “green based”.  Well, we get wiser as we get older

We’re getting there folks.  It may not be at a rate that we’d like, but we’re getting there.  Let’s face it, we’re Americans.  We’re used to getting what we want, when we want it, and lots of it.  This whole green thing is just moving to slowly for most Americans.  We’re fickle.  If its not the latest craze, the latest media darling, we’re not interested.

Well, here’s an articlethat gives me hope.  It appears we may have a new business in switchgrass production, processing, and delivery if more tests come out as good as this one.  Switchgrass appears to be a whole heapin’ helpin’ better than corn at creating ethanol.  Here’s the line from the article that gives me the most hope:

After crunching the numbers, Vogel and his colleagues found that ethanol produced from switchgrass yields 540% of the energy used to grow, harvest, and process it into ethanol. Equally important, the researchers found that the switchgrass is carbon neutral, as it absorbs essentially the same amount of greenhouse gases while it’s growing as it emits when burned as fuel.

That’s the kind of ingenuity we’ve come to expect from America, and it’s finally been applied to the environment.  Now we just need some enterprising entrepreneur to figure out how to make large scale production of ethanol from switchgrass feasible and cost effective enough.  Someone out there with more smarts than me should be able to figure out that part.  As I said, environmental news that gives me hope.

Yesterday my neighbors asked me if I had received my utilities bill (the local energy company serves up both gas and electric) and if it was as outrageous as their’s.  They said their bill for Thanksgiving to Christmas was $350.  I almost fell over.  These are people that have a cottage up north that they go to every weekend.  All of their appliances run on timers to reduce usage.  And, the husband owns his own insulation company and has insulated his house to the hilt.  Then they said the neighbors on the other side of their house had a $340 bill.

My bill comes via email and I hadn’t checked the home email yet, so I was a bit nervous.  Especially since after the birth of my son, my wife has stayed home and the furnace now runs during the day instead of the temps dropping down.  Plus, despite replacing windows for more energy efficient ones and re-insulating, I still have a 25 year old furnace (it was an efficiency furnace in its day) and a 10 year old 40 gallon water heater.  I opened up the email and it was only $240.  Whew, what a relief.

The difference appeared to be twofold.  I used more gas than last year at the same time.  Makes sense, more furnace time, more laundry, etc.  Plus, gas is a lot more expensive than last year.  The electric usage was about the same, but like the gas, those nasty kilowatt hours cost more this year.

So, I guess its time to save up for a new furnace (since one that age might die anytime, its probably not a bad idea) and I’ll have to be more serious about my thoughts of investigating tankless or inline water heaters.  They’ve got to be more expensive to install, but depending on how much more they might pay for themselves quickly.  I’m thinking it’s got to be more fuel efficient to only heat the water when you need it rather than keeping 40 gallons of H2O piping hot — a bit of a misnomer since I have it turned down as low as the temperature gauge goes — in case you need it.  Also, it might finally be worth filling up the landfill with perfectly good incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact flourescent ones.

The automakers are trying.  So, I guess that’s a good thing.  It may be 10 full years away from commercialization, but I’d rather they make sure the hydrogren fuel cells work for normal people and are safe before we have mini-Hindenburg’s all over the nations highways

The Google humanitarian arm/foundation/”we have more money than God so let’s do some good division” has come up with a laudable project.  Check this out. Google is offering cold hard cash to folks who submit the best proposals for a plug-in vehicle that is commercially marketable. Anywhere from $500,000 to $2M for the ideas the folks at Google think have the best shot to make it.

Apparently, there are some technologies the “million monkeys at Google” can’t create.  So, they’ve decided to outsource it.  The liberitarian in me absolutely loves this idea.  Private citizens using their resources to solve a public problem.  No tax dollars and its being handled by people with more creativity and less red tape than it would in the government allowing them to get it done cheaper and faster than the government could do it.  Perfect!

In this case, they’re trying to push along a commercially viable electric car.  Granted, a lot of the energy production has been moved from the combustion engine under your hood to the power plant down the road, it’s still an alternative fueled vehicle and its contained to one place.  A single place that should, in theory, be easy to clean up, maintain, and even switch production source.

It’s a great idea, and I’m glad one of the monkeys at the great inter-Google came up with it.

So, most of you know I’ve been on a kick lately to be more environmentally conscious.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not green.  But, I’m working to get there.  Which brings me to the compact flourescent bulb.

Instead of using 60 watts while the bulb is burning, we can instead use 11.  That should help the ol’ electric bill.  It’s simple everyone can do it and it should really help out the environment.  Let’s change them all!  But…wait…what do I do with the perfectly good albeit electricity eating incandescent bulbs I already have in my lamps.  Seems a bit misguided to throw all of them in a landfill to use less electricity.  It certainly doesn’t seem anymore “green”. 

Plus, those compact flourescent bulbs can be pretty pricey.  For example, when my house was remodeled, the builders placed can lighting throughout the house with dimming switch plates.  Makes for nice lighting and you don’t have to worry about changing fixtures as things go from brass to nickel to antique brass to chrome to antique nickel back to brass again.  However, just one equivalent compact flourescent bulb that can actually be dimmed costs $13.  Plus, what about the fancy candle shaped lights?  Those will run you over $5 apiece.  The estimated dollar cost of turning my entire house over is around $410.  I know, I know, I’ll get that money back in what I save on the electric bill.  But, that’s still a decent amount of coin all at once.

So, we have decided to let these un-miserly incandenscent bulbs burn themselves out and replace them with more miserly bulbs when they do.  Still filling the landfill although it’s spread out over time.  So is the cost of replacing all of those light bulbs.  We replaced some of the other light fixtures that use the more standard bulb that you can replace for a little under $4 per bulb.  But we replaced the first spot light yesterday.  It’s actually brighter than the other spotlights. 

So, for less wattage, you get more light and I get to feel a little better about myself.  Plus, I get to spread out the pain of changing out the bulbs and gradually bring down the electric bill.  That works.

In my effort to become more of a green individual I came across this article. I’ll let it do the talking as it is a simple set of numbers that should be easy for anyone to understand.

Why more green? ‘Cuz it’s the “in” thing? Guilty conscience? Trying to impress other people?  I’d love to say none of the above, but that would reflect little understanding of self.  I’m sure in some way or another all of those things are playing into it in the deepest reaches of my brain.  But, really I just look at the Earth and think it can’t possibly sustain us for a prolonged period of time the way we currently do things. 

Why the sudden realization?  Why couldn’t you see the obvious before now?  I have a simple answer to that one — kids.  They have a nasty way of putting things back into a perspective I never had before.  A realization that my actions don’t just effect me.  There are others out there that will also pay for my sins.