News-Record.com

Shakori Hills in Chatham County will host a June concert to both help fund construction of a new elementary school in West Virginia and raise awareness about the devastating effects of mountaintop coal removal.

Organizers are holding the concert in North Carolina because some state lawmakers are trying to ban utilities from powering plants using this method. Fifty percent of the coal used to produce electricity in the state is extracted through mountaintop removal at Appalachian coalfields.

City post offices are doing their part to help government agencies meet a federal goal of cutting energy use over the next seven years.

The U.S. Postal Service hired ADMMicro in Roanoke, Va. to install programmable thermostats at 16 offices in Greensboro in 2007. The systems automatically turn down the heat or reduce air conditioning in empty buildings.

“Those buildings – like most commercial and some residential buildings, [ran] their heating and air conditioning pretty much at the same temperatures for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, whether someone is in those buildings or not,” said Robert McNiece, the agency’s facilities manager.

The offices have since cut energy use by an average 14 percent, with the 6,000-square-foot Guilford station reducing consumption by 31 percent and saving $3,700 in utility bills. McNiece estimated the systems pay for themselves in two years.

Nationally, the Postal Service has cut its energy use by 17 percent at its roughly 34,000 facilities as of September 2008, McNiece said. A 2007 law requires federal buildings to reduce energy by 30 percent by 2015.

“We’re well on our way toward our objective,” he said. “This pilot does a good job of showing… that you can get a whole lot of savings without a whole lot of investment.”

The Postal Service has been a leader for decades in the area of conserving energy and protecting the environment, he said. The agency’s many initiatives and achievements include:

* Winning numerous environmental awards, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s WasteWise Partner of the Year;

* Working with agencies in Maine to launch the nation’s first program allowing consumers to dispose of excess pharmaceuticals by mail in an effort to reduce environmental contamination;

* Delivering mail by bicycle in locations throughout Florida and Arizona;

* Piloting a mail-back program for electronic recycling;

*Operating a fleet of 43,000 alternative-fueled vehicles and testing hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles; and

* Constructing new buildings with features such as straw bale insulation, natural lighting, solar thermal systems, rainwater cisterns and vegetative roofs.

Learn about the agency’s other sustainability iniatives here.

The Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute has recruited Raleigh and the Triangle to participate in its Project Get Ready initiative. Participants announced the partnership by teleconference today.

The official Web site describes Project Get Ready as...

" a non-profit initiative led by Rocky Mountain Institute, in conjunction with a wide array of partners and technical advisers. Project Get Ready will:
* Create a dynamic “menu” of strategic plug-in readiness actions including the “business case” for each action.
* Provide a web database of American and international plug-in readiness activities.
* Convene at least 20 cities as well as technical players regularly to discuss their lessons learned and best practices, and report these conversations on our website and materials."

The Rocky Mountain Institute hopes this initiative will help President Obama surpass a goal of one million plug-in hybrid or electric vehicles on the road by 2015. That number represents less than 1 percent of the American vehicle fleet.

Raleigh officials said they hope to expand from one plug-in hybrid to six to 12 vehicles over the next year or so, with hundreds or thousands being purchased in the private sector. The city also plans to install eight to 10 charging stations over the next three months, with local universities and private developers installing up to 12 more. Read more here.

Laura Schewel with the Rocky Mountain Institute identified the following challenges to expanding the plug-in vehicle fleet:
* Current low consumer demand;
* expensive batteries;
* figuring out who will pay to install the needed infrastructure and then doing it.

Another speaker on the teleconference mentioned another challenge: establishing the regulations needed to encourage smart grid investments.

Update (Friday): I took a look at the report and found some good points, particularly about states overlooking the importance of energy conservation in lowering fossil fuel-powered electricity demand. People often pay lip service to this but at the end of the day utilities and their employees are worried about revenue and jobs. And consumers want their big screen TVs and computers.

But consumers can have direct control over their energy use and wallets by reducing energy use, not just through weatherizing but through changed habits and dependencies. And it's going to become more important with all the layoffs taking place. Ways to curtail energy use include reducing the number of appliances and gadgets one uses at home, hanging laundry on clothes lines with perhaps neighbors sharing dryers during cold and rainy weather.

The Cato report argues that states would do better to focus on the goal rather than the method so as to not unfairly benefit a few industries while shutting out others. Moreover, it's unclear what the net impact will be of massive use of solar panel projects, wind farms, biomass/animal waste conversion and so on. For example, not everyone is happy about Fibrowatt's chicken waste burning plants in North Carolina. And what will be the economic and environmental impacts of converting land to biomass production?

Still, I would be interested in seeing a comparison study between subsidies and incentives provided for the established fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric industries and those for renewable/alternative energy. We obviously cannot redo the past but I wonder how developed the fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries would be without government taxpayer support during the 20th century. Perhaps the situation would be better. Perhaps it would be worse.

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A new report out by the Cato Institute questions the economics of the renewable energy portfolio trend where states are requiring utilities to supply a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable energy. Twenty-six states have renewable portfolio requirements, including North Carolina, whose lawmakers passed standards in 2007.

Note: The institute espouses a "market-liberal" vision and opposes government planning mandates:

"Market liberals appreciate the complexity of a great society, they recognize that socialism and government planning are just too clumsy for the modern world. It is--or used to be--the conventional wisdom that a more complex society needs more government, but the truth is just the opposite. The simpler the society, the less damage government planning does. Planning is cumbersome in an agricultural society, costly in an industrial economy, and impossible in the information age. Today collectivism and planning are outmoded and backward, a drag on social progress."

I'll have comments on the report later, but feel free to chime in.

FYI: North Carolinians who planned to upgrade to an energy efficient appliance can get a break from the state sales tax by scheduling the purchase on Nov. 7-9. State legislators last year established a sales tax holiday on the first Friday-Sunday of November for certain Energy Star appliances.

The national version of "Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Re-energize America," a documentary about America's electricity generation, will air on UNC-TV locally this month. The tentative schedule for Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem is 10 p.m., Oct. 23.

Visit the Web site to find out how to purchase a DVD or host a screening. I viewed an earlier version of the film last year and found it very practical and down-to-earth. Intended audience: those who have not yet switched to compact fluorescent bulbs.

For many people, the use of compact flourescent light bulbs in their homes is a no-brainer: they consume a fraction of the electricity needed to operate traditional light bulbs. But some people worry that the tiny amount of mercury in CFLs could poison or pollute.

Well, a new state Web site tells you how to appropriately dispose of them. Find here where to dispose of bulbs in Greensboro.

(Note: Only 32 of 100 counties in North Carolina have hazardous waste centers that can collect these bulbs, according to this. The price alone discourages many people from switching; now they are supposed to go out of their way to get rid of them?)

According to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources:

"Tube or linear fluorescent lights are in widespread use in commercial, industrial and institutional settings in North Carolina, and CFL use is expanding rapidly in both the commercial and residential sectors. A study submitted to the state's General Assembly in March showed that from 2005-2007, CFLs jumped from 5 percent to 20 percent market share. The study estimated that 120 million fluorescents are in current use in North Carolina and 15 million lamps are ready to be discarded each year.

"However, since both tube lamps and CFLs contain a small amount of mercury, recycling fluorescent lights is the best way to minimize the release of mercury from the lamps to the environment. Despite their mercury content, energy-efficient fluorescent lights help achieve a greater net reduction in mercury by reducing the mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants."

The N.C. Sustainable Energy Association is asking residents to sign a petition requesting strong rules for connecting solar systems to the electrical grid (net metering, which would allow households to supply electricity). The Vote Solar Initiatve is an effort to bring solar energy into the mainstream.