For those who want clean energy, why don't you buy it?

For those who want clean energy, how about YOU buy it yourself?

My utility company recently began offering a special plan of clean energy offsets. If individual electric company consumers are willing to pay more, the electric company has pledged to pay for offsets, so that for every unit of energy you buy, they'll make sure that a correlating unit of energy was derived from renewable sources.

That basically means customers have the option of choosing between normal electric power, and moderately more expensive electric power from renewable sources.

The program has not been very popular. Apparently, few people want to pay higher electric bills, even if they say they care about the environment and want renewable energy.

If you want clean energy, it begins with YOU.
Why don't you go and buy clean energy offsets for the amount of electric power you use?

You have the option of using clean green renewable electric power, so why don't you do so?

Obviously, paying for an electric offset has no different effect on the environment than if the power you used came directly from a renewable source. That's like the difference between you using clean energy and someone else in another place using dirty energy, and you using dirty energy but paying someone else in another place to use clean energy as an alternative.
No net difference. Effectively the same thing.

You can be "carbon neutral". So why don't you go do it?

(Is it because you want someone else to pay for it?)

 

Who says they are not?

 

Green weenie-ese sounds good and talks good, but mention any sacrifice and/or hardship and that's a new ball game.

 

It’s like she didn’t read the OP but responded to it anyway.

 

True believers talk the talk but rarely if ever walk the walk and never put their money where their mouth is.

 

That's what they claim. A lot of so-called carbon offsetting is a con and it's difficult for the consumer to tell the difference. There is also the issue of companies putting money in the carbon offsetting or greener energy (by choice or obligation) but then marketing this kind of tariff despite the number of customers paying it actually having no impact on the total investment.

Reducing energy use is a much more direct and effective method individuals can use since no form of energy production and delivery will be entirely harmless.

 

The truth is people love combustion, they love it a lot, it makes life easy, and they don't want any increase in their utility bills.

When it comes down to their ox getting gored people say to hell with the green stuff and global warming.

Anything in the news only presents cheerleading for green weenie propaganda and never mentions that there is heavy price and personal sacrifice that goes with it.

Yes, TJ, I love the harp seals, too. But if there is to be more ice for them it is going to come at one hell of a human cost, and that's what you left out in your emotional piece for GMA.

 

So basically you are saying you won’t pay more for green energy either. Not willingly anyway.

 

I'd pay for actual environmentally friendly energy generation if it was an option for me. My point remains that the kind of scheme you're referring to isn't necessarily more environmentally friendly and so not a reasonable investment unless it could be demonstrated to be so.

I do pay, in time, effort and money, to do other things in my day-to-day life that certainly are more environmentally friendly and I think that is a better approach to focus on. The push for better generation methods needs to be at a larger scale than the poorly (and maybe mis-) informed decision of individual domestic energy customers.

 

I’m referring to the OP where people were offered green energy at a higher cost and said thanks but no thanks.

 

Me too. I only burn wood in camp.

 

No, the OP referred to a scheme where the energy company promises to buy some kind of clean energy offsets. There are all sorts of different schemes, some of which are fatally flawed and don't offer much or any actual environmental benefit. Even if the scheme in this case is a good one, the general concept is tainted by the bad and generally difficult to get details on. That's the kind of thing that might put people off paying money to support that scheme, especially if they can use the same money for something they can be more confident is beneficial.

That isn't to say that lots of people talk the talk but stop short of impacting their own lives, but tissue hat is far from exclusive to environmentalism.

 

Not the way I understood the OP.


“so that forevery unit of energy you buy, they'llmake sure that a correlating unit ofenergy was derived from renewablesources.”

 

That's just the OPs interpretation of the energy companies claim. It isn't that simple and lots of people will have doubts (fairly or not) which will likely be a factor in why the scheme doesn't get a lot of interest (which was the OP question).

 

I will go with the OP interpretation over yours because they are the one actively involved.

 

What if there was government regulation and scrutiny to make sure that the claims of the utility company were not misleading?
(There already is a lot of government regulation on utility companies, since they are granted a government monopoly)

Would you buy this alternative green electric billing option then?

 

How about a government funded clean energy project, funded by private donations?
(government salaries going only to a board of just a few people to oversee the program)

The clean energy project would sell electric power to the private sector, but at an overall financial loss of course.

The program could tell you how much money you would need to donate to offset your individual energy usage.

 

Your question wasn't about what I'd do, it was about why few customers have taken up the option you describe. I gave one possible reason why some might choose not to even if they support environmental policies more generally. I'm sure being unwilling (or maybe unable) to pay more personally to support it is a factor too but as I said, that's a general issue, not specific to environmentalism.

 

Simply put, folks, when given the option to offset the development costs for wind/solar grid expansion aren't willing to foot the bill for it. More, the actual cost of adopting things like solar never pay for themselves. Or, at least your ROI is exceptionally long. I've been researching Tesla roofs. The ROI doesn't happen until year 22 and the roof is only good for 25. Even with the federal tax rebate, the cost of the roof is staggering, and the offset for what you can actually deliver in power production vs other sources is insanely high. The other thing that seems not to get much attention is just how much localized heat is produced from the installations. Lots of things to consider here...

 

It is indeed specific to true believerism. True believers talk the talk but it ends there.

 

Oh Lord, won't you give me a new Bombadier, my friends all have Gulfstreams, I must make amends.

I'm celeb all my lifetime, no help from my friends,

Oh Lord, won't you give me a new Bombadier.

 

You can put it that way if you like. That must mean it applies to whatever you believe in too. However much you'd like to see this as a failure of some defined "them", you're really just talking human nature.

 

True believers in AGW are like any other religious fanatics. It's not what you do it's what you believe that sets you apart from and above those who don't believe. In reality though the true believers in AGW live no differently from us "deniers".

 

Help Wanted: Need tens of thousands of workers, entrepreneurs, and financiers who are expert in nearly everything, to install a nations infrastructure of underground utilities and pipelines, lay many thousands of miles of interstate highways, thousands of miles of railroad tracks, put satellites into space, stretch cables across the oceans to connect the continents with communications, plumb the oceans, navigate the nations major channels, dredging and setting channel buoys, build fantastic bridges over large bodies of water, damn mighty rivers and blast tunnels thru solid granite mountains. Must be environmentally conscious, sensitive and tender hearted.

 

I even saw one study that found that those with more conservative political orientations recycle more, if given the same sort of situation with available recycling facilities, than those with more progressive political orientations.
Which would sort of make sense, in a way. Conservatives are more likely to pinch pennies and do the extra work going out of their way to get back the 5 cent container deposit on cans, and try to do the responsible thing, if given a recycling bin, while progressives often have the mentality of thinking someone else should take care of things.