Going green now could help you weather a financial storm later
Consumers are steaming over soaring gas prices and heating bills. The only upside to the energy-price surge is that if you cut household resource and energy consumption, you save money while helping the environment.
Most of the pain is being felt by those facing higher heating oil prices, which have risen 83 percent over the past year as crude oil prices approached $100 a barrel.
Natural gas is becoming more expensive to find and transport. And coal prices have reached record levels, translating into higher electricity rates where coal is burned to create power.
There are many cul-de-sacs on the road to saving energy, though. My pet peeve is "energy offsets," little contributions you (or your company) can make to invest in cleaner, greener energy somewhere else. They are also known as green tags.
Offsets are often the equivalent of buying medieval indulgences to cleanse yourself of environmental sins.
These eco-penances may allay your guilt somewhat if you have an energy-gluttonous lifestyle, yet they do little to directly address the main problem: how to live a less resource-intensive life.
With green tags you can buy a third-party promise to purchase renewable energy and offset your carbon-dioxide emissions. Say you drive a lot. You go online and find a service that will sell you an offset. There are more than a dozen marketers of what the US Energy Department calls "retail renewable energy certificates." You will pay from $1 to $20 per ton of carbon-dioxide emissions saved.
One appealing program, called Native Energy, allows you to directly contribute to renewable-power projects built on American Indian lands. The Rosebud Sioux Tribe, for example, is getting help from Native Energy to build its 30-megawatt Owl Feather War Bonnet Wind Farm in South Dakota.
What's wrong with that? You may be avoiding the real issue: Most Americans generate 20 tons of carbon dioxide per year, compared with about 4.5 tons for the average resident of the planet.
Some of the best economic solutions to an ecological crisis start in the home and are direct actions.
When Maren Engelmohr, a St. Louis architect, designed a new home, energy consumption was on her mind. She worked with Kirkwood, Mo.-based green builder Matt Belcher to construct a 2,650-square-foot home that will not only provide a healthier indoor environment, but will cut utility bills for her family of four.
By installing a 94 percent efficient furnace and highly rated air conditioning, they expect to save 60 percent on energy, compared with a conventional home. They also reduced building waste by constructing walls with structurally insulated panels.
Remodelers and renters can lower their utility bills, too. Some of the changes can be simple.
No matter how you do it, cutting resource consumption on a personal level will help you in the future. You won't be able to do anything about energy prices, but if you cut your utility bills, you will at least be able to weather an economic storm with more cash in your pocket.
John F. Wasik is a Bloomberg News columnist. He can be reached at jwasik@bloomberg.net.
