Skip to main content

How Clean is the Electricity You Use?

By
The Environmental Protection Agency developed a power profiler that:
  • Determines your power grid region based on your ZIP code and electric utility,
  • Compares the fuel mix and air emissions rates of the electricity in your region to the national average, and
  • Determines the air emissions impacts of electricity use in your home or business.
To start, all you need is a zip code, check it out. Hat tip to Nick Loris.
Labels:

Comments

Matthew66 said…
My problem with this site is that of the green energy options offered for my zip code, none allows me the option to purchase 100% of my electricity from nuclear (even though Indian Point supplies 50% of the electricity for my zip code).

If the nuclear utilities would offer consumers the option to purchase 100% of their electricity from nuclear, it would at least provide some data on how many people actually favor nuclear power enough to use it as their exclusive source of electricity.

Maybe they could call it Blue Power, blue for clean skies, blue for Cerenkov radiation.
August 7, 2008 at 10:03 AM
Anonymous said…
Unfortunately, EPA doesn't consider upstream costs. Does anyone know of a site where I can use my zip code to find my greenhouse gas emissions from electricity including these upstream costs?
August 7, 2008 at 11:55 AM
Anonymous said…
The superstition that CO2 causes global warming is alive and well at this EPA site. Anybody that still buys into that is willfully ignorant of the science (and the 31,000 scientists who disagree as well.)

CO2 def. from EPA site:
"A naturally occurring gas, and also a by-product of burning fossil fuels and biomass, as well as land-use changes and other industrial processes. It is the principal anthropogenic greenhouse gas that affects the earth's radiative balance. It is the reference gas against which other greenhouse gases are measured and therefore has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 1."
August 7, 2008 at 2:06 PM
Matthew66 said…
I am not an atmospheric scientist so cannot attest to the truth or otherwise of global warming. What I do know is that burning fossil fuels for energy severely degrades the air quality in the surrounding areas, and the bigger the plant the larger the area.

I believe that when we make decisions about human activity, we should always favor those options that permit satisfactory advancement of the human condition with the least environmental impact possible. There will always be tradeoffs, but I don't think that we should be destroying mountain ranges to extract coal when a viable alternative is available that does not require the destruction of large swathes of the countryside.
August 7, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Anonymous said…
This "profiler" has serious limitations. It asks for a specific ZIP code, and confirms which specific utility you are using, but then just presents (outputs) the generation mix for the entire "region", the "region" being a very large, multi-state area.

Try entring a Chicago-area ZIP code. The profiler will confirm for you that your utility company is Commonwealth Edison (which is over 80% nuclear). Then the profiler will tell you that your "region" gets 73% of its power from coal, which is higher than the national average. It goes on to report that, therefore, our Chicagoan's emissions of CO2, SO2, etc.. are higher than the national average.

Useless.

Beyond useless, in fact. Certainly for the Chicago case. Since it's giving out info that is literally the opposite of the truth, it is better to not know anything at all.

Jim Hopf
August 7, 2008 at 4:41 PM
Anonymous said…
% Long Island
5 non-hydro renewables (trash burning?),
0 hydro,
0 nuclear,
58 oil (!!!),
35 gas (!),
0 coal.

Fundie antinukes and their BS around Shoreham NPP obviously *increased* out oil dependency!
August 7, 2008 at 5:19 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

By
Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...
Post a Comment
Read more