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By Ted Mitchell (registered) | Posted December 23, 2005 at 07:40:00
Building new power plants is like building new roads so people can continue putting a single occupant in a 5000 lb vehicle and commute two hours a day.
From a purely economic standpoint, conservation blows all other options out of the water. Conventional power use is monumentally wasteful. Waste never equals quality of life.
Incandescent light bulbs are mostly electric resistance heating, light production is like a side effect. My 3000 sq. ft house uses only 3/4 of what the average (smaller) household consumes. It could be even less with a little effort. A purpose built efficient home could get by on miniscule power - like 25% of average.
The total consumption of "idling" electronic equipment, due to using cheap transformers and not giving a damn about efficient design, conservatively amounts nationwide to the size of a new nuclear plant. Not to mention lights left on when nobody's home.
New, more efficient appliances are only better if the old one does not become the beer fridge.
The Globe had a recent piece on heated driveways with electricity - the "exergy" efficiency of this is, well, embarrasing. Almost as bad are clothes dryers and electric resistance heating in general.
Some economists suggest "exergy" analysis should be the basis for energy pricing and policy - I wholeheartedly agree. This is not mainstream terminology - look it up - but in general it parallels common sense in appropriately matching source to use.
High grade energy like electricity is a severe mismatch with low grade energy such as space heating (and lowest grade like melting snow on your driveway - that's about as socially responsible as slavery!)
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