We know, it’s a heavy burden, but it’s your job to make clean coal for the foreseeable future.

Here are the facts.  There is no such thing as clean coal, and there won’t be such a thing for a long time.

The coal industry is running ads showing President Obama, as candidate Obama, saying that “if America can put a man on the moon, don’t tell me we can’t burn coal without releasing carbon dioxide.”  Maybe that’s true, but we aren’t doing it yet, and the moon mission took a decade.

Fifty percent or so of the electricity we use in the United States comes from coal.  In the middle of the country, almost all of the electricity comes from coal.  The coal state senators are going to be hard to budge on cap and trade legislation, and whatever passes congress this year will be a baby step toward curbing carbon dioxide  (a teeny tiny step in the right direction).

But you can start making coal cleaner right now.

How, you ask?  By not wasting electricity.  All the electricity you don’t waste is electricity that doesn’t have to be generated by coal.

Here is the logic.  There is no storage system on the electricity grid (some argue that hydroelectric dams and their reservoirs are grid storage, but very little of our electricity comes from hydro).

When we turn on a switch to use electricity, for all intents and purposes, the power providers have to make that electricity right then.  They can’t make some today and save it for you to use tomorrow or next week.  A majority of the time, power companies are burning coal to make that electricity.

So when you don’t waste electricity, you keep the power providers from burning coal that had no real use.  Where can you find wasted electricity: in your unattended power, phantom power, vampire power, call it what you will.  Also in the rooms with lights on when nobody is there, or the TVs or game systems or computers running when nobody is watching or playing.

Look around your house to see where the only form of current clean coal is hiding.

Here are some videos about unattended power:

Simple things you can do to save energy around the home

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-15.html

End phantom power drain-cartoon

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-44.html

An Introduction to GreenSwitch with Ed Begley, Jr.

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-24.html

We have heard about some of the knocks on the first draft of the economic stimulus package which has passed the House of Representatives.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/20/AR2009012003980.html?hpid=topnews

For example, of $30 billion in highway spending, less than $4 billion would occur over the next two years. Of $18.5 billion proposed for renewable energy, less than $3 billion would be spent by 2011. And of $14 billion for school construction, less than $7 billion would be spent in the first two years.

How about something that could get people working right now and help us reduce our dependence on polluting fuels.  Here is a suggestion from the National Association of Homebuilders.

http://www.nahb.org/news_details.aspx?sectionID=0&newsID=8520

Mike Hodgson, president of the California energy consulting company ConSol, revealed the results of a study conducted for the California Homebuilding Foundation last fall. Seventy percent of the greenhouse gas emissions related to single-family envelope energy consumption can be attributed to homes built before 1983, the study found.

“Simple arithmetic demonstrates how retrofitting existing homes with energy-efficient features is four to eight times more carbon- and cost-efficient than adding further energy-efficiency requirements to new housing,” Hodgson said.

The importance of window caulking

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-71.html

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs can be beautiful

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-55.html

Energy Star Appliances to save lots of energy

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-43.html

Here is a link to more great energy saving ideas from the EPA Energy Star Program

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_improvement.hm_improvement_hpwes