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

Energy Independence is a nice slogan, but where is the gunfire we are supposed to march toward.

As reported recently, President-elect Obama, doesn’t think that we are going to become energy independent because we change some light bulbs.

He is right.  Energy Independence requires big picture, macro economic evolution of our energy infrastructure.

There are steps we can all take to reduce the amount of energy we waste.  Most of the greenhouse gases the world frets over comes from coal fired power plants.  The less power used, the less energy produced, the less carbon dioxide released.  This doesn’t mean decreasing our standard of living, it means using energy more efficiently.

Individual efforts to reduce energy waste can have big effects when they are all added together.

Here are some videos about how to save energy at home:

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-14.html

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

How about those phantom power loads?

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-105.html

If you want a great solution to reducing your phantom power loads by remote control, check out the GreenSwitch.

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

If you really want to make a difference, show us how you save energy so we can copy your great ideas by signing the Declaration of Endependence.

http://endependence.info/declaration/category-6.html