People’s motivations for making energy improvements to their homes range from pragmatic (“I want to save money.”) to ethical (“It’s the right thing to do.”) to environmental (“I want to do my part to save the earth.”).
With all the attention to global warming, it’s easy to forget how many other compelling reasons there are to save energy and generate clean energy. When you install a solar or wind system or improve your home or business’s energy efficiency, your action:
1. Benefits the Environment
Lessens or eliminates your contribution to:
- global warming (CO2)
- acid rain, which kills plant, aquatic, and animal life
- the generation of nuclear waste
- the environmental damage and loss of human and animal life caused by coal mining (including mountaintop removal and groundwater contamination)
- the environmental danger and energy costs of shipping oil and liquid natural gas to U.S.*
- air pollution’s toll on public health (Estimates of direct premature deaths in the U.S. caused by air pollution range from 70,000 to 122,000 per year, with children and the elderly particularly susceptible.)
- mercury contamination (Electrical generation is the #1 source.) in birds, animals, fish, and people
- water use by power plants (estimated by Harper’s as one-half of all freshwater drawn from U.S. sources)
- the pressure to build new power plants (which are paid for by utility customers
2. Benefits Your Life and Community
- Cuts your energy costs
- Protects you from rising energy costs** (For more, see What Solar Costs and What Solar Saves)
- Makes you more energy-independent and lessens your dependence on an increasingly strained and unreliable power grid
- Improves the value of your home*** (For more, see Why Solar is a Great Home Improvement.)
- Provides a safe and dependable return on investment at a time when few investments are safe or dependable
- Demonstrates that you are socially concerned and “part of the solution”
- Shows community technological and environmental leadership
3. Benefits Our Country -- and the World
- Makes the U.S. more secure: less dependence on foreign energy sources (oil and natural gas) and less danger to public from potential accidents or terrorism involving nuclear waste and liquid natural gas
- Makes the world more secure: less international unrest caused by competition for dwindling energy supplies and less need “to defend national interests”
- Lightens the load on the overloaded power grid (Because solar electric output peaks during mid-day, it can help prevent brown-outs and black-outs.)
- Conserves natural resources for future generations
4. Grows Green Industries that Benefit Many
- Green jobs strengthen local economies. (Compared to fossil fuel energy, green jobs create more jobs per dollar, and a higher proportion of local jobs.)
- Because they do not need expensive infrastructure, solar and wind are best suited to provide electricity to the 1.7 billion people worldwide who live without basic energy services.
- Your purchase of renewable energy makes a statement about what you want our nation’s priorities to be. In spite of their maturity and profitability, the fossil fuel and nuclear industries’ influence over U.S. national policy is so great that they continue to receive subsidies at a rate 30 to 50 times greater than those given to solar and wind. (In Europe, the ratio is closer to 10 to 1.)
Footnotes and Resources for More Information
Notes on electrical generation, pollution, and health effects
“U.S. power plants discharge nearly three-quarters of the country's acid rain emissions (sulfur dioxide), over one-third of its greenhouse-gas emissions (carbon dioxide), one-third of its smog emissions (nitrogen oxide), one-third of its particulate matter, half of its nuclear waste, and one-quarter of its toxic heavy metals.”
“When all the externalities, such as the cost and pollution caused by liquefying and transporting this fuel, are included, liquefied natural gas (LNG) is much more expensive than coal, and almost as dirty.”
“Solar is the Solution,” Steven Heckeroth, Mother Earth News, Dec. 2007/Jan. 2008
Only 8% of the 11 million gallons of crude oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill was recovered.
From the Congressional testimony of Dr. Jeff Short, on the 20th anniversary of the spill, according to the Oceana newsletter of April 7, 2009.
Coal provides about 49% of the nation’s electricity, natural gas about 20%, and nuclear about 20%.
In Maryland, coal-fired plants typically supply more than one half of the electrical generation, nuclear power more than one fourth, and petroleum and natural gas much of the remainder.
Source: Energy Information Administration,
According to the American Lung Association: In 2003, more than half the American population continued to breathe polluted air that was harmful to their health.
In 2002, Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts of the Earth Policy Institute stated: “In the United States, traffic fatalities total just over 40,000 per year, while air pollution claims 70,000 lives annually – equal to deaths from breast cancer and prostate cancer combined.”
Notes on utility costs and deregulation
“On average, since 2001, the burden of utility costs have risen an average of 3.75% each year.”
“Not one of the 16 states — plus the District of Columbia — that have pushed forward with deregulation since the late 1990s can call it a success. In fact, consumers in those states fared worse than residents in states that stuck with a policy of regulating their power industries. . . In many states, [deregulation’s] had the opposite effect with sharply higher rates — 72% in Maryland, up to 50% in Illinois. . . Consumers in deregulated states also have suffered from bigger price swings . . . We said back then it was a raw deal for consumers. We now know it was a raw deal for consumers," said Johanna Neumann of Maryland Public Interest Research Group.
Source: “Electric deregulation fails to live up to promises as bills soar,” USA Today, April 21, 2007
“Competition in the supply of electricity is intended to produce pressure downward on energy costs, but the savings are going to be small relative to the overall rise in the cost of energy production from the previous year.”
Source: Maryland Office of the People’s Counsel website
“Powerful energy companies have rewritten the rules that govern our utilities. Now, companies like Constellation can charge prices for power that are completely unrelated to the cost of generating that power. Our utilities are no longer accountable to the people they serve. Our electric system is in the hands of companies that are more interested in maximizing profits than in serving the people of Maryland. These companies will keep fighting to bend more rules their way.”
Source: Maryland PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) website
Notes on real estate and the value of solar
“Solar electric systems increase property value by decreasing utility operating costs. According to the Appraisal Journal (Nevin, Rick et al, “Evidence of Rational Market Valuations for Home Energy Efficiency,” Oct 1998, www.ongrid.net/AppraisalJournalPVValue10.98.pdf
), a home’s value is increased by $20,000 for every $1,000 reduction in annual operating costs from energy efficiency.”
Assessments of the direct resale value of solar power vary. At the low end, Remodeling Magazine places the investment in solar panels recouped at resale at 87%. California-based solar power analyst Andrew Black (“Financial Payback on Residential California Solar Electric Systems”) stated that “A solar electric system compares very favorably with other home improvements in percentage of cost recovered. Often, a solar system can recover much more than 100% of its cost, and this percentage actually increases over time as electric rates rise." Big solar power systems can recoup as much as 157% percent of their cost in value returned, Black reported.
According to a Roper survey conducted earlier this year, half of consumers surveyed said they would pay up to 10% more for a solar-equipped house.
“With energy costs remaining near-record highs, homeowners are looking to energy-management systems and other sustainable design elements to help reduce the financial burden of high utility bills, according to a survey of architects by the American Institute of Architects. . .” “There is strong demand for green-home design features and products like solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling, and water-reclamation systems," said AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker.
Source: “Real Estate News and Notes,” Palm Beach Daily News, Dec. 12, 2008
“Solar-powered homes are starting to outsell traditionally electrified new homes in several markets . . .”
Source: “Sun-powered homes defy a cool housing market,” Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 25, 2007
Notes on Green Industries vs. Fossil Fuel Industries
“At a time of mounting public concern about climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels, the world fossil fuel industry is still being subsidized by taxpayers at more than $210 billion per year. Fossil fuel subsidies belong to another age, a time when development of the oil and coal industries was seen as a key to economic progress—not as a threat to our twenty-first century civilization.
In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in 1999, Donald Lubick, U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, said in reference to oil and gas companies: “This is an industry that probably has a larger tax incentive relative to its size than any other industry in the country.”
Many subsidies are largely hidden from taxpayers. This is especially true of the fossil fuel industry, whose subsidies include such things as a depletion allowance for oil pumping in the United States. Even more dramatic are the routine U.S. military expenditures to protect access to Middle Eastern oil, which were calculated by analysts at the Rand Corporation before the most recent Iraq war to fall between $30 billion and $60 billion a year, while the oil imported from the region was worth only $20 billion.
A 2001 study by Redefining Progress shows U.S. taxpayers subsidizing automobile use at $257 billion a year, or roughly $2,000 per taxpayer. In addition to subsidizing carbon emissions, this also means that taxpayers who do not own automobiles, including those too poor to afford them, are subsidizing those who do.”
Adapted from Chapters 4 and 12 in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), available for free downloading at: www.earthpolicy.org/Books/PB2/index.htm.
“A study commissioned by Greenpeace found that, in an average year, the Government subsidizes coal, oil and gas companies to the tune of about $9 billion. But renewable industries like solar and wind received $330 million.”
Charles Komanoff puts direct subsidies to nuclear power at $3.75 billion per year, while Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman put the total (direct and indirect) at almost $7.1 billion a year.
“Nuclear power’s very limited ability to reduce greenhouse gases, compared to reductions that can be achieved using the same dollars for sustainable energy, and its enormously dangerous proliferation and pollution issues, combine to make nuclear an untenable, irrational energy choice.”
“Towards an International Renewable Energy Agency,”