When my brother looked at one of my solar production posts, he exclaimed, "Wow! I didn't know that much CO2 was created by our utilities. Are you sure you are saving 339 pounds of CO2 for only 199 kilowatts hours of electricity? Seems like an awful lot." When he said that, I was even a little incredulous. How can you create 1.7 pounds of CO2 pollution by producing only 1 KWH of electricity? So, I had to look it up.
Here are some pollution rates (per KWH) based on the major fuel types (1999 rates from a U.S. Department of Energy Study):
Coal: 2.095 lbs
Oil: 1.969 lbs
Gas: 1.321 lbs
US Average: 1.341
While my solar monitoring system uses a higher than average carbon assumption, either way, 1.34 or 1.7 pounds of CO2 per KWH is still a lot. And it really adds up. U.S. electricity generation plants emitted 2.27 billion metric tons of CO2 pollution in 2009 according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Electric Power Annual 2009 study. Way too much!
To put this into more everyday terms, a typical refrigerator, for example, uses 188 watts per hour. For the year, it will use 1,647 KWH and have a carbon footprint of 2,175-3,450 pounds of CO2 per year, depending on your utility's fuel source mix. Here's a site on how much electricity common household appliances use. Conserving electricity and being more aware of what and how we use electricity are some things we can all do to help save the planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment