Hybrid cars--really?

Hey Mr. Green,
I think you are an idiot for recommending hybrid or electric cars. Have you ever seen the inside of car-battery factories? Have you seen the health problems that their workers face? Have you seen the impact of the waste?
--Dr. Pollution in Manasquan, New Jersey

Such heartfelt, warm reader reactions are welcome. Frankly, I'm grateful to have never entered a battery factory, especially one that's a hypertoxic sweatshop in a developing country.

Any type of battery can be treacherous if recklessly produced or poorly recycled. Lead is the major ingredient in batteries for ordinary cars, nickel for hybrids, and lithium for plug-ins. Lead is by far the most toxic, nickel less so, and lithium the least, but the nickel and lithium batteries do contain some toxic metals, including cobalt and manganese.

With nearly a 90 percent recycling rate, lead batteries ought to be a success story. But lead is still released by many facilities that handle it, though such operations must upgrade to comply with new EPA air standards. The insides of U.S. lead-battery factories, however, remain regulated by 33-year-old Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards, which allow workers to be exposed to lead levels that some consider unsafe.

Some used lead batteries aren't recycled domestically but exported to developing nations that have lax safety standards. Millions of batteries are now made in these countries, which puts their workers in grave danger. In China, for instance, battery-plant workers and children nearby have experienced episodes of lead poisoning. Typically, lead-battery processors in developing countries don't comply with the equivalent of U.S. standards.

Regardless of battery type, we should tighten regulations on lead batteries and stop exporting used ones to nations with weak safety rules. While a perfect vehicle-power solution eludes us, when you compare the damage done by hybrid and EV batteries with that done by burning fossil fuel, the trade-off seems worth it to me. And thus I'll continue to favor hybrids and EVs. I won't, however, debate the question of my idiocy. Only an idiot would do that.

Comparing Car Costs

Hey Mr. Green,
What's the cost of generating enough electricity with coal, gasoline, or biomass to power an electric car for 100 miles? Is it less expensive than engine fuel?--Lois in Glenview, Illinois

Juice for electric vehicles (EVs) is generally much cheaper than engine fuel, but it's tough to calculate exactly how much cheaper because of all the variables in cars (especially their size and design) and power plants (especially their location and the cost of energy to spin the dynamos). Such differences explain the wide range of electricity prices: from 7.6 cents per kilowatt-hour in North Dakota to 27.6 cents in Hawaii.

To get a handle on this, let's take the average residential price of electricity per kWh in the United States--currently 11.3 cents--and compare cars. Nissan claims that its plug-in Leaf gets 4.16 miles per kWh. So traveling 100 miles would cost just $2.72, or less if your utility offers off-peak rates. Even in a sweet little 40-mpg gas-powered car, the same trip would cost $7.50 when gas was $3 per gallon.
Remember, though, that those 100 miles can cost more than $50 in any kind of car, because fuel isn't your biggest car-related money-sucker. A new midsize sedan ends up costing 54 cents per mile when you factor in all expenses, including financing, depreciation, insurance, licensing, and so on, according to the AAA. Which explains why cheapskates such as Mr. Green don't own a car.

Though touted as environmental miracles, EVs aren't so innocent if their energy comes from power plants that burn fossil fuels and spew massive amounts of carbon dioxide. An EV that gets its charge from a coal-powered plant can be responsible for releasing almost as much CO2 as a conventional 40-mpg car.

What About a Fridge With No Freezer?

Hey Mr. Green,

I love your column in Sierra, but I felt cheated by your answer to the question about refrigerators in the July/August issue.  Since a few manufacturers make fridge-only models, why didn't you let us know if they are indeed more efficient than the combo fridge-freezers that are most common? It would seem easier to buy one of these outright than to transform a freezer into a veggie cooler.

--Janis in Gambier, Ohio

Yours is a very valid complaint. I got so infatuated with the exquisitely Rube Goldbergian maneuver of converting a freezer to a fridge that I completely ignored the obvious: If you don’t want or need a freezer, you can indeed procure a refrigerator without a freezing compartment. In general, freezer-free models take somewhat less power than combination models of comparable size.

Speaking of size, small remains beautiful. Big units usually require more power than small ones. Hence, in purchasing any kind of refrigerator, you should consider what size you need. Do we truly have to have a 25- or 30- cubic-foot behemoth that eats more than 700 kilowatt-hours per year, or could we get by with a modest 16-footer that requires only 400 kWh?

Also, ask yourself if you need all that function – the ice maker and other gadgetry costs more and uses more energy. Some folks could probably even downsize to the 3.1 cubic-foot Fisher & Paykel fridge-only model with the lowest power demands of all, 145 kWh a year – without diminishing their quality of life.

To explore the possibilities among 1,876 Energy Star-qualified refrigerators and freezers and pinpoint the best one for you, click here to go to a site that lets you create lists of any given combination of types, sizes, brands, and Energy Star ratings. (Energy Star-qualified models are at least 20% more efficient than already required by federal policy.)

To narrow your search to the most energy-efficient fridge-only models, click here.

Man vs. Dishwasher

Hey Mr. Green,

Living in a 100-year-old house comes with primitive luxuries, like hand-washing the dishes. In considering a kitchen upgrade, though, I was wondering if putting in a dishwasher is a good idea. Which is greener, a dishwasher, or washing dishes by hand?

–Jocque in New Richmond, Wisconsin

As I’ve noted before, studies indicate that a dishwasher is greener than hand-washing. The EPA estimates that Energy Star-qualified dishwashers use half as much energy as hand-washing does, and 5,000 fewer gallons of water per year. To find the most efficient dishwasher brands, see the EPA’s Energy Star ratings. Some of these machines use as little as 1.6 gallons of water per cycle; many require around 3 gallons, and the maximum allowed for Energy Star is only 5.8 gallons.

However, in what may represent an epochal shift in human consciousness, more than a few men have boasted to me that their great dishwashing prowess leads them to doubt that a dishwashing machine is superior. These guys crow that their hand-washing techniques are so advanced, so ingenious, so hugely green that they can put any dishwasher to shame. Yep, they roll up their sleeves, plunge into suds up to their elbows, and simply outperform the machine. Who—among even the most optimistic reformers of domestic tasking—could have predicted that dishwashing skills might one day be upheld as a marker of manhood?

But all right, these guys may have a point. The studies I noted scrutinized a random sampling of dishwashers. It may be possible, though unlikely, given the numbers above, for the exceptional individual to get by with less water than the machine. In terms of gross water consumption, there is really only one scientific way to determine whether you're superior to the machine, and that is to wash an amount of dishes that equals the capacity of a fully loaded dishwasher, and then measure the amount of water you used.

This can be done simply by detaching the trap from your sink and allowing all the water to drain into a calibrated bucket, taking care not to let the bucket overflow. You then compare the total volume drained with the specifications of any given dishwasher. A less accurate though simpler method would be to leave the drain plugs in and carefully bail out and measure the water used rather than removing the trap. But I’m assuming that your macho dishwasher dude can handle the plumbing issue involved in trap-tampering.

Note, too, that the amount of water used doesn’t correspond exactly to the energy consumed, but will give you a rough approximation, because around 60 percent of a dishwashing machine’s total energy use is devoted to heating the water, not to running its motor.

If you do conduct such an experiment, beware the biases that can creep into the process—as they sometimes do in studies funded by various industries to prove that their products are safe and green. Use a realistic number of dishes—dishwashers can hold a lot—and don’t cheat by rinsing so superficially that you leave your dishes less clean than hygienic standards would demand.

In the interest of citizen science, I invite those who carry out this experiment to send me their results.

Accounting for All That Goes Into a Hybrid Car

Hey Mr. Green,

Does your analysis of hybrid cars’ energy use account for all the fuels used in shipping cars and parts to different countries, making the batteries, and so on?

--Branden in Austin, Texas

Yes, the analyses I consulted, such as those from Argonne National Laboratory, include "upstream" and "downstream" inputs to the manufacture, distribution, and disposal, or to use another weary metaphor, “cradle-to-grave inputs.”

Shipping by sea is nowhere near the energy drain some anti-globalist and locavore zealots claim. The amount of energy required even to send a car halfway around the world only amounts to only a tiny fraction of what it’s gonna burn on the road! A huge ship can move more than ton of material 1,000 miles on only a gallon of fuel. The international shipping average is estimated around 422 miles per ton per gallon, and that’s a fairly conservative number because it includes less efficient ships that may well use more fuel that those hauling cars. Like it or not, this is a major reason why multinationals can afford to be multinationals.

Right here on terra firma is where we burn the bulk of our fossil fuel. In fact, of all the cargo shipped by sea, about a third is oil itself, almost all of which is burned by us clueless land-lubbers. People who harp about the evils of long-distance shipping might just be projecting their own local energy waste onto “distant ships sailing into the mist,” as Bob Dylan pictured them in his astoundingly allusive and complex “Jokerman.”

A typical semi truck with a 30-ton load burns about six to eight times more fuel per ton-mile than the biggest cargo ships, but that’s nothing compared to air freight, which can guzzle from 30 to 100 times more fuel per ton-mile as a large ship. Also, a lot of the fuel used in ships, known as "bunker fuel," is actually recycled oil, though this isn’t nearly as environmentally friendly as it sounds. This fuel is, as you can imagine, quite dirty, so the real problem with ships is less energy use than toxic emissions of sulfur, nitrogen oxides, lung-clogging microparticulates, and other pollutants. This is why the International Maritime Organization has begun to take steps to force ships to clean up their emissions near U.S. and Canadian coasts – thanks in large part to a long campaign by our friends at Friends of the Earth.

Finally, to the hybrid-cars battery controversy. There’s been some substantial clouds of blog-fog from chronic hybrid dissers, in which the claim is that it takes more energy to get the nickel for a hybrid’s batteries than a Hummer would burn in its entire supersize life. As I’ve noted, if this were the case, hybrid manufacturers couldn’t even afford the batteries, let alone the whole bleepin’ car, since the Hummer would burn more than $15,000 worth of gas at today’s prices before it hit 100,000 miles. The nickel used to make the batteries is mostly recycled, which requires far less energy than would be needed if it had to be mined and smelted anew.

Yes We Can (Rent Solar Panels, That Is)

Hey Mr. Green,

I've heard that there are solar installers who will now lease you the panels for zero down. Is this for real or too good to be true?

--Erica in Berkeley, California

Yes, you can indeed lease solar panels rather than purchase them, which would enable you to go solar without any payment up front. You can also choose to pay considerably less money down than the full purchase price, and lease at a lower monthly rate than if you put no money down. I contacted one of the leasing companies, Solar City, and quickly received a reliable estimate of the solar capacity I’d need based on my annual power consumption.

But before you jump into any solar lease or purchase, you should first see how much you can cut your energy use by taking all my eminently sensible power-miser measures on the Cool Home Checklist here (PDF). Why hive up more solar capacity than you truly need, especially if you’re worried about the price?

Consider this CBS News story about solar leasing that quoted one satisfied customer who slashed her electric bill from $200 to $300 per month to less than $60 per month by paying a $100 per month in solar rent. She enjoys a net savings of between $40 and $140 per month, but since she had “five TVs and four computers” in a suburban home, she might have saved even more by better managing her excess computer and home-entertainment consumption.

Many U.S. households could easily cut their electric use in half—which would help bring U.S. per-capita consumption down to the level of, for example, Germany or Italy. Because increased power consumption jams up the system, power loss between dynamo and user zoomed from 5 percent in 1970 to 9.5 percent by 2001, according to the Department of Energy. In light of such wretched excess, let’s halt dumb use, or the “smart grid” will begin losing IQ points even before it’s built.

PG&E Wields Its Power, Over 11 Trees and All of California

Hey Mr. Green,

Have you ever had to go up against the big guy to save the environment? We are a very small coastal community trying to save 11 beautiful, healthy palm trees from being cut down by our power company, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E). The palms have now grown up into the wires. Trimming them will kill them. The power company does not want to spend the money, of course, to move the poles, bury the wires, or implement a myriad of other solutions we have suggested. PG&E claims it will take almost $50,000 to save three trees, by moving two poles, but they are unwilling to subsidize it.

--Jody in Pacifica, California

Well, you’ve not only got a classic David vs. Goliath situation, but a classic case of “act locally, think globally.” This company’s attitude toward your trees is a symptom of a colossal power grab it’s attempting—in both the political and the electrical realms, as you’ll see in a moment.

But first, I assume that you guys have already looked into the legality of cutting the trees, and that you have no recourse. If that’s the case, you obviously need to keep rallying your treehuggers to get as much publicity and media attention as possible. It might help to call attention to the scandalous fact that PG&E officials have stated that they are willing to spend up to $35 million to put a proposition—Prop 16—on a state ballot to stop any city or county in California from forming its own power company unless there’s approval from two-thirds of the local residents. You could hold your public hats out and ask if they might spare a few dollars from this prodigious political war chest, or from the $1.22 billion they reaped in profits last year , to rescue your trees.

This company has obviously learned what a magnificent tool supermajorities can be in preventing anything from getting done, what with California already in gridlock because it’s stuck with a two-thirds majority requirement merely to pass a state budget. Though Prop 16 would prevent communities from developing their own alternative power sources in their own way, its Orwellian name, “The Taxpayers Right to Vote Act,” sounds more like civil-rights legislation than a cynical coup by corporate plutocrats. The saddest thing about all this conniving is that this company has actually made laudable efforts in energy conservation, including supporting the emissions regulations called for in California’s tough new law, AB32.

I wouldn’t be quite so quite so lathered up about this if it weren’t for the fact that, like it or not, California sets trends for the rest of the country, some great (like AB32) and some dastardly. If this latest development wins in the Golden State, a bunch of others might follow suit, and wind up as vulnerable to corporate ambush as your trees are to PG&E’s chainsaws.

A Burning (Wood vs. Electricity) Question

Hey Mr. Green,

I burn wood to heat my home. Otherwise, I use electric heat when I’m away from home. How can I determine my carbon footprint using the wood versus using electricity?

--Dot in Central New York

The comparative size of your carbon footprint depends on the source of your electric power and the quality of your wood burner. If the electric power used to heat your home is generated from coal or other fossil fuels, then your footprint might be bigger than if you're burning wood in a new, efficient, EPA-approved firebox or stove. But if you've got an old, inefficient stove or a traditional fireplace, your footprint could be way bigger than with electric heat. Also remember that you’ve got a major environmental tradeoff here: Even if the new wood burner has a smaller carbon footprint, per unit of energy it still releases a lot more other pollutants into the air than a coal-burning power plant, and it releases them right where you and your neighbors breathe. Burning wood to heat a home emits 250 times as much global-warming methane as burning coal in a power plant.

Electric heating is not such a great choice either. This is because only around 35 percent of the energy in coal gets converted to electricity; the rest is lost as heat, friction, turning the dynamo, and so on.

To calculate the difference between your two sources, you need to think in terms of British thermal units (Btus) and kilowatt-hours (kWh). Really, it's not hard. Bear with me. Since a typical generator's efficiency is only 35 percent, producing one Btu worth of electricity requires about 3 times as many Btus worth of coal to get the same amount of heat from electricity that you’d get from direct combustion of the coal. Since the carbon emissions generated to produce a Btu from burning wood are only a bit less than burning coal, to get 1 Btu from your wood, the total carbon dioxide released from the stove is roughly half that of coal-sourced electric power, provided you had a modern 75 percent-efficient wood stove. But if you've got an ancient stove, or an old-fashioned fireplace, which can be less than 15 percent efficient, then your carbon footprint could zoom up two or three times higher than with electric heat.

Of course, it’s not as easy to regulate the heat in a wood burner as in an electric heater, so you could end up burning more wood than you really need, pushing your carbon footprint up.

Does the Coal Industry Get Subsidies?

Hey Mr. Green,

An acquaintance of mine claims that there are no subsidies for the coal industry. Well?

--Bill in Landenberg, Pennsylvania

Puzzling out the subsidies to the coal business is as unnerving as edging through a dark mineshaft swarming with Velcro-winged bats. This is because a big chunk of the subsidies are not direct handouts, but packaged as tax credits, tax breaks, and other goodies too numerous to itemize here. The U.S. coal industry enjoyed subsidies of around $17 billion between 2002 and 2008, including tax credits for production of "nonconventional" fuels ($14.1 billion), tax breaks on coal royalties ($986 million), exploration, and development breaks ($342 million), according to a study by the Environmental Law Institute.

On top of this federal largesse, state and local governments coddle coal with hundreds of millions per year. The Kentucky state government’s net subsidy to coal is $115 million. Virginia grants tax credits of about $26 million to power plants just to burn Virginia coal, and doles out credits ranging from 40 cents to $2 per ton for another 20 million tons not burned by power plants. Bioregionalism at its finest.

Around $1.5 billion of the federal costs are associated with damages to miners’ health such as the notorious black lung disease. Thinking of the miners’ plight lands us smack in a morass of hidden subsidies as thick as the billion gallons of coal-ash sludge that poured into eastern Tennessee in 2008.

What is the true health and environmental cost when mining machines rip off mountaintops and chuck the rubble into streams? What was the cost of acid rain? What’s been the healthcare cost of 47 tons per year of mercury from burning coal that put 300,000 fetuses at risk for neurological damage each year? And how do you calculate the cost of coal’s 20 percent contribution to global-warming gases?

It doesn't end with this list. There are huge subsidies, direct and indirect, for the coal industry in the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), H.R. 2454, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last year. It remains to be seen what will emerge after the Senate has its go at the bill, but the EPA's own analysis notes that there will be substantial subsidies for carbon-capture technology, up to $90 per ton for carbon dioxide that’s "captured" in the first ten years. This is why some critics say it looks more like a "Coal Subsidy Act" than a Clean Energy and Security Act. For those who don’t have time to wade through the 946-page proposed law, Grist provides a valuable summary of welfare for coal here.

A Question of Appliances

Hey Mr. Green,

Can I get a federal tax credit by upgrading the large appliances in my house, which are probably 20 years old? I mean the refrigerator, washer, dryer, and water heater. Even without a tax credit, I'd like to upgrade at least one of these energy hogs. If can't do them all at once, which would be the most cost- and energy-saving one to upgrade?

–Sam in Santa Fe, New Mexico

There are indeed federal tax credits available for some appliances, and for quite a number of other home improvements ranging from windows to roofs to geothermal heating setups. Given our perennial wailing about high taxes, it's a shame we don't hear more about such benefits. According to Energystar.gov, qualifying products purchased up until December 31, 2010 are eligible for a rebate of up to 30 percent of the product's price. And since you live in a sunny state, you might consider solar water heaters, some of which are eligible for a 30 percent credit with no limit on cost. But the water-heater credits (and some others) do expire at the end of this year, so don't procrastinate unless you're sure we can whip Congress into shape and get extensions soon. To find out more about eligibility, click here. Your tax dollars at work—cutting your taxes.

A variety of other rebates are available from utilities and manufacturers that partner with EPA's Energy Star program; click here for more information.

With regard to prioritizing your replacements, a lot depends on the actual condition of the appliances, but I'd start with the refrigerator or the clothes washer, because they use more energy than any other appliances, and huge improvements have been made in their efficiency. For example, a refrigerator made prior to 1993 can use twice as much power as a new model; replacing one that’s more than 10 years old can save you $135 per year. To get more precise savings estimates for appliances, see the EPA's online calculators here (fridge) and here (washing machine).

Next, look at the water heater. Efficient new ones can use 10 to 50 percent less energy than older models, but because it's easy to drastically cut hot water use, I'd make cuts first before getting a new water heater. Simply washing with cold water when feasible can work wonders. You can get further reductions by installing low-flow shower heads and filling the dishwasher completely before running it. Once you've got all that down, then look into new heaters. A tankless or on-demand model is often the most efficient (but expensive) choice, because it doesn't have to keep the water constantly heated.

Dryers get the lowest priority. They generally burn less energy than fridges or washing machines of the same age, and most of the time you don't even need 'em. “Solar drying” on a clothesline or indoor drying on a clothes rack is far more efficient.