An inconvenient electric bill
At the home of Al and Tipper Gore. So reports USA Today.
Buying "green power" is just rearranging the deck chairs, buying power that would have been in the energy mix anyway. It's like buying the green M&M's when no one else cares what the color of their M&M's are.
And what about buying carbon offsets? Marginal Revolution shows it can easily be the case that you make pollution worse -- here and here.
Buying "green power" is just rearranging the deck chairs, buying power that would have been in the energy mix anyway. It's like buying the green M&M's when no one else cares what the color of their M&M's are.
And what about buying carbon offsets? Marginal Revolution shows it can easily be the case that you make pollution worse -- here and here.
Labels: environment
posted by John B. Chilton at 2/28/2007 09:32:00 PM
2 Comments:
Pretty simplistic analysis with your deck chairs analogy. Buying green power sends a market signal that will stimulate future production of green power. The name of the game is to push our power mix in the right direction over the long term. Buying green power "now" is a valid way for individual consumers to exercise economic choice---cleaner electricity over dirty coal. There won't be more green power tomorrow if no one is buying today.
I think that the commenter above me was on to something. The supply will always rise to meet demand, and sometimes you have to "create" demand to get supply going. This could change the long-term course of our energy initiatives.
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