On Tuesday, January 2, 2001, Wallace McMullen reported on "The Connection Between Your Light Switch and Environmental Damage" at the Thomas Hart Benton Group (of the Sierra Club) General Meeting. Mr. McMullen, a member of the Executive Committee of the Ozark Chapter of the Sierra Club, came from Jefferson City, Missouri, to present this vital package of information to the several dozen audience members present at the Central United Methodist Church in Kansas City.

Mr. McMullen first gave an overview of how electricity is generated and moved. He explained that the unit of measure for electricity as it is purchased is the kilowatt-hour (kwhr). If you have a 100-watt light bulb and keep it lit for 1 hour, you have used 100 watt-hour. Ten 100-watt light bulbs lit for 1 hour equals 1 kwhr. The typical home uses approximately 400 – 500 kwhrs per month. A medium-sized power plant puts out 500 megawatts (mw). One mw equals 1000 kw. After electricity is generated at the power plant, it is moved on the transmission system. Transmission lines move electricity on what is called a "grid," on which all electricity is essentially intermixed. The third component of the electricity trio is retail distribution. This is the area of the system that brings electricity to our homes. Mr. McMullen indicated that the retail price of electricity is typically about 7 – 9 cents per kwhr.

Next, Mr. McMullen explained the environmental impacts of the electrical industry. Electrical generation creates 70 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions. This accounts for over 20 million tons annually in the United States. Sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere combines with water vapor to form acid rain. Electrical generation also creates 30 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions. Oxides of nitrogen create smog, cause respiratory disease, and deposit in surface water, reducing levels of oxygen available to aquatic organisms. Coal-burning power plants emit mercury. These emissions also end up in surface water, where they are taken up by aquatic organisms. Since mercury bioaccumulates, it ends up being passed along in the food chain, with those organisms at the top of the food chain (including people) receiving the largest dosages. Finally, electrical generation is a major contributor to global warming. When coal and/or petroleum are burned to fuel power generation, vast amounts of carbon are liberated. This carbon combines with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, which is the primary greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. About 30 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions are from the power industry. Approximately 70 million tons of carbon dioxide are produced each year associated with electrical generation in Missouri alone.

Demand for electricity, Mr. McMullen noted, has grown more rapidly than predicted in the last three years. This has resulted in frequent instances where demand for electricity has been very close to supply. As this relationship gets closer to a 1:1 ratio, due to limits in generation and transmission, blackouts and rolling brownouts have become real possibilities. Deregulation, Mr. McMullen explained, has really been a restructuring of the industry. Utilities have divested their generating assets as a result of this restructuring, somewhat akin to when local and long-distance phone service was split. In this environment, there has been relatively little construction of new generating plants. Theoretically, retail customers can choose from a number of suppliers of electricity under deregulation. This sort of multiplicity of electrical suppliers has failed to materialize, resulting in the sort of situation currently occurring in California, where high demand has led to retail electrical distributors having to buy power on the spot commodities market at rates many times the standard (peaks in demand rapidly drive the cost of a given commodity up). State utility commissions have been reluctant to allow retailers to pass all of these costs along to customers, resulting in real financial hardship for these suppliers. Most of the new electrical generation plants on the drawing boards are envisioned as deriving their power from natural gas. This is because emissions from burning natural gas require less elaborate treatment than emissions from burning coal. However, the natural gas pipeline infrastructure is old, limited, and near capacity. Extraction of more natural gas in Canada and Alaska, and movement of this resource to power plants, will cause more environmental destruction due to construction of pipelines through sensitive areas. Furthermore, large power transmission lines create the need for clearcuts through undeveloped areas.

One alternative, Mr. McMullen noted, would be construction of more, smaller power plants. This alternative, called distributed generation, would be beneficial in terms of power distribution. However, air quality could suffer if generators are powered by diesel engines. The least expensive, most desirable option is increasing efficiency.

More efficient lighting in residential and commercial applications would help tremendously. If every household in the United States switched to energy efficient light fixtures, we could save 70 billion kwhr and prevent the creation of 100 billion pounds of carbon dioxide per year – the equivalent of removing 10 million cars from the road. Compact fluorescent light bulbs start out being more expensive than their low-end incandescent counterparts. However, it takes only a short time (as little as a couple of years) for this sort of lighting to pay for itself. Over the life of a compact fluorescent bulb (approximately 10,000 hours), one compact fluorescent bulb will cost in the range of $45 to buy and operate at current electrical rates. By comparison, the 10 to 13 incandescent bulbs needed for the same application would cost over $90 to buy and operate. During winter’s short days and long nights, compact fluorescents are especially advantageous, when artificial lighting makes up a greater proportion of the home’s electrical demand. If a homeowner replaces a fourth of their lights in high-use areas with compact fluorescent bulbs, they will reduce their lighting bill by about 50 percent. Compact fluorescents have become more readily available in recent years, and can be purchased through mail-order catalogs or at large retail chains, hardware stores, and home improvement centers. Some utility providers may sell them at discounted prices or give rebates. A 23-watt fluorescent bulb produces about the same number of lumens (the unit of measure of lighting appliances) as a 100-watt incandescent bulb. Newer compact fluorescent bulbs use electronic ballasts, which start and regulate the light. These ballasts don’t emit the annoying hum created by the old electromagnetic ballasts. All compact fluorescents operate at a higher frequency than in the past, eliminating the flickering associated with them previously. They also produce a warmer, more pleasing color of light than they used to. Much of the inefficiency associated with incandescent bulbs stems from the way they transform more of the current they receive to heat than fluorescent bulbs do. Halogen bulbs are guilty of this too. Furthermore, compact fluorescents last 10 to 13 times longer than incandescents, and they don’t require special wiring or fixtures. Compact fluorescent bulbs are even available for use in 3-way fixtures and with dimmers. It should be noted that compact fluorescent bulbs are slightly larger than incandescent bulbs, so they don’t fit in every fixture. They also don’t typically work well in the cold, meaning special models are needed for outdoor applications.

Refrigeration is perhaps the highest area of demand of electricity in the home. Generally, the newer the refrigerator, the more efficient it is. This adage applies for other appliances as well. For example, properly sized Energy Star-labeled heating and cooling equipment can save consumers 10 to 40 percent on heating and cooling bills.  (The Energy Star program is a cooperative arrangement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy which promotes very energy-efficient products.  For more information, visit http://www.energystar.gov.) Examples of a wide variety of Energy Star-labeled appliances are available.

Use of renewable energy resources is very desirable. Widely distributed photovoltaic (solar) generation, Mr. McMullen noted, costs about 4 times as much as natural gas-generated electricity. As a consequence, utilities are not anxious to develop this resource. The cost to produce wind-generated power has come down substantially, and this resource is very promising. Not a lot of wind power plants are planned, however, primarily because utilities, like other bureaucracies, tend to stick with those things with which they are comfortable. One audience member asked why there has not been more emphasis on expansion of nuclear energy. Mr. McMullen explained that the biggest problem lies in the disposal of radioactive wastes generated by nuclear power plants. These plants have been required to store their own radioactive wastes in the past, but capacities are running out, and there is as yet no long-term storage facility. Even if and when a long-term storage facility exists, truck and rail transportation of radioactive wastes over long distances and through metropolitan areas in not an attractive option.

Mr. McMullen stated that, while the cost for renewable energy is going down and availability is increasing, demand for electricity is growing quickly due to higher populations and changes in lifestyle. He closed by stating that greater efficiency and more widespread development of renewable energy resources were the most desirable options available. He urged the audience to push for legislation which requires utilities to allow individuals and businesses which self-generate electricity through development of renewable sources to hook up to the grid. This arrangement, called net metering, has been discouraged by utilities through onerous contractual and liability requirements. He also urged the Sierra Club’s chapters and groups to work together to promote efficiency standards for homes and appliances.

The audience went away with a new appreciation of how electricity is produced, moved, and marketed.  However, there is a deeper message, not verbalized by Mr. McMullen, that we also should ponder.  We should keep in mind, as we utilize electricity generated through the burning of petroleum or coal, that we are making large withdrawals on our finite, fossil fuel bank account. The large numbers of us living this way, and the much larger number of people around the world for whom our lifestyle is a model, predicate that our account will be empty much sooner than later. The sooner we wake up to this reality, the sooner we will face that we must make adjustments to this lifestyle (for example, if we recognize that more "stuff" does not provide happiness or security, but better, closer relationships and community do) and explore ways to produce energy from resources which leave our account intact. Should we fail in these efforts, the penalty we and our descendants pay will be very steep indeed.

William Gresham, January 2001