The Beer-erator solution
City Water Light & Power is making major investments in energy efficiency and one of their first new efforts is the Refrigerator Roundup program. In the first year since the program launched they recycled over 1,000 inefficient refrigerators taken off the grid, and helped bring green jobs to Springfield.
Today's SJR article explains the term for that extra, energy hogging fridge in the garage or basement.
“We call them ‘beer-erators’ in the industry,” Bill Mills, manager of energy services for CWLP, said Monday. “People put their sodas and beer in there, or the Thanksgiving turkey, but they don’t realize how expensive they are,”
A study conducted for CWLP by RLW Analytics identified old refrigerators as one of the areas with the greatest potential for reducing residential energy use. Since the program started, it expanded to pick up old window air conditioning units for free, without a rebate.
The CEO of Appliance Recycling Centers of America, Jack Cameron, said the refrigerator programs are why his company opened a new facility in Springfield. His remarks when the facility was announced point to the potential for the area's economic growth in green jobs.
"We believe that locating our new facility in central Illinois makes good strategic sense for pursuing other recycling opportunities throughout the region. With the heightened public interest in conserving energy and combating global climate change, we believe that ARCA's Springfield operation is positioned to capitalize on the growing need for environmentally sound appliance recycling services in the Midwest."
I asked the CWLP energy services office about the amount of climate-changing CO2 reduced by the program. They report that the first year took enough old refrigerators off the grid to avoid 910 annual tons of CO2.
They project that a three year pilot program of 3,600 units will have lifecycle savings (assumes a 10 year average life expectancy on the units collected and de-manufactured) of:
MHW savings = 26,100; equivalent to energy supplied to approximately 2,175 homes for one year. Tons of CO2 avoided = 24,665.
Springfield is proving the naysayers wrong. Yes, we can reduce CO2 while creating new jobs and helping people save on energy bills. Energy efficiency doesn't sound sexy but it's an absolutely essential part of confronting climate change.
My thoughts about the critical Illinois Times column on the same program were getting long so I made that a separate post.
Comments
It is definately essential to conserve energy that is produced using polluting technologies.
In fact, according the new National Academy of Sciences study http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12794#toc that was issued Monday, burning fossil fuels costs the United States about $120 billion a year in health costs, mostly because of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution.
The damages are caused almost equally by coal and oil, according to the study, which was ordered by Congress. The study set out to measure the costs not incorporated into the price of a kilowatt-hour or a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel.
It's time to include in the discussion the FULL, REAL cost of these technologies especially since taxpayers end up forking over billions of collective dollars to pay for energy companies clean-up/ remediation. Free markets may be profitable, but it's only because they don't have to be responsible for their toxic wastes. In less than 150 years we have allowed most the ground and sea water to be polluted, and much of the air. In the U.S., we can thank our corporate sponsor, the Supreme Court, for ensuring corporations have more rights than citizens. It's time for Lady Justice to take off her blindfold.
Posted by: beth adams | October 22, 2009 2:11 PM