This one's for all you aspiring visionairies:

Visionary Leaders with Purposes Are Not Easy to Replace. How Many Can You Name out There?
by: Idris Mootee
Many think that visionaries are not the kind of leaders who can take advantage of any short-term opportunities and solely focus on the big vision. That may not be the case, for those smart visionaries, they can create short terms opportunities from long term vision. . .

These Are Not Your Parent's CFLs!

Do not be fooled by my camera's automatic settings. The CFL example only looks darker because it was too bright and my camera toned it down. Take a close look at the Watt readings in the pictures to compare the difference in electricity between the single incandescent and four compact fluorescents.







And these are not your first generation CFLs:
1. They are instant on. (No more waiting 0.5-2 seconds.)
2. They are available in various color temperatures. (Note the difference between the two spiral options in the second picture. The one of the left is very close to the color of an incansecent.)
3. They do not flicker (actually they flicker 12,000+ times per second which is way too fast to be seen by even a humming bird. Which means no more headaches).
4. They still use 75% less electricity.
5. They still last 10 times longer than an incandescent.
6. They have less than half the mercury of the first generation CFLs.


If you are looking for these options and more be sure to choose an Energy Star rated product. They require the bulbs to prove their lamp life and reduce the mercury content, among other things.


Also if you have not read an earlier post about the mercury content in CFLs the short message is: because these bulbs use significantly less power (nation wide a large portion of this power is coal fired plants) less mercury is released into the environment than if an incandescent bulb was used (even is the worst case senario when the bulb ends up in a landfill instead of recycled). So as the Department of Energy says "Change a light. Change the world."

Another Reason To Go Electric

NW Natural to request natural gas rate increase.

So They Printed My Letter-to-the-Editor . . .

This is how they printed my letter. While I did change the format of the letter from the one I posted here, it will be very clear that they did some work of their own. Just don't read it too carefully or some of the sentences will not make any sense:

CFLs a good investment
Here is a more accurate perspective on CFLs, energy use and environmental conservation:
Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, requiring roughly 25 percent greater efficiency from light bulbs beginning in 2012. While some incandescent technology meets this standard, CFL lighting fits any standard light fixture and already exceeds the efficiency mark.
Unfortunately, misinformation about mercury content in CFLs has discouraged many people from using them. As conservation specialist for McMinnville Water & Light, I can tell you that using CFLs means less mercury released into the environment, not more.
A CFL bulb typically contains between 1.4 and 5 milligrams of mercury — not enough to cover the head of a pin. Said John Bachner, National Lighting Bureau, "Even in a small room, the impact on air quality (of a broken CFL) is well below danger levels established by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration."
Older thermometers typically contain 500 milligrams of mercury; mechanical thermostats typically contain 1,000 to 3,000 mg of mercury. The EPA estimates that Americans release 104 metric tons of mercury each year, mostly from coal-fired electrical power.
Since CFLs use 75 percent less electricity than an incandescent, replacing incandescents with CFLs means 75 percent less mercury released into the atmosphere. One CFL saves 4.5 mg of mercury from the atmosphere. The mercury vapor inside fluorescent light bulbs binds to the inside of the bulb, leaving an average of 0.4 mg of mercury free in the bulb. So, even when it goes to a landfill, there is 4.1 mg of mercury saved from the environment.
If mercury from CFLs is a dripping faucet, coal-fired power plants are a wide-open fire hydrant of mercury. Using CFLs saves hydro power here, which can be sold to offset coal power elsewhere.
Long life and low energy use make CFLs a good investment. For cleanup suggestions when a CFL bulb breaks, visit www.epa.gov/mercury.
Matt DeppeMcMinnville

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I guess the main ideas are still comunicated, they just happen to have taken out any resemblence of art or form or fun. Oh well.

Oregon and Solar Electric

Great article in the Oregonian today regarding solar electricity and Oregonians. Check it out HERE.

Conservation 101:

As a utility in a growing and thriving town we are faced with an ever increasingly pressing question: Where are we going to get more power? Whether it is from new homes and businesses moving in, or just the newest electronic gizmo getting plugged in, our city electric load is growing.

To date we have purchased all our power from Bonneville Power Administration. A large percentage of that power (about 80%) comes from large hydro. The good thing about this type of power is that it is very cheap. It was invested in a long time ago and many of them are still running very smoothly (granted that they have severely effected fish populations in many areas). The down side is that hydro power is finite. There is only so much water behind the dam, and not a drop more. So as our city grows we are forced to look at other options.

In our region solar electricity is not a viable option. An average home (1000 square feet w/ heat pump) owner would need to invest $100k in solar panels to offset their yearly electrical consumption. This would save them $630 dollars a year in electricity; providing a simple payback of 159 years. Even with robust tax incentives and local utility rebates it does not take an accountant to see that it does not pencil out on the money side.

Some utilities started to wonder if they might be able to convince people to use a little less electricity as a way of dealing with load growth. One way to bring down electrical demand is to raise the price. This has limited success and tends to hurt those with fixed incomes. And as the Carter administration proved (think ‘warm sweater and less heat’), as well as recent buzz about gas prices, people do not like to change their habits. So, what if we could get people to use less electricity and save money without asking them to sacrifice their comfort?

For example: if I could get my neighbor to insulate his 1,800 square foot home he might save as much as 12,000 kilowatt hours over the next year (estimated project cost of $7,000). That is equivalent to $80k worth of solar electricity and he would also save as much as 50% on his winter heating bills. From his standpoint it is a win-win. His bills go down, and he is likely to see a simple-payback in less than 5 years after the tax rebates and utility incentives.

As it turns out buying conservation (incenting people to be more efficient) is the cheapest resource a utility can find, by a factor of at least 10. In 2007 the Northwest funded enough conservation to power 146,000 homes or, to look at it another way, enough power to offset 50% of the load growth of that same year. By this evidence every power planning committee in the nation would be wise to pursue conservation as a portion of their portfolio. Many utilities also use this funding to help field high bill complaints as they can be great leads to inefficient homes.

Next Issue: So you think you hate CFLs?

Just when you thought. . .

there were no breakthroughs in the portable toilet business (other than catchy names like "Honey Bucket" & "Paradise Lua") some genius comes up with this:




That's right folks. It is a double decker urinal trougher. Services 12 semi-modest men, or 16 true troopers at one time. Life just does not get any better than this.

Oregon Brew Festival

Possilbly the Best Store Sign Ever

Sometimes I wonder how the small mom & pop stores survive in a big box world. Other times I really really wonder.

A CFL Detour to Conservation 101

Last week we passed out 19,500 CFL bulbs to our customers here in McMinnville, as a part of our conservation effort. Since then the local news paper has published two articles about CFLs with a strongly negative slant. Attached is my responce to the editor. I may also be using this to buy myself a little more time to finish the Energy 101 post:

http://www.newsregister.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=238072

http://www.newsregister.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=237176

Dear Editor,

CFLs are not a perfect light source.

As has been covered twice in the last week by your paper, they contain mercury. Mercury is an essential part of CFLs and a bulb typically contains between 1.4 and 5 milligrams.

In order to provide some context to this number: older thermometers typically contain 500 milligrams of mercury, and mechanical thermostats typically contain 1,000-3,000 mg of mercury (some of these were still available for purchase as late as December 2003).

The EPA estimates that the U.S. is responsible for the release of 104 metric tons of mercury each year. Most of these emissions come from coal-fired electrical power, and in a national energy market any hydro power we do not use in the NW can be sold to offset coal power elsewhere.

So when we say that CFLs use 75% less electricity than an incandescent, we are saying that 75% less mercury is released into the atmosphere when you use one instead of an incandescent; to the tune of 4.5 mg of mercury over the life of the CFL. Because the mercury vapor inside fluorescent light bulbs becomes bound to the inside of the light bulb as it is used, there is an average of 0.4 mg of mercury free in the bulb at the end of its life. This gives us a net total of 4.1 mg of mercury saved from the environment even in the worst case scenario where the bulb ends up in the landfill.

If all 290 million CFLs sold in 2007 were landfilled, they would add 0.1 percent to the U.S. mercury emission caused by humans. So harping on the mercury in CFLs is akin to complaining about a dripping sink when a fire hydrant is open in your front yard.

CFLs are a better environmental choice than incandescents.


Matt Deppe
B.A. Philosophy
McMinnville, OR

P.S. If a CFL falls in the forest and breaks, and no one is there to lick it, is anyone really hurt?

I ran out of room in the letter to discuss the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which mandates incandescents to be 25% more efficient then they are now by 2012 or so(mentions nothing about anything being illegal), and also has a list of exceptions longer than my arm that covers all specialty bulbs etc. I also have yet to find a legitimate and verifiable source that states that a broken CFL pose a serious health concern to anyone assuming they are not going to eat it.

Pictures on FaceBook

So I posted some pictures on my FaceBook page and thought you all might want to take a gander. Also feel free to add me as a friend if you are not already one of the luck winners.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=545300061

As a side note I will mail you one of my newly designed and freshly screen-printed recycled cloth napkins if you are the randomly chosen commenter to this post. To be selected, by Jackie, one week from today.

onward and (some random direction)

Term 3 is well upon me and the scramble has already begun. I am currently enrolled in the following classes: Fundamentals of Lighting, Energy Efficiency Methods, Air Conditioning System Analysis, and Physics 102 (heat transfer, magnetism, etc). So far the classes have succeeded in showing me how little I actually know and how many things I have been doing wrong. For instance: "bulbs" go in the ground and "lamps" go into fixtures making the entire thing a "luminaire" (so I am no longer allowed to talk about the compact florescent "bulb" I just put in my in-laws lamp).

I also now know what "Heating Degree Days" are, how to calculate them, and how to use them to determine how much heat you are losing out of the walls on your home over the course of a year. In case you are interested, that can then tell you if it would be worth blowing insulation into those walls.


On a similar note compact florescent bulbs will not save the world (neither will LEDs which put out less lumens per watt than florescent lamps), but if we all replaced one incandescent with one this country would save 5 billion dollars over the life of those bulbs.

Gotta go.

Cars are for losers

Looks as if the sun will be out today, but it has some serious fog cleanup to do before it starts feeling warm. This is a shot of part of LCC, where I go to school.

the great wall of '07

the early stages. believe it or not digging those post holes was the easiest part.
especially with one of these. . .

Brielle's dad and I had all 16 of them dug in under 25 minutes.


Yes, apparently it does snow in Eugene from time to time.
we have planted some clover and slow growing grass seed on this side. We'll see how it does. It has the benefit of staying green through most of the summer with little to no water.
our pretty tree and part of our temporary path. we think large wood chips will work well in the near future.
Our fence in all its glory.

To balance off the snow pictures I'll just say that it is sunny and 77 degrees Fahrenheit today (25 degrees Celsius). Jackie has been walking the perimeter for nearly 3 hours, while I am in here typing a paper on Oregon senate bill 1149. Yeah, you guessed it, I'm the jealous one today.

the great give-away

so we are moving and have some g-rate stuff. everything is for sale. . .

so you iowa childrens. i have a phone i used on midwest wireless. it is a NOKIA 6255i. Has a nice camera, plays radio and also mp3s. Don't know if they are still selling these but I got mine about a year ago.

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/6255i

bidding starts at 1 bottle of hobgoblin...

http://leatherapronrevival.blogspot.com/

Dear blog readers,

The rumor is true. I am cheating on you.

Love,
Matt

Stunned Silent

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend Bioneers. Which is a nation wide conference that stems from California. There are satelite conferences that gather all over the US and are fed the morning lecture through internet links, after which they break into there own workshops and such.

"Bioneers is a nonprofit organization that promotes practical environmental solutions and innovative social strategies for restoring the Earth and communities. BIONEERS OFFERS PRAGMATIC SOLUTIONS THAT HONOR THE LIVING WEB of the natural world as the most fertile source of inspiration and models. Everyone and everything around you shares this web of life." (Source: Bioneers.org)

And yes, as some of you are guessing, there are a fair amount of "crazies" at these conferences. What you may not know is that these "crazies", while they may or may not be Christians and may or may not believe that George Bush is the worst thing that ever happened to our politics, they have a passion and concern for this earth unlike anything I have ever seen in Christian circles.

On Friday night I heard Mary Wood (Founding Director of the U of O Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program) explain how we can, and should, treat the environment like a financial Trust and how legally there is validity in using Trust laws when arguing conservation. It was very stilling and made me wonder if I was taking any responcibility for what is being done to the land that I live in.

Saturday was even better. Joseph McCormick is a nationally recognized player in the goal of getting our hyper polarized parties back to the same tables. He has a goal of the "people" organizing and drafting a document that 80%+ of the american people can agree on and then slamming it down on the desks of the politicians and making them listen. That is over simplified and dramatized, but he really effected me and I am still processing what I heard from him.

There is more but I think I'll stop there. In short, you should attend Bioneers if you ever get a chance. And if the closest city for you to attend is Eugene. I promise that Brielle and I will make some room for you in our Airstream. Pictures to come. No promised about Jackie though.



P.S. For those of you that asked "Yes, the picture from my last post was from a website that sells rubber snakes. Snakes that they stuggested could be used to practice religious snake handling. As depicted in the picture."

P.P.S. No one asked.

Come on preacher man, shoot me with your poison arrow. . .

School update:

best overheard comment of the week: "ok, here is what you do: meet as many people in the class as you can, then figure out which ones are the smart ones. . ."

best new stat: LCC is the only school in the country that has an Energy Management program (there are approx. 6 that have Alt. Energy Technician programs)

best new fact: the earth is going to hell in a hand basket



So, I have survived two weeks of classes along with working whenever I can get the hours in. Last week that amounted to almost 25 hours. Not bad since I do say so myself.

I am currently enrolled in three classes: Into to Spreadsheets and Databases, Blueprint Reading, and Energy 101. Spreadsheets is exactly what you would expect with a little bit of personal agendas sprinkled on top (i.e. for some reason anything that appears unusual at first glance in Excel has something to do with Bill Gates and the price of tea in China).

Blueprint reading is taught by a very interest character that runs his own contracting/design business. He built and lives in an intentional community just north of town and runs a crew of five. This community has 10 houses on it that roughly face each other and share six acres of common land on the west end of the property. They have a few rules (i.e. no power lawn tools, no renters only owners, etc.) and were sold as they were built. Each house was constructed with as many natural materials as possible (so no vinyl or fiberglass shingles) and they all look very cool. I’ll try to get some pictures up here soon and explain a little more about it.

Energy 101 is about what I expected and a little more. We began by talking a little about how energy is produced today and who uses it. Then went on to talk about oil and how many people believe that we have reached “peak oil,” which means that human beings are currently taking oil out of the ground at the highest rate that will ever be possible. This spells trouble, assuming it is true, since our consumption (as well as foreign consumption) continues to increase. This can only mean that prices will begin to increase soon and never go back down. Yeah, don’t want to go into that now, but I imagine I will in the future. The amount of George Bush jokes is a little annoying. I wish we could talk a little more facts instead of assuming that everyone in the class despises him and “knows that the country would be better off without him”. I have written to the Oregon GOP to ask for more information about the energy plan and their disbelief in Global Warming, among other things, but have not heard anything back as of yet. I’ll keep you up to date.



Tallyhoe.

Ta-Da!!

So here is the desk. Tell me you love it.

back to school, back to school, jiggedy jig

Didn't really see it coming but here it is: Monday I go


It is true.

Lane Community College runs an Energy Management class. It is one of only 5 programs in the country. It is a two-year applied science degree, and while a handful of credits from my Bach degree do count it is not a continuation of Philosophy of Psychology. But then again what could someone possibly do without those degrees anyway?

The program has two veins. One focuses on renewable energy installation: from solar heating, to solar electricity, to wind power and rain water collection systems. The other focuses on accesing the efficiency of a buildings energy use. Most common in older or retro-fit buildings, but increasingly popular with new construction (read: mechanical engineering firms). The program has placed 100% of their students within a month of graduation for the last 10 years or more, all within a reasonable salary range. To top it all off: I would be working in a field that takes energy use and its effects very seriously.



Brielle and I have looked at the cost and feel that it is within our means to afford the classes. Brielle also hopes to take some classes within a year or two. And for less than $70 a credit hour it makes me wonder what Dordt did with all the money I gave/promied to them.



P.S. pictures of the desk are still on their way.