Working against climate change as "energy assistance"? What are the real costs of renewables (& a bonus tool for wealthy Boulderites to amuse themselves with)? And, because it's Friday, Woden's Day.
Energy Outreach Colorado (EOC) helping people buy subscriptions to solar farms? Denver's affordability efforts include climate change and electrification?
I posted recently on Energy Outreach Colorado. As part of my research for that post, I found a curiosity on EOC's website.
EOC, an organization set up to help people pay for energy will help you get a subscription to a solar farm if you're too poor to get it.
Let me back up a step here and walk through some things in case you're not familiar with the terms. What is a solar farm (garden)?
If you wanted to have a hand in adding solar to our grid but did not have the roof/land space (say you rent a second floor apartment in a 5 story building. You can buy shares in a solar farm. Someone has an array somewhere and you can buy your way in.
Just like if you had solar panels on your home, you could get credits on your electric bill (presumably in the proportion to the total number of shares in the garden you held) for the generation.
What if you had a low enough income to qualify for assistance from EOC--and thus couldn't buy shares in a solar garden--but you still wanted to get solar discounts on your bill? You could get shares donated to you through the EOC and thus get the credit from the solar garden applied to your electric bill. Screenshot 1 has the details and comes from the first link below.
I have to admit that this feels weird to me (thus the label "curiosity" above), but if this is how someone wants to get assistance on their electric bill and someone else pays for then donates the subscription, God bless. That is, I don't think I have a problem.
Now, delving further into EOC's site I came across something I DO think I disagree with. I want to contrast two different programs. One is EOC's Colorado’s Affordable Residential Energy (CARE) program and the other is Denver's Healthy Homes Program (HHP). They are linked second and third below respectively.
To give you an overview of what I mean, take a look at screenshot 2 which highlights an important difference between the two.
Did you catch it? Both nominally are there to help people with limited means to improve their homes, but only Denver's program states climate change as a goal.
As such, quoting the HHP website, Denver will help you with the following: "The scope of work may include air quality improvements, solar subscriptions, LED light bulbs, Energy Star refrigerators, air sealing, insulation, mechanical systems replacement/tune-up, electrification measures, and more."
Yes. Denver will help pay for you to electrify your home if you want to and don't have the funds.
Let's talk reasonable here.
I'm perfectly fine with using assistance monies to help people make their homes more energy efficient a la CARE or even HHP. It is just as valid to offer money to pay a bill as it is to offer help to make the consumption (and thus the bill) less.
Frankly, I'm even okay with helping someone to trade a 30 year old gas stove for a new electric one for the same reason as above: if it lowers the overall bill, it is assistance.
What I have to roll my eyes at is the idea that somehow we can help others keep their homes comfortable by fighting climate change. People that need energy assistance need help heating in the winter and keeping the lights on RIGHT NOW. They don't need climate righteousness or speculative benefits that might (maybe) come in 30 years.
And while I'm not sure that this is what HHP means by the vague term "electrification", if they mean replacing reasonably efficient gas water and home heating appliances with the electric versions, that is dumb. The amount of money paid by an assistance organization for heat pumps or electric water heaters vs. the return in terms of affordability is beyond the bounds of reasonable.
https://www.energyoutreach.org/community-solar/
https://www.energyoutreach.org/care/
https://www.energyoutreach.org/healthy-homes/
What are the real costs of renewables?
The video below is a good one to watch because it details something probably already knew, even if you didn't know it: there's nothing free in this world and yes, Gov Polis, that includes energy from wind and solar.
No, they're not automatically cheaper, not if you do a true apples to apples comparison.
Focus in on about the 7:05 mark for a discussion of why that goes into some detail. I will leave it to you to watch, but I can excerpt a couple of big points here.
One of the main selling points used with renewables is the so-called levelized cost of energy. That is, you add up the entire lifetime cost of a particular energy generation method and divide by the total expected lifetime energy produced.
For renewables (particularly if you assume that fossil fuel costs go up and up and up) this might generally be less and therefore advocates will say renewables are cheaper.
There is a detail, an important detail, missed here however. Energy might have different values at different times and in different areas. If you have solar as a generation method and have none at night (with no storage) and you need that power to run ovens and heaters, how much is that solar worth then?
I.e. a simple comparison of lifetime price leaves out a lot of detail.
Secondly, you need to pay careful attention to detail in the way the modeling is done. I've written a fair bit in the past about how little energy density there is for renewables compared to sources like gas, coal, and nuclear.
If we are to meet our demand, even ignoring the issue of storage, we'll need a lot (A LOT) of renewables. More stuff = more cost = higher energy prices.
But we can't say that part out loud though, so a trick is to magically lower demand. Somehow with new building codes (and even more ironically by driving EV's and electrifying homes) we'll drop a horribly unrealistic amount of demand (the number of 25% drop is quoted in the video) and need fewer renewables.
Maybe we just need to believe, like with Tinkerbell.
Nothing is free, there is no choice without consequence. Watch the video below so you can pick up some things to put in your pocket for later.
Related: an online tool for wealthy Boulderites to amuse themselves with.
Gov Polis recently attended a press conference touting a new online tool by Google which helps people find what kinds of discounts and subsidies they can get or electrifying their home. See the links below for an article and the calculator.
I tried and tried and tried but couldn't seem to get the calculator to tell me how much of my tax money is being used to subsidize these things.
Nor could I get it to tell me how much electrification would cost. I mean, I get it that I might have $5000 in incentives, but will I spend $6000? $12000? $30000?
Maybe it's a glitch. Or maybe this whole thing is a toy for wealthy Boulderites to amuse themselves with.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/04/12/how-much-money-can-you-save-on-home-electrification-projects-colorado-has-a-new-tool-to-add-up-incentives/
https://homes.rewiringamerica.org/calculator
What mnemonic do you use? Mine is Wed Nes Day.
Well, it's that time of the week again. Time for something for fun, not related to politics.
It's going to be the last post til Tuesday. Work and gardening are taking lots of my time and attention just now. Not going away, just taking a few days off.
I was listening to an audiobook recently and the (painfully-British) reader kept pronouncing Wednesday as Wed En's Day.
This, as opposed to our more modern corruptions like Weds Day or Wends Day is probably more closely related to the actual pronunciation from when the word was coined.
You see, Wednesday is named for the God Woden (or Oden) and then later Mercury's Day got folded in. I took a screenshot of the little snippet on etymology and attached. If you want more on the subject, I also linked to a little online article below.
So the pronunciation above (which I tried my best to render faithfully), the one that implies a possessive about the day, is accurate.
As for the spelling, I put my own favorite mnemonic above, the same one I have used since grade school (along with you only want to go through the desert once, but you could always find room for two desserts). What about you? Use a different memory device or got one for a particular spelling you like? Feel free to share.
Have a good Friday. Back at it next Tuesday!