My Note to Oprah...

On why green is good and really green is really better...

You know Earth Day is back in style when Oprah goes green. And green she went in a recent show, from her outfit right down to a promise to use fewer napkins to generate less waste. The show focused on easy every-day things anyone can do to start living a a more environmentally-friendly life: Switch to biodegradable cleaning products. Recycle whenever possible. Replace old light bulbs with long-lasting, energy-miser compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). And plug appliances into smart power strips to cut off electricity to them when not in use (It turns out “off’” doesn’t mean what you think it means when it comes to the electricity. But having a constant stream of “phantom” or “stealth” power coming out the outlet is also why you can tap into it immediately to turn on the toaster with a flick of the switch).

All of these are good ideas. But like a lot ideas crowding under the green banner these days, there’s often a little more to the story. Although using smart power strips will lower your electric bill, they won’t make much of a dent in curbing power plant greenhouse gas emissions because the problem isn’t at the outlet, it’s at the smokestack. Power plants are designed to generate more electricity than customers use to make sure there is always enough -- otherwise it’s the risk of rolling brown-outs and black-outs.

Likewise, although the EPA’s boast that if each American household were to replace just one incandescent bulb with a CFL, it would save the equivalent of 800 million car emissions, in reality probably not. Power companies generate power based on predicted demand and a change of one bulb per household won’t significantly alter those predictions. Also, it is a little fuzzy what’s meant by 800 million car emissions: Emissions for a day? A year? What kind of mileage are these cars getting? Are we talking Hummers or hybrids?

Sadly, Vice-President Cheney had a point when he sneered that conservation was a “personal virtue.” To make it a public virtue means change on a public scale: for starters, better fuel economy standards and cleaner power plants. It means policy shifts to make it easier for home-owners to connect solar panels to the electric grid.

“If Mother Earth is to be saved, Earth’s mothers are the ones who are going to make it happen.”

It means increasing investment in clean distributed power systems and developing creative public transportation options that allow suburbanites to drive less.

Yet even if the green details are a little less shiny than advertised, Oprah’s show was an unabashed good thing. In one glossy Oprah-smooth hour, the discussion went mainstream and brought women as a group into the debate -- which could do more to move things forward more quickly than anything even the most prestigious of think-tanks, smartest of policy wonks, or most dedicated of activists has been able to pull off over the last 20 years. If Mother Earth is to be saved, Earth’s mothers are the ones who are going to make it happen. Although Oprah’s audience goes beyond that group, that group is particularly wired to think about the future and do whatever they can to make sure it’s a good one.

Now the trick is to focus their collective passion and influence beyond recyclable 100% cotton grocery bags (buy an “O” grocery bag from the Oprah boutique for $9.50...) and napkin conservation to see the bigger picture and push for the kinds of changes that will actually make their best hopes for their children possible.

So I posted. I joined the Oprah website and found the right message board, and somewhere between the almost 1,000 messages (so far) of thinly disguised promotions for Shaklee products, odes to Earth Day, and tales of green solidarity…

April 22, 2007

My Note to Oprah...

germtales...

Dear Oprah,

Although all the suggestions on the show were good, many of them don't go nearly far enough, or really do what you think they're going to do. For example, although using power strips and CFL bulbs will certainly reduce a home's energy use and monthly bill, they actually won't do much to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. If the power coming into the home was generated by a coal-burning power plant, the big problem is at the smoke stack, not the outlet. And since electricity isn't fungible -- an industry term that means you can't easily store it -- the electric company has to produce more than enough power to cover the expected load. Given the current set up, the electricity will be generated whether or not anyone turns on the lights. Coal-generated power is particularly inefficient. About half the energy is lost as heat, and another 7 to 10 percent in transmission over powerlines.

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, there are two alternatives:

1) Generate greener power. For example, wind power. While a CFL is a laudable power-miser, if wind power were the source of energy, ALL light bulbs would be green. The stat about each household changing to one CFL saving the emissions equivalent of of nearly a million cars -- which is on the EPA's website -- is misleading. If light bulbs -- and toasters, coffeemakers, hair-dryers and tv's -- were powered by a green power source, the emissions would drop to zero. Much better!

2) Change the paradigm: Instead of a power inefficiently generated by central power plants, mix in what the experts call "Distributed Power" (DP) (aka "Distributed Generation”). For example, if every building had solar panels that were able to interconnect to the grid (IEEE, "the" electricians group, has been working on standards for this), not only would it help people save money (once the installation costs were recouped), but excess power could be sold back to and delivered to the grid. This is especially important during "peak" power demand (hot summer days when everyone's got the AC on). Power companies have to build plants designed to accommodate peak demand. A DP paradigm means we don't need as many central power plants. Also, DP systems (which can be co-generation gas-powered units delivering power AND heat), are much, much, much more efficient since the 7 to 10 percent lost over transmission lines isn't lost.

Re CFL's: Great idea, but...Each bulb has a little bit of mercury in it, and with gazillions of bulbs coming online, disposal looms as a big, big issue. You can't throw them out with the regular garbage, nor the regular recycle. Municipalities don't know how to handle them, and retailers have been slow stepping up to the plate (Hello, Wal-Mart?). Everybody (EPA, all the green groups) know this is an issue, but it's been down-played. It needs to be addressed soonest.

Re Ethanol: Although your show didn't focus on fuel, this is another example of "h'mmmm, maybe not so green after all..." Beyond all the issues of production (fossil-fuel based fertilizers, etc.), ethanol tail pipe emissions for CO2, a greenhouse gas, are virtually identical to gasoline. Since ethanol has only 2/3s the energy ooomph of gasoline per unit of measurement, it takes about 1.5 gallons of ethanol to equal the energy generated in 1 gallon of gas. According to the EPA, burning 1 gallon of gas generates 19.6 pounds of CO2. According to researchers at Argonne Lab, burning 1.5 gallons of ethanol generates 18.9 pounds. As for the argument that ethanol is "carbon-neutral" because the plants used to make the fuel stored carbon while they where growing, the "fossils" in fossil fuels were photosynthesizing, CO2 absorbing plants and algae, too. The only difference is how long the CO2 has remained stored.

Bottom line: We need to think much more creatively. I love the story of my friend who works in downtown DC, but lives in Virginia. She used to drive in every day, but now that they've built a new, safe, cheap garage at a Metro stop 3 miles from her home, she drives 6 miles a day instead of 30+. She didn't have to invest in a new car. She saves money on gas. And in terms of the planet, she's cut her greenhouse gas emissions from driving by over half. Overnight. Who would have thought a parking lot could be green?

Right now cars are a necessity for how we've designed our world. How can we come up with ways so that we can drive less?

Likewise, I am very excited about the potential of micro-fuel cells. These are going to start showing up in cell phones and computers first -- there are already a few out there. In five years, experts predict 80 million micro fuel cells will be in use. Not only will this mean a laptop will be able hold a charge for 100 hours (outlet liberation!), but we'll have a whole new source of distributed power (DP). While most micro fuel cells now are powered by methanol, there's no reason they couldn't eventually be powered by, say, hydrogen generated using wind power. Green, greener, greenest. DARPA, the military's R&D arm, has been working on creating micro fuel cells the size of a credit card. One day, we'll buy them by the 20 pack at Walgreen's to power all kinds of things, perhaps even small home appliances and lighting. Now that's DP! And remember, the more DP, the fewer central power plants you need, the less CO2 spewing out of smokestacks.

There are a lot of really visionary thinkers out there, from Dean Kamen (who invented the Segway -- I actually interviewed him once...) to Amory Lovins (wrote about him for BusinessWeek...). But to me, the most exciting development will be when we kick the conversation into the every day. When we as citizens know what to ask for (smartly placed parking lots, more mass transit options, higher mileage standards for cars, interconnection standards so solar can be plug'n'play -- btw, Harpo Studios has got a great roof for solar).

I know this probably comes off as techy and a bit dull, but to make a substantive difference, we need to figure out ways to make it approachable, and framed in such a way that people can articulate the kinds of changes they want to see happen.

Best,

Janet A. Ginsburg