California utility companies are required to provide Power Content Labels to their customers letting them know the mix of power sources in the electricity that they use. Here in Alameda we have our own city owned utility, Alameda Power and Telecom, that provides a relatively clean mix of power. Other parts of California, including our immediate neighbours here in the SF bay area, don’t do so well.

The table below shows the projected 2008 mixes for PG&E and Alameda, alongside the 2007 mix for the whole state. As you can see, Alameda Power & Telecom is doing a pretty good job of using renewables (79% total when you include the large hydroelectric mix), whereas PG&E, one of the largest electricity utilities in the state, is still reliant on natural gas and nuclear power.

(more…)

Via wecansolveit.org:

Last week Al Gore laid down a challenge to the US: generate 100% of all the country’s electricity needs from renewable sources within a decade. At the same time, Bush and his oil friends were pushing to expand off shore drilling for oil and continue the addiction that has made them rich, and made the US into the huge source of pollution it is today. Everybody agrees that even were these new areas opened for drilling, they would not produce a single barrel of oil for at least a decade. And since they would cost a lot of money to develop (leases need to be acquired, exploration & surveying happens, drilling rigs need to be built), what makes this likely to reduce the cost of fossil fuels?

(more…)

The folks over at Green Upgrader found this video, and another one, that both make fun of the idea that coal energy is clean energy. The US has huge reserves of coal and generates over half its electricity by burning it. According to the folks at Coal is Dirty, that alone produces 10% of the global CO2 emissions. And that’s before you even look at the other emissions from burning coal (everything from sulphur dioxide to health-damaging mercury).

So, if coal is dirty, then what are the alternatives?

(more…)