Flaring a new natural gas
well in Texas. Starting Point: Natural Gas

• American average:
       1,000 therms/household/year
• 90% reduction goal:
       100 therms/household/year

Another easy calculation from our utility bills:

• Our usage in the last 12 months:
       211 therms, or 21% of the average American

We only use natural gas for heating, which means only in the winter. We keep our thermostat at 68 degrees F in the winter. Aside from lowering the thermostat, the best way to reduce heating energy is to insulate and weatherize. With our vaulted ceilings and high windows we do obtain some passive solar heat during sunny days, but when it’s cloudy or stormy all the heat just rises and dissapates through the windows. Halfway through last winter I cobbled up ’storm windows’ out of clear garbage bags for our high windows and it seemed to make a huge difference in how warm it felt inside. However, we can’t discern any difference between our usage before and after putting up the plastic when looking at the average monthly temperatures and our utility bill.

Unfortunately, this turns out to be a very complicated question. There are just too many variables (e.g. sunny vs. overcast, windyness, whether we remember to open shades during the day, and probably a lot more I can’t think of right now). Also, average monthly temperature is essentially useless for an analysis of this type - if half of the month is extrememly cold and half extremely warm the average monthly temperature will be the same as a completely moderate month, but gas usage will be quite different. We don’t have the data necessary to determine which variables are relevant and to do the analysis necessary to figure out whether the storm windows actually helped reduce our natural gas consumption.

However, on a really cold day you can stand next to our windows and feel the cold pouring off the windows into the room. Putting up the plastic helped a lot with this, so I think I have good reason to believe that the plastic is helping.

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There are some great
warning signs out there. Starting Point: Electricity

• American average: 11,000 kilowatt hours/household/year
• 90% reduction goal: 1,100 kwh/household/year

This was an easy calculation - I just got out our old utility bills and added up the kilowatt hours we used from July 2006 - June 2007.

• Use during the last 12 months: 7,201 kilowatt hours, or 65% of the average American household

The Problem
I’m pretty sure this is our highest consumption category. We have an electric oven, central air conditioning, and a fair amount of electronics (Shaun is a computer programmer). We usually set the air conditioning to 80°F and switch to open windows at night when it gets cool, but our condo bakes in the sun - we have high windows and vaulted ceilings, which means no attic or upper floor to act as a secondary barrier to heat accumulation. Electric bicycles will also add a bit to our load from now on. I don’t think we’ll be able to reduce our actual consumption in this category by very much - being originally from Alaska, air conditioning is life.

The (Partial) Solution
Instead of immediately trying to drastically cut our actual electricity usage, I signed up for Xcel Energy’s Windsource program to use wind power rather than electricity generated by fossil fuels. It will only cost an extra $6.27 or so per month, and the 90% Project rules consider wind energy to be 1/4 as emission-producing as other forms of electricity. The US Dept of Energy has a list of similar projects throughout the US. (Please leave a comment if you switch to renewable power!)

If we had used wind power last year, we would have produced only 16% of the emissions of the average American. And all without changing our habits one bit.

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The 90% Emission Reduction Project divides personal emissions into 7 categories: gasoline, electricity, other heating and cooking energy (natural gas, wood or oil), garbage, water, consumer goods, and food. I have the impression that we are doing fairly well in a few categories, but not too great in a couple. We’ll see how it looks as I gather the actual numbers for our current usage.

Personal monthly spending on gasoline Starting Point: Gasoline

• American average: 500 gallons/person/year
• Goal for our 2 person household: 100 gallons/year

We don’t keep track of the number of gallons purchased or miles driven, but we do keep pretty good track of our finances. We spent $600.47 on gas from July 2006 - June 2007. I used a chart of historical gas prices in Colorado to estimate the gas price on each day we purchased gas, and divided the price/gallon by the amount we paid in order to find the number of gallons we purchased each time. Based on this estimate of gallons purchased in the last year, we used roughly 228 gallons. We also take public transit fairly regularly: about 1.5 18-mile round trip rides per week. The 90% Project rules calculate gasoline for public transit at 100 miles/gallon. That’s an additional 14 gallons.

• Our consumption in the last 12 months: 242 gallons of gasoline, or 24% of the average American

Based on this calculation, we are already doing pretty well in this category. As Shaun has blogged, we are trying to go carless by getting electric bikes. We just recently got me a bike (pawn shops are great!) and assembled the eBike kit - this required a couple 90-mile car trips to 21 Wheels in Boulder to buy the kit and trade in a faulty part. 90-mile car trips are not so good for reducing our emissions, but now we’re finally able to use both of our bikes.

We’ve started to get routines established (last night we discovered that I absolutely require a headlight: my night vision is abysmal) and have begun trying to sell our car - soon we will walk, bike, or take public transit everywhere. Obviously, using electric bikes that require charging will make our electricity usage increase, but I’ll talk about that next time.

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Well we went and did it. Our car is up for sale… http://denver.craigslist.org/car/372425044.html

Over the last few weeks we’ve “tried not to use the car” which was an utter failure. We did succeed in proving that everything we have to do in day to day life is acceptably convenient to do on a bike, but the extra step to not using the car when you have one proved to be too much.

Answer: if you don’t have a car you can’t use it.

Anyone want to buy a car?

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The detergent fits just right. I re-adjusted my back-rack and we had another go at a trip to costco. The baskets worked perfectly. We returned triumphantly with two gallons of detergent and some cherries (mmmm, cherries) after about an hour’s round trip. The only annoying thing was a 600 foot stretch where there is no sidewalk. We will try a different route next time.

So it turns out that motorized bikes of any kind are not allowed on the Denver public transit system…

http://www.rtd-denver.com/SpecialRides/B_n_Ride/index.html

Only two-wheeled adult and children’s bikes fit on the bus bike racks. Motorized bikes are not allowed on any bike rack, inside the baggage bins, or inside light rail cars.

I’m wondering if this rule was made for gasoline powered bicycles — It would be understandable that they don’t want people bringing explosive stuff onto light rail cars. It is a bit of a bummer that our electric bikes aren’t allowed, but actually it isn’t that bad.

We have taken a few trips up the light rail to pick up parts for our laundromat from our equipment distributor and we have decided that we actually prefer the non-electric bike when using public transit anyway. This is simply because the non-electric bike is 50 lbs lighter and is easier to get on and off the train car (three very steep steps up). Luckily for us the places we want to go are within a block of a light-rail station, so the electric assistance isn’t really needed even though we are buying some heavy stuff (powdered detergent by the case).

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Greetings from yet another Sundrops blogger. Erin did such a good job calculating our business’s footprint, I thought it would be a good idea to see where we stand personally. Since Hig and Erin are hiking 4,000 miles through the wilderness for the next 9 months, their footprint is probably pretty small. Shaun and I have decided to calculate our own footprint in the spirt of the [rather poorly named] Riot For Austerity 90% Emissions Reduction Project started by Miranda and Sharon.



The United States has the highest CO2 per capita* According to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: In order to reduce global CO2 by the necessary 60% by 2050 Americans would have to reduce emissions by 90% on average to do our part. Americans are due for such a large cut-back because we use so much more energy than everyone else, see the figure at the left. It is argued by some that even 90% isn’t enough.

The first step is to figure out where we stand relative to the average American. I’ll let you know what we find out.

*Graph taken from here.

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Take my first trip to Costco on a bike and buy some badly needed supplies for our laundromat. We needed a bunch of snacks and candy for the vending machine, and some detergent (heavy!).
Folding Baskets (left one: folded)
In order to haul things, we purchased some panniers (it’s french-talk for saddle-bags). We took a while looking at different bicycle back-tire-racks and have some useful things to say about them.

Most back-racks come with a weight rating: “good up to 40 lbs”. I found that these weight ratings are pretty much useless (it’s all trying-not-to-get-sued). It seems to be much more effective to just look at the racks with your eyes, and to judge their relative strength. Heck, pick them up and give em a good flex — can they take it? It’s not hard to say things like: racks with three legs can take more weight then racks with one. Racks with big thick legs can take more weight then racks with little skinny ones. Racks with no legs at all can’t take as much weight. In general the racks can take a lot more then they say they can, especially when you pick a burly one like I did. Load that thing up. Whats the worst that can happen? Answer: you will drop your groceries on the ground and bend your rack (in the grand scheme of things: not so bad). Tip: Don’t ride in traffic when load-testing new racks.

Note: I’m not saying any of those linked racks are good and/or bad. I have never had my hands on any of them. Make your own decisions.

It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, but it’s ok as it will work next time. It turns out it takes 30 minutes to get to Costco from where I live. I was delighted that it was so short a trip. Once there I was chanting to myself in my head: “don’t buy too much stuff” over and over again.

I bought too much stuff.

Passers-by were getting quite a lot of entertainment watching me strap stuff to the bike. I could hear each and every one thinking: “there is no way that’s all going to fit”. It did all fit — barely. Extensive bungee-cordage was required and the bike was really really top-heavy. I could have ridden it home, but I would have had to go very slowly. Top heavy bikes aren’t that bad when you are riding them, but they are impossible to handle when you are not sitting on them. Keeping a super-top-heavy bike from flipping over when you are walking it is quite difficult and requires lots of upper body strength to recover from a balance-whoops.
Unfortunately I didn’t notice that I installed the rack a bit off center (it leans to the left). When I loaded the bike down (sorry I don’t have a picture) the rack held up nicely under the weight, but it did settle a little and it rubbed on the back tire. There was absolutely no way the kickstand was going to manage that much top-heavy weight on the bike, so I couldn’t really let go of the bike to fix it. I ended up just giving up and calling my wife Tawny (who is going to start writing posts for this blog soon by the way) to come pick me up in the car.

I’m confident that once I get the rack centered properly that my next attempt will be a success. I’ll let you know.

PS: I have a new cell phone with a camera in it. I’ll not miss any more good pictures

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