Electricity, Carbon Dioxide and What It Means
How Electricity Is Produced
The electricity used to power your home can be produced in a number of different ways, but the final result is the same - the kilowatts used to run your lights, air conditioning, oven, computer, etc. come to your house over transmission lines. All power plants need an energy source to produce electricity. Coal, natural gas, nuclear reactors, methane gas from landfills, wind, water and solar energy can all provide energy with which to produce electricity.
The EPA Power Profiler can offer further information about the power mix in your region. Each source has advantages and disadvantages in terms of the amount of electricity produced and the harm caused to the environment by the plants themselves and the procurement of the energy source. By learning about the positive and negative aspects of each type of power production, you can make choices based on your individual beliefs and concerns.
Reading Your Electric Bill
Your bill is comprised of three charges: your demand charge, your Transmission Distribution Service Provider (TDSP) charge and taxes. Your demand charge is the amount of kilowatt hours you use during a billing cycle times the price that you are paying for your power. Your TDSP charge is a charge that your distribution company charges every homeowner for delivering power to your home.
Carbon Off-Setting
Calculate your personal impact in terms of carbon dioxide emissions using the American Forests calculator. Then come into a Current Energy store to purchase trees to be planted by American Forests.
When we make comparisons between saving electricity and preventing carbon dioxide emissions, we are using averages provided by the EPA and other sources of how much our national power production results in emissions. The national average emissions factor for electricity is 1.37 pounds carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour.
Another way to look at the impact of electricity production is to compare it to what trees can absorb. Just like humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, trees use carbon dioxide as their source of respiration and produce oxygen. For that reason, trees are a useful way of comparing our resource usage versus what the environment can absorb. There are organizations around the world that plant trees both for erosion and re-forestation purposes, but also as a way of re-absorbing the carbon dioxide that is produced by us when we burn fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas, are burned in many different settings. Primarily, power plants burn them to produce electricity; we burn them in our homes to produce heat, and in our cars and airplanes to move around. Some people and organizations use carbon dioxide emission calculators to determine what amount of carbon dioxide emissions they are responsible for, based on their electricity, gas and travel patterns. They then offset that carbon dioxide production by paying for an organization to plant the number of trees that it would take to re-absorb that amount of carbon dioxide.
This type of comparison is a useful tool for making estimates of what your impact is on the world both in a negative sense with the emissions and a positive sense when you reduce your fossil fuel usage and plant trees. Current Energy uses the following comparisons for making such estimates, which we derived from the EPA and Alliance to Save Energy websites:
Adding one car to the road results in approximately 11,450 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year. Adding one SUV to the road results in approximately 16,035 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
You would need to plant one acre of trees to absorb 7,333 pounds of carbon dioxide in one year. For example, if your annual emissions of carbon dioxide are 11,450 pounds, you would need to plant one and half acres of trees to absorb that amount.
The American Forests calculator can help you determine how many trees you would need to plant to offset your carbon dioxide output.
