Al Gore has been in the news in recent weeks, with a right wing advocacy group playing “gotcha” over the issue of Gore’s personal energy budget. The group, which calls itself “Right Wing Cranks for Energy Efficiency” or something of the sort, reported that Gore’s energy use at his Tennessee compound tips the scales at 191,000 kilowatthours per year, something on the order of twelve times what is normal for an average Tennessee family.
Gore is not your average Tennessean, so I’m not sure why we should anticipate that he would be. In addition to being his residence, his ten-thousand-square-foot home most likely functions as a workplace for himself, for Mrs. Gore, and a staff of indeterminate size.
I don’t suppose that the Gore family is getting to that breathtaking figure simply by running extra loads of laundry. Presumably there is a retinue of people – employees, visitors, secret servicemen – helping Al use up those kilowatts on a rich assortment of late-night meetings, high-tech communications, and security electronics.
Anyway, it occurred to me that a closer look at Gore’s household energy strategy might help us better understand 21st century sustainability issues pertaining to household energy use. It also illuminates the immense opportunities that west Michigan businesses like alternative energy producer Mackinaw Power, and the State of Michigan as a whole, continue to miss out on as we take the slow road to energy innovation.
Counting Carbon, Erecting Windmills
I begin by assuming that the critics don’t really care a giblet about how much electricity it takes to run Gore’s life for him. The Right Wing Cranks for Energy Efficiency have never cared about energy efficiency before. And the only reason they care now is because they’d like to inoculate us all against the positive press accruing to Gore as a result of his Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth – just in case he runs for President again.
Gore’s compound released a statement saying that the former Vice President’s energy budget was “carbon neutral” because he is purchasing 100 percent alternative renewable power – wind and solar.
“Carbon neutral?”
I happen to know what this means because I’ve been thrashing around among energy issues for more than a decade. But how much does the average American understand about carbon neutrality, or how and where Al Gore gets his power?
The answer is “not much,” judging by the purple rain of web commentary I’ve viewed on the matter.
Put simply, as we burn fossil fuels like coal to make electricity, carbon stored in the ground for hundreds of millions of years gets released into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. There it acts as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat from the sun. Living a ‘carbon neutral’ lifestyle means taking steps to offset your net carbon emissions by, say, planting carbon-absorbing trees or investing in energy conservation.
I predict will all follow Gore’s lead and reduce our carbon output in the years to come. In order to understand better how we might go about it, let’s drop back about ten years and focus on another great devotee of alternative renewable energy: then-Texas Governor George W. Bush.
Texas is the leading producer of wind energy in the United States today, thanks to Gov. Bush’s commitment to wind power back in the 90’s. Under Bush’s leadership, Texas began installing wind turbines at breakneck speed. They were just in time to tap into the carbon neutrality movement; and Texans were willing to spend a little extra to be wind power consumers. Thus, as the politics, policy, and market aligned, selling Texas wind power became a breeze.
The story of Bush’s adventure into green power continues to attract national attention. Basically, Bush threw Texas into the column of states legislating the move toward alternative energy and, since then, wind power in the state has become a multibillion-dollar industry.
The wind energy business is booming in Texas. Last year, by some estimates, it surpassed California as the foremost producer of wind power in the United States. What’s more, Governor Bush became President Bush.
Waiting Around In Michigan
Is Gore buying wind power from Texas? I don’t know, but he is undoubtedly buying it from Texas, Colorado, or perhaps a combination of wind-producing states. But probably not from Michigan, since we don’t produce much and don’t have any to spare.
So let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Gore is buying it from Texas. There is certainly not a wire running from Gore’s fusebox to any Texas wind farm. Actually, like most Tennesseans, he’s probably getting his electrons from the Tennessee Valley Authority.
It doesn’t really matter, because as a holder of wind power certificates, he is part of the wind power market, and his consumption of electricity benefits wind power, not fossil fuels or hydropower.
Should he try to conserve more anyway? Probably. We all should.
In the future we will have to produce more alternative power in every region of the country, or clean electricity might not be available when and where we need it. We will need to get more wires connected physically to more wind farms. But this is one problem that virtually solves itself as time goes by, another example of marketplace magic.
And Michigan? The state has yet to enact a modern, meaningful energy policy that accounts for global warming, oil-driven terrorism, and other global mega trends. And that continues to slow the expansion and competitiveness of the alternative energy business.
A wry, slightly frustrated Rich VanderVeen, CEO of Lowell-based wind provider Mackinaw Power, noted recently that Michigan has added no new wind turbines since he installed his second turbine back in 2001.
Why is that? Are we smarter than the rest of the world? Smarter than Texas? How much are we gaining by all this wait-and-see?
Oh, sorry, it wasn’t Right Wing Cranks for Energy Efficiency who attacked Al Gore after all. It was the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. I wonder if the Cranks are a Michigan group.
Tom Leonard, the former executive director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council, is a writer and independent consultant living in Grand Rapids.Photos:
Mackinaw Wind Project - Mackinac, MI
Wind farm (photo courtesy of Leica Geosytems)
Wind turbine
Windmill
Photographs courtesy of Mackinaw Power