Peeling the Onion - Going 100% Renewable



If your home or apartment has an electric stove, or an electric water heater, or an electric furnace, or and electric clothes dryer you're helping Portland with such a goal.  If you also own an electric vehicle and only use it, or walk, or bike that’s a help too.


If any of your appliances operate on natural gas, or propane, or fuel oil, you'd need to replace them with ones that operate on electricity.  That means using an electric water heater or a heat pump water heater.  Your oil or propane or natural gas furnace would need to be replaced most likely with a ducted heat pump or perhaps one or more thru-the-wall heat pumps.  Your gas range would need to be switched out for an electric one.  Same with the clothes dryer.

As for your vehicle, you’d need to retire your gas-powered (or diesel, or biofuel) car, even if it's a hybrid, for an EV.  However, keep in mind that your new EV still results in fossil fuel use.

 As is reported at this link, "Even if cars soon start running entirely on electricity or hydrogen, they'll still need 100 gallons or more of oil to make their plastic parts, such as seats, dashboards, bumpers, and engine components."  You could stop using a car and switch to using some combination of public transit that no longer uses fossil fuels, walking, or cycling.  As your tires wear out, they'd need to be replaced by ones made of some synthetic materials in a factory that has zero carbon emissions.  Plus, you'd want to pay attention to where it was manufactured.  If it is overseas, that means fossil fuels were burned getting it to you.

Do you own any kind of travel trailer?  Uh-oh.  That probably means you have a larger fossil fuel powered vehicle tha gets lower gas mileage.  You’d probably have to ditch the trailer.

If you wanted to be a purist about it, you'd also need to stop buying anything that comes n a plastic container, stop using Saran Wrap or aluminum foil type products.  You’ll need to stop purchasing anything made of plastic, plus replace your plastic re-usable grocery bags with cloth ones, not buy a new plastic shower curtain liner, and on and on.  Even if you shop at Whole Foods or New Seasons type stores, or a food co-op for that matter, you’d want to avoid buying anything that comes in a plastic bottle.  Even bulk shampoos and bulk foods are typically stored in large plastic containers rather than some metal or glass. 

Alternatively, you could avoid changing any of this by buying carbon offsets.  Of course, they don't stop your direct emissions of CO2, (e.g., air travel, cruises, driving your fossil-fuels powered car) or your portion of CO2 emissions you are indirectly responsible for due to the choices you make (e.g., buying products in plastic containers, purchasing anything that requires fossil fuel to produce or dispose of at any stage of the product cycle, from resource extraction to deposit in a landfill or recycling center).

Now, about those PV panels on your roof, what do they contain, how are they manufactured, and shipped?  And what about those wind turbines?  Many wind turbine manufacturers are located in Asia, with China leading the list.  As a result, if all the fossil fuel plants currently in existence in North America are shut down and replaced by PV solar and wind turbines plus a greatly expanded transmission system, until the manufacture of their components is also free of CO2 emissions, what we are essentially doing is shifting emissions from the developed world to the undeveloped world.

If we want to rely 100% renewably generated electricity shouldn’t we also want to make sure we achieve that goal and not worsen conditions in another part of the earth?

   image courtesy of cityholistic.com

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