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Energy-wasting Britons rank top for failing to see the light
James Randerson and David Adam, The Guardian
Britons are the worst energy wasters in Europe, according to a survey of 5,000 people across the continent. The study found UK citizens admitting to 32 energy-wasting actions a week on average, more than twice as many as the most efficient citizens polled, the Germans.
The country’s most wasteful habit, according to the Energy Saving Trust, an independent consumer advisory group, is leaving electrical devices on standby, something 71% of Britons admitted to doing in the survey.
Unless energy habits change, the report predicts that by 2010 we will have wasted £11bn and emitted 43m tonnes of carbon dioxide unnecessarily, equivalent to the emissions from more than 7m homes.
(23 Oct 2006)
Executives: Electrical worries looming
Martin Rosenberg, Denver Post
Despite a few nasty pockets of outages, the country managed to weather the summer with no large-scale, prolonged blackouts similar to the epic Northeast power failure of three years ago.
We likely will not be so lucky in years to come, say many of the executives responsible for producing electricity for America.
When the country thinks about its energy problems, it often focuses on our dependence on foreign oil and the recent high prices of gasoline. Petroleum provides 40 percent of our energy and is particularly vulnerable to geopolitical swings in unstable regions of the world.
But utility executives worry that Americans are failing to appreciate another aspect of the energy picture, namely that the power plants using coal, natural gas and nuclear power to produce electricity may soon not meet our growing needs.
“My biggest fear is that we are running out of generation,” said Michael G. Morris, chairman and chief executive of American Electric Power, with 5 million customers in 11 states. “That is an issue that the average person doesn’t know a thing about. When we tell corporate America, they say, ‘What do you mean you’re running out of power?”‘
(22 Oct 2006)
Alaskans face prospect of no heat
ALEX deMARBAN, Anchorage Daily News
A warning by rural Alaska’s largest electric utility that it will pull the plug on delinquent customers means hundreds of villagers could face a cold winter.
Unpaid electric bills have mounted the last four years because rising costs have hammered Bush residents financially, said Meera Kohler, president and chief executive of Alaska Village Electric Cooperative.
About 380 customers, including more than 300 residential clients, owed $900,000 at the beginning of the summer, a record amount for the 38-year-old nonprofit, she said.
(16 Oct 2006)
Dark Days Ahead
Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t
One of the biggest failures of George W. Bush’s presidency has been his administration’s total disregard of the nation’s power infrastructure – an issue that is a larger threat to homeland security than the impending attack on US soil by al Qaeda-type terrorists for which we’ve been issued murky warnings over the years.
On Monday, the North American Electric Reliability Council, an organization funded by the power industry, and that was named by federal regulators in July as the new watchdog group in charge of overseeing the rules for operating the nation’s power grid, issued a grim report that confirmed an investigative story first reported by Truthout in August: three years after a devastating blackout left 50 million people in the dark in the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada for nearly three days, and forced the closure of the New York Stock Exchange, nothing substantial has been done to overhaul the country’s dilapidated power grid.
(17 Oct 2006)
Texas lawmakers may revisit electric deregulation
Reuters
Texas lawmakers should give state regulators the ability to cap or modify electricity prices as the state moves to full deregulation next year, a Houston legislator said on Thursday.
Citing a significant rise in electric prices since Texas opened its $20 billion a year market in 2002, Texas Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, said he is “nervous” that price competition may lead to volatility that could hurt consumers, especially low-income and elderly residents.
(19 Oct 2006)
