The Renewable Energy Products Deserves The Money We Spend On Them

Cutback of city lights will save money and coal; its real and easy to do

. But how to convince the citizen to bear night without light is still great challenge. So the following two topics come up.

Light in the dark

When the news that Colorado Springs will shut off roughly a third of its street lights has got around, which means about 8000 street lights will be closed to save $1.245 million this year, many residents were apoplectic. The city estimates that this project will reduce power usage by approximately 8,000 megawatt hours annually.

In turn, shutting off the 8,000 or so street lights for a year reduces the city's use of coal by about 4,700 tons, to be equivalent to 47 train cars full. It's a tiny amount of the 2 million tons of coal the city uses per year, but every little bit helps.

Here's another advantage: "If you compound those energy savings for several years, then we're looking at a reduced load in our power plants to create electricity," Eric Isaacson, Colorado Springs Utilities worker, writes on the agency's Web site.

Grossman notes that while the city relies on coal for two-thirds of its electricity, 22 percent of electric output comes from natural gas, 8 percent from hydroelectric and the rest from purchased power, which can be a mix of fuel sources. For further program, its a good idea to replace all the legacy lights with solar street lights; the lights will produce electricity by themselves.

Carbon credits

Of course, most of us would rather see progress come via deliberate efforts in the legislative process than from budget-slashing side effects. But if political contributions measure congressional influence, the renewable energy industry is woefully behind fossil fuels trailing so badly that it might never catch up.

Consider: The oil and gas and coal mining industries gave nearly $272 million from 1990 through early this year to candidates and political parties at the national level, compared to $5.4 million donated by alternative energy production and services, according to opensecrets.org, a database of federal campaign contributions. And fossil fuels contributed $39 million in presidential year 2008 alone, compared to alternative energy's $2 million.

But she admits the renewable industry needs to secure more federal mandates in order to compete with cheaper fossil fuels. And because the industry is so young, it's difficult to amass large amounts of campaign money to compete with the deeply entrenched oil and gas industries.

"How do you have the money to contribute money before you've developed a market so you can grow and thrive?" she says. "We're making the case for the next wave for our energy future and doing that as the underdog. We've got to be smarter and have the power of the people behind us and make the case on the merit of the issue."

The development of low carbon technology brings us much great benefits. And technologies such as solar street lights make it easier for us to build our city greener.

by: cindycai

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