Energy Smart: Local Action

Energy Smart: Local Action Welcomes You

This blog is intended to report on and facilitate efforts by smart pebbles to self-organize to create an avalanche by emphasizing grass-roots local action to coordinate and cooperate with state and federal level action rather than rely on state and federal action.

For example, using LED holiday lighting rather than incandescent holiday lighting is win-win scenario, however persuading people and communities to make that change often requires making direct local contact. Compact fluorescent light bulbs (LED lighting is even better) and cool (light colored) roofing materials are additional examples.

My intention is to initiate conversations with the various units of local government that operate in my immediate region in the western suburbs of Chicago and to encourage others to initiate such conversations with their own local governments. There is more . . .

Boulder Colorado: LED Holiday lights

From Boulder's Daily Camera (October 5, 2007)

A new kind of light will be shining along Pearl Street Mall this holiday season.

Every year, downtown organizations team up with Boulder's Parks and Recreation Department to festoon trees with thousands of holiday lights. Now, city staffers are trying to replace traditional bulbs with light-emitting diodes, which use a fraction of the energy and can last as long as two decades.

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Green said the city will educate downtown visitors about the new lights, in the hope of encouraging residents to make the switch themselves.

This sounds like a sensible plan that towns across America could imitate.

Compact Fluorescent Lighting

About a year ago my wife and I completed a home addition and renovation project including a large number of ceiling recessed lights and a smaller number of fixtures that use ordinary light bulbs. Our electrician installed generic incandescent everywhere and we were so busy I didn't think much about that.

But after about a year (the lighting was finished several months before everything else) the bulbs started to go dead and while I was off to the store to buy replacements, I made the decision to go with compact fluorescents. I recall standing in the aisle trying to figure out how many bulbs we needed since the others were sure to quickly follow but I couldn't remember. So just bought a few and tried different wattages and colors and after some experimentation purchased exactly the right number to fill our home.

Its been a few month now and looking at our electric bill I figure we are saving $20 to $25 per month more than enough to pay the higher purchase price and if they don't burn out after 12 or 14 months we shall save even more.

But now I want LED . . .

White Roof (Cool Roof) Project

Many benefits are associated with "cool roofs" and the most publicized of these pertain to private benefits accrued by the property owner.

Other research suggests that increased albedo (reflectivity) will directly affect the mechanisms of global warming,  and in the words of one researcher, "cooling the planet by reducing urban albedo through white and other cool roofs is a direct effect, much larger and immediate than the 2nd-order cooling from reduced CO2 from reduced" air conditioning use. If widely deployed, white roofs and "cool roofs and cooler pavements can raise urban albedo by 10%. This directly drops the global average temperature by ˜0.05 /deg C. Though small compared to a likely 3 /deg C rise by 2060, an immediate drop of 0.05 /deg C represents a reprieve in global warming of 1 year, and represents avoiding a year's current annual world emissions" of carbon dioxide.