I was bored and stumbling around the Interweb today, and came across a Slate article about the relative environmental friendliness of electric hand dryers vs. paper towels. That somehow led me to the Power Profiler, an online service of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The site asks for your ZIP code, then spits out some charts showing the sources of power generation in your region—along with the emissions of various greenhouse gases produced by that power generation—and compares your region’s stats with the nation as a whole.
I found out that the New England region is ahead of the national average in non-hydroelectric renewable power. We also use less than half the national average of coal for our electricity, opting instead to use a lot more (relatively clean) natural gas. Check it out; New England is green… the national average is poop (er, brown):
In terms of emissions, the region puts out less than half the national average of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, and a lot less carbon dioxide (in pounds per megawatt-hour) than the rest of the nation:
Data comes from the Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID), “a comprehensive inventory of environmental attributes of electric power systems.”
While these numbers still aren’t anything to be too proud of (11% renewable sources regionally; 9% nationally), it’s a good start. It’s important that these numbers grow, and we invest in local sources of renewable energy generation, such as the proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound, and other town- and city-based initiatives to harness wind and solar power.
With Bush and the Republicans pushing to destroy even more of the environment and cause ever greater potential for dramatic global climate changes, it’s time we stopped expanding our drilling for oil and started, instead, investing in the green energies that we will need to power our future.
