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48% of Oregon's electricity comes from fossil fuels: https://www.oregon.gov/energy/energy-oregon/Pages/Electricity-Mix-in-Oregon.aspx
For Pacific Power, it's 69%: https://www.pacificpower.net/content/dam/pcorp/documents/en/pacificpower/rates-regulation/oregon/tariffs/OR_LabelingInsert_LrgBiz.pdf
As the Secretary General of the UN said last week: “We are on a
highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”
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Hey Mark,Long time no talk, I hope you are doing well!
It would be nice if you would cite your sources when restating wild claims like that. It makes it much easier for one of us to learn something.It takes hours to disprove thoroughly, but from what I’ve seen most of your claims are off, I suspect you’ve been reading news that’s funded by the fossil fuel industry, since it’s hard to find anything but that these days in energy news. The truth of course is nuanced and a matter of degrees, but clean electricity seems to now be the cheapest form of energy for new power plants and keeps getting cheaper and cleaner. I do believe electricity is our clean and sustainable future.Every form of energy has some sort of pollutant, it’s all about the types and amounts. Few articles actually cite data, most are fear based hit pieces funded by special interests.I do read a lot, especially directly from the energy researchers on Twitter. From how I see it my favorite choices are wind and solar electricity heating a well insulated house through a minisplit heat pump. The solar on my house produces twice as much electricity as the (all electric) house uses in a year and the utility pays me about $1500 a year for the electricity I produce. the $ was a special deal on the buyback for 15 years, but even without that bonus solar is impressive if done efficiently. Solar panels themselves cost about 1/10 of what they cost ten years ago though some installer profits have not passed all that on.And as to lithium mining impact being worse that a gas car, that’s clearly fake news. EV lifecycle impacts are smaller in comparison to fossil fuels vehicles. But you wouldn’t know that reading the many false hit pieces funded by vested interests.Oil companies take in $2.6 Billion a day, and that can buy a lot of news.
It’s a mess out there, in many ways.We do have a lot of wood in Oregon. I do hope people burning wood do it cleanly, since PM 2.5 emissions seem to have bad effects on human lungs. No worse of course than the forest fires exaberated by the climate change caused by the fossil fuels.I try to do what I can. But I still have a burn pile. And you’re doing great since you hardly drive at all. I think It’s probably still better to rarely drive a gas car like you do than to commute in a new EV a lot. But every cold start of a old gas car pollutes as much as hours of driving, so they do really suck.Be well!
It is true that heating a home with natural gas adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide is a cause of climate change. It is also true that some electricity production also contributes carbon. So does burning wood. Some people feel using wood is better as the carbon in the wood came from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. It does still put carbon in the atmosphere.
My request wasn’t about emitting greenhouse gasses. It was about releasing particulate pollution during an atmospheric inversion. A poorly managed wood stove emits far more particulate pollution than a well-managed one. It also generates other toxic pollutants that can be held near the ground during an inversion. When the atmosphere is stable and smoke can rise it poses less of a risk. It still releases toxins, but they aren’t held close to the ground. Even when we aren’t experiencing an inversion, it’s a good idea to run your wood stove properly and if you have an older stove consider upgrading to a modern wood stove that is certified by EPA. The EPA provides some other guidance about wood stoves and the health effects of burning wood.
If you heat your house with electricity, it is possible that electricity was generated with fossil fuels. It is also possible it was generated by clean fuel. Now that the coal plant at Boardman has closed, I wonder what our current mix is. Even with a fossil fuel plant like natural gas or coal, there are emission controls on the stack. That’s not true for people who use wood to heat their homes. I suspect if all users of wood heat had to get an air quality permit from the DEQ, there would be a lot fewer wood stoves. It is also true that hydroelectric generation imperils salmon. Wind turbines have their liabilities too. Even nuclear energy has liabilities. If/when we figure out how to develop fusion power, there may yet be unexpected consequences. I hope we are able to find out.
My plea was for people who choose to heat their homes with wood to consider an alternative source when there is an atmospheric inversion and to manage their stoves to minimize particulate pollution even when there isn’t an inversion.
To just write it off because there are also impacts of using
natural gas or electric heat is spurious.
By that logic, we should go back to using leaded gasoline and get rid of
emission controls on automobiles because internal combustion engines still give
off pollutants.
The risks of using natural gas for cooking aren't relevant to this request. I am curious how many people in the Willamette Valley are using wood burning cook stoves. I bet not many. My plea was about home heating during and specifically during an inversion when air stagnates near the ground.
Thank you.
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I heated with wood for years and used to build wood-burning
stoves. The number 1 cause of smokey fires is wet (or damp) wood,
which is also inefficient because you're using energy to boil
water instead of heat the house. High-efficiency (airtight) stoves
make a big difference too; open fire places or fireplace doors are
not very effective at heating a house. Their main impact of an
open fireplace is the sensation of heat provided by the light from
the open flame hitting your skin; most of the hot air is just
going up the chimney.
The other thing is how you operate the wood-burning stove. When adding a new load of wood, or starting the fire, you want to crank it up to a roaring flame with a lot of air--the hot flame will burn off more of the volatile gases that are emitted early in the combustion of a log. Once the log is burning well, you can shut the air down ("damping" down) to keep the wood burning efficiently and keep the heat in the stove box as long as possible so that it can heat the stove and the room. That's why it's better to do large loads at a time rather than add a little bit at a time. If people damp the fire down too much (perhaps hoping to keep the fire going all night), it will just become a smoker again from lack of air. I doubt such a fire is providing much heat overnight; it would probably be best to let the fire burn out at a decent burn rate.
Most wood burning pollution can be attributed to how people burn.
Andy
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