I was paying the electricity bill and looking at the little public relations flyer that comes in the mail with it, when there it was some real news:<\/p>\n
Emissions data for 2006<\/p>\n
Last year, Dominion Virginia Power generated 66,723,825 megawatt-hours of electricity. …serves more than 2 million customers…sulphur dioxide [emissions] … were about 0.0021 tons per megawatt-hour…nitrogen oxide [emissions] … were about 0.0009 tons per megawatt-hour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
No one looking at these at these numbers would know if they are good or bad.<\/p>\n
\nA little spreadsheet magic and I have 4.2 lbs. of SO2 and 1.8 lbs of NO2 per megawatt-hour (MWh) or 140,120 tons of SO2 and 60,051 tons of NO2 for all of Dominion Virginia Power.<\/p>\nThat seems like a lot of emissions. If I actually break it down by customer (which includes both residential and business), we get 140 lbs. of SO2 and 60 lbs. of NO2 per customer. And most of that is business and industrial customers since the average family uses about 1 MWh per month or 12 MWh per year. Yep, a total of 72 lbs. for each residental customer in a year of emissions.<\/p>\n
The rest is business use. A small industrial customer uses about 385 times more energy than a household and a large industrial customer uses about 26,000 time more energy than the average household. Even a small commercial business uses 10 times more energy than a residential home.<\/p>\n
Therefore, all of the savings we do as families will not come close to having the impact an industrial customer has on energy use, on pollution, on energy prices. Environmental engineers: start your electric motors and reduce industry’s energy foot print. That is where the savings are.<\/p>\n
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