The Energy Consumer's Bulletin- a New England energy news blog

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Should Data Centers Receive a Sales Tax Exemption?

Recently, data centers have rapidly become a topic that advocates and policymakers need to reckon with in the clean energy space. Mostly, we’ve seen...

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Posts by

Larry Chretien

Executive Director of Green Energy Consumers Alliance

Electric vehicles/Transportation

I Want to Buy an Electric Vehicle Part 6: Happy With My Chevy Volt After Two Months

Readers of this blog know that my family bought a 2015 Chevy Volt on August 21, 2014.  I’m happy to report that two months later, we are thrilled with the car.  After doing a lot of research on the Volt, Prius Plug-In and Nissan Leaf, we chose the Volt and it is exceeding our high expectations.

Background:  The Volt is a plug-in hybrid.  When the battery is fully charged, my Volt has a range of about 40 miles (I’ve gone 47), more than its 38 mile EPA rating.   If I deplete the battery, the car runs on gasoline (actually gasoline fuels a generator that runs the motor on electricity).

Picture of Larry Chretien Larry Chretien
Our programs Climate change

Avoid carbon dioxide emissions: Doing the math on green power

If we can avoid burning fossil fuels to make electricity (or heat our homes), we can avoid carbon dioxide emissions which cause global warming.  Fortunately, we can do just that by buying green power and making our homes energy efficient.  Can we quantify the benefits of green power and efficiency?  Yes, we can!  Here’s how:

The organization that runs the New England power grid does an annual assessment of air emissions made by generators in the region.  The assessment reports on how much sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon dioxide are emitted in a given year, both on average per megawatt hour and at the margin.  By “at the margin” we mean the last megawatt hour (MWh) produced.  When we consider how avoiding emissions is a benefit, we calculate the benefit by looking at the marginal rate, which is the rate associated with the last megawatt hour we are using on the New England Power grid.  For those of who are concerned about climate change, we are interested in the marginal rate of carbon dioxide emissions because we want to replace that last megawatt hour of dirty energy with something that is zero-emission.   The point is that that we claim credit for avoiding the marginal rate rather than the average rate. 

Picture of Larry Chretien Larry Chretien
Electric vehicles/Transportation

I Want to Buy an Electric Vehicle Part 5: The Decision

Our new car is a Chevy Volt!

This past Friday, the Chretien family traded in our fabulous 2002 Toyota Prius and bought a 2015 Chevrolet Volt.  After three months of research and test drives, we decided to go with the Volt if we could find a Chevy dealer we could tolerate.  It was a difficult choice because we also liked the Prius Plug-In Hybrid and the all-electric Nissan Leaf.  We would have been happy with either of those, especially given that we loved our 2002 Prius and still love our 2008 Prius.  In fact, we even thought about holding off on buying a plug-in for a year or two because the 2002 Prius has been running great.  On recent highway drives, it was getting 55 miles per gallon (mpg). 

Picture of Larry Chretien Larry Chretien
Climate change

Climate Change Impacts on Public Heath - Up Close and Personal

Before he died in 2011, Dr. Paul Epstein of the Harvard School of Public Health researched the impacts of global warming on public health.  The work he did brought complicated science down to a very basic fundamental point – how does changing our climate affect human health? He illustrated the many ways that we are being harmed. Shortly before he died, he wrote a great piece for the Atlantic. 

Picture of Larry Chretien Larry Chretien
Climate change

Soccer and Energy on a Worldwide Scale

Some of us are big soccer fans, especially when it comes to the World Cup, now being played in Brazil.  On Monday, we witnessed an excellent match between the United States and Ghana.  As Americans, we can be proud of the 2-1 victory.  But there is more to that match than just the final score.  We also learned that Ghanaians were quite stressed out about the possibility that they would be unable to watch the big game due to electricity shortages.  For them, the World Cup is the equivalent of the World Series, Stanley Cup, Super Bowl and NBA Championships all rolled into one.

Picture of Larry Chretien Larry Chretien