Like Pennsylvania, Maine, and California, Minnesota is beginning to require a certain percentage of electricity savings. I work for a program called Energy Smart in Minnesota – we are a business assistance program approved by the state Office of Energy Security helping small and medium sized businesses save money through energy efficiency. Minnesota has several fantastic utility programs, including the One-Stop Efficiency Shop lighting program which takes care of lighting rebates for a business and helps coordinate a lighting retrofit project through contractors. The One-Stop “Shared Savings” loan program is designed so that the monthly payment is approximately equal to the amount of energy cost savings each month.

Energy efficiency definitely can be a tough project to tackle as a small business. As Mike Grande noted, generally a small business isn’t a big enough power consumer to have a dedicated utility account manager to help them, and the savings from retrofitting a couple of lighting fixtures does not look as impressive as, say, retrofitting the entire Department of Defense, or all of 3M. There is rebate paperwork to fill out, there are contractors to call – and meanwhile small business owners are busy trying to run their businesses.

If the process is easy – that helps. We do our best to get the opportunity in front of a business multiple times and really focus on the cost savings aspect and the increased quality of a more energy efficient retrofit. Consistent reminders and follow ups also help – we contact each small business that has upgraded an average of twelve times, and it takes an average of five months from the first contact to the final upgrade.

We have helped several small businesses through this process – it can be done, and it can save the businesses money right away while providing better building performance. A seafood distributor, advertising agency, a flooring distributor, and more have all upgraded in the last year – despite the economic downturn.

the CA utilities make substantially more money off of efficiency than they do selling power.

Coal fired boilers do have scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, or chemical wet scrubbers to get 90% of the ash, which contains the mercury, out of the flue gas. That’s fine, and great strides have been made in improving the efficiency of these devices.

But there is a problem. A lot of the ash from burning coal simply passes through the grates of the boiler into ash collection systems, like a dumpster. The ash from the flue gases is first passed through dry removal devices like cyclone separators, bag houses, and electrostatic precipitators. This removed dry ash also ends up in the same collection systems as the ash from the grates. Having operated boilers.

This ash has to go somewhere. Sometimes, and generally in times gone by, this ash was simply put in piles next to or near the coal fired plants. To keep the dust down, often times the ash we either mixed with water or put into ponds, and then landfilled wet.

Today, the ash is considered a toxic waste and must be sent to an approved toxic waste landfill, where techniques like mixing with concrete are deployed.

However, recently I have seen where local municipalities are actually taking some of the ash from the power plants, and mixing it with the salt they use for roads during the winter. It was even touted as a great way for the local city to reduce the cost of taking care of the roads since salt prices had risen 5 fold in the past couple of years. They were claiming that this was a savings both to the city and to the power plant’s owner who could now reduce their costly landfill expense.

Do you see a problem with this? I do, big time. The ash which contains the mercury from the coal, is now spread in a thin layer all over our streets where after thousands of cars run over it turns into a fine dust that blows in the wind all over the place, including into our lungs, onto playgrounds, front yards, all over toys etc.

Coal contains mercury. Though 90% might be removed from the air stream from a boiler, 100% of the mercury from coal ends up in the environment in one form or another. Don’t be fooled. Power plants try very hard to contain their ash, but having worked at an operation that burned solid fuels, a lot of ash ends up all over the place, not in the secured landfill.

I also want to raise another point. Coal contains mercury. It also contains other very toxic materials, like uranium, thorium, cadmium, and lead to varying degrees. These too are knows carcinogens, all ending up in the environment with coal combustion.

As the article states, if all the CFL’s were broken, and all the mercury vapor were released into the air, 0.16 tons of mercury would be released. Coal plants emit 104 tons of mercury into the air now. CFL’s mercury emissions are miniscule in comparison. If the bulb is properly disposed of, little mercury is released if any at all.

how is it again that a farmer growing bio-fuels is sprawl?

Every human body needs energy no more than it can produce by its physical force.
Mind needs more but how much more.
Let’s start think about efficiency from here..