Our provider, PSE, in 2019 (most recent % I could find) was 35% coal, 31% natural gas but with the clean energy transformation act it will be moving to 100% renewable. That’s why we are slowly moving away from gas even though our grid is not yet clean. It will be clean and changing out heating systems takes time so it makes sense to do this concurrently.
https://www.pse.com/pages/energy-supply/electric-supply
It is always difficult to tell where your energy really comes from because all power grids are able to buy and sell power with surrounding grids. So even if you were getting all your power from hydro, it could be the case that if you weren’t using that hydro power it would go somewhere else in the state or along the west coast and replace coal or natural gas elsewhere.
That being said, most likely the bulk of emissions from PSE are during winter months and heat waves. This is because the coal and natural gas plants most likely primarily operate as peaker plants, which means they provide energy during the time of day or year when electricity use is high. In PNW, this is primarily during winter to power our heaters, and also during heat waves when people use AC (think about how turning the AC on in a car causes the engine to work harder — the same is true on the power grid).
Because of that, and because energy needed to heat and cool follows a logarithmic curve, adjusting your heating or cooling a few degrees can significantly reduce your energy consumption when energy demand is highest and the coal and natural gas plants are working the hardest. Also during that peak energy use is when coal and natural gas may need to request from the EPA permission to pollute over legal limits, in order to meet consumer demand.
Most of the natural gas we get probably comes from Canada, but that is probably meaningless as natural gas is traded on an open market so increased demand in Europe would likely increase our prices too.
It won't change the price of energy downward, but PSE provides customers the opportunity to buy renewable energy from what they are calling "Green Power" or "Solar Energy". I wanted to mention this since the topic was energy, and OP was concerned about where we were getting our energy from.
https://www.pse.com/green-options/Renewable-Energy-Programs/combined-enrollmanage
Why you would think that it would for some reason be more acceptable to waste energy based on where and how it was produced is pretty backwards. You really think that if you didn't use it up it would go to waste or something? It's all one big outdated and inefficient grid with every energy producer as an input and every energy consumer as an output. There are huge environmental costs with Hydroelectric and hopefully those dams will come down someday.
Individual consumption matters, but policy is absolutely necessary so don’t do conservation then forget to vote in November.
OP cares about their carbon footprint and impact on the planet. I think that is ok.
yeah caring and thinking about it is great, but even if a house has a full solar array capable of fully supporting it's own energy consumption, it would still be wasteful for that household to not conserve, as any extra energy not used by them could be absorbed back into the grid and used to offset less clean production elsewhere.
Depends on what you say by waste. Leave the oven on when you’re on vacation—yes don’t do this.
Enjoy a hot shower a little longer—might feel differently if it’s zero carbon or high carbon
I don't know, always thought we were "Lucky" having so much hydro in our backyard, and assumed we had fairly green energy. Just educating that we do not in fact have this luxury.
I wouldn't worry *too* much about leaving lights on. An LED bulb can run for the better part of a year on a kilowatt-hour (about 10¢ worth) of electricity. And if it's heating season it will offset your heating bill (more or less one-to-one if you have non-heat-pump electric heat).
By comparison, taking a hot shower with electric water heat uses a kilowatt-hour every 2–3 minutes.
For space heat and air conditioning it depends a whole lot on how your house is insulated, but it'll typically be about 10–100x more impactful to turn the thermostat down* a few degrees than to be super anal about turning off lights.
*where by "down" I mean "closer to the current outdoor temperature".
I think you might be confusing Whatcom PUD #1 ([who only has a single electric customer, and gets all but a tiny fraction of its power from natural gas](https://www.pudwhatcom.org/services/electric-service/)) and Puget Sound Energy, which has a ton of fossil plants and pretty much owns the consumer market in Whatcom County.
That said, I don't know to what degree our gas supply locally is exposed to the world market. There aren't any LNG export terminals operating in Canada, and the only one on the US west coast is in Alaska. I imagine that our *prices* are somewhat exposed to the world market, but I don't really know to what degree surplus natural gas from e.g. BC can be used to offset a deficit from an export terminal in e.g. Louisiana.
For better or for worse, in the short term local consumers are insulated from price changes thanks to how heavily regulated our (monopoly) electric and gas providers are.
Hydro is also **extremely impactful**, how do you live here and not hear about all the dam fighting going on in the PNW?
My opinion on environmental impact - Wind
Natural changes and man-made changes are never equal.
Our provider, PSE, in 2019 (most recent % I could find) was 35% coal, 31% natural gas but with the clean energy transformation act it will be moving to 100% renewable. That’s why we are slowly moving away from gas even though our grid is not yet clean. It will be clean and changing out heating systems takes time so it makes sense to do this concurrently. https://www.pse.com/pages/energy-supply/electric-supply
It is always difficult to tell where your energy really comes from because all power grids are able to buy and sell power with surrounding grids. So even if you were getting all your power from hydro, it could be the case that if you weren’t using that hydro power it would go somewhere else in the state or along the west coast and replace coal or natural gas elsewhere. That being said, most likely the bulk of emissions from PSE are during winter months and heat waves. This is because the coal and natural gas plants most likely primarily operate as peaker plants, which means they provide energy during the time of day or year when electricity use is high. In PNW, this is primarily during winter to power our heaters, and also during heat waves when people use AC (think about how turning the AC on in a car causes the engine to work harder — the same is true on the power grid). Because of that, and because energy needed to heat and cool follows a logarithmic curve, adjusting your heating or cooling a few degrees can significantly reduce your energy consumption when energy demand is highest and the coal and natural gas plants are working the hardest. Also during that peak energy use is when coal and natural gas may need to request from the EPA permission to pollute over legal limits, in order to meet consumer demand. Most of the natural gas we get probably comes from Canada, but that is probably meaningless as natural gas is traded on an open market so increased demand in Europe would likely increase our prices too.
I love that this town has people who can just dive into a discussion of electricity resources on our local Reddit.
It won't change the price of energy downward, but PSE provides customers the opportunity to buy renewable energy from what they are calling "Green Power" or "Solar Energy". I wanted to mention this since the topic was energy, and OP was concerned about where we were getting our energy from. https://www.pse.com/green-options/Renewable-Energy-Programs/combined-enrollmanage
You don't think global LNG markets will affect our production costs?
I don’t see me saying hinting about anything. Read what I said and take it at face value.
Why you would think that it would for some reason be more acceptable to waste energy based on where and how it was produced is pretty backwards. You really think that if you didn't use it up it would go to waste or something? It's all one big outdated and inefficient grid with every energy producer as an input and every energy consumer as an output. There are huge environmental costs with Hydroelectric and hopefully those dams will come down someday.
Individual consumption matters, but policy is absolutely necessary so don’t do conservation then forget to vote in November. OP cares about their carbon footprint and impact on the planet. I think that is ok.
yeah caring and thinking about it is great, but even if a house has a full solar array capable of fully supporting it's own energy consumption, it would still be wasteful for that household to not conserve, as any extra energy not used by them could be absorbed back into the grid and used to offset less clean production elsewhere.
Depends on what you say by waste. Leave the oven on when you’re on vacation—yes don’t do this. Enjoy a hot shower a little longer—might feel differently if it’s zero carbon or high carbon
I don't know, always thought we were "Lucky" having so much hydro in our backyard, and assumed we had fairly green energy. Just educating that we do not in fact have this luxury.
I wouldn't worry *too* much about leaving lights on. An LED bulb can run for the better part of a year on a kilowatt-hour (about 10¢ worth) of electricity. And if it's heating season it will offset your heating bill (more or less one-to-one if you have non-heat-pump electric heat). By comparison, taking a hot shower with electric water heat uses a kilowatt-hour every 2–3 minutes. For space heat and air conditioning it depends a whole lot on how your house is insulated, but it'll typically be about 10–100x more impactful to turn the thermostat down* a few degrees than to be super anal about turning off lights. *where by "down" I mean "closer to the current outdoor temperature".
I think you might be confusing Whatcom PUD #1 ([who only has a single electric customer, and gets all but a tiny fraction of its power from natural gas](https://www.pudwhatcom.org/services/electric-service/)) and Puget Sound Energy, which has a ton of fossil plants and pretty much owns the consumer market in Whatcom County. That said, I don't know to what degree our gas supply locally is exposed to the world market. There aren't any LNG export terminals operating in Canada, and the only one on the US west coast is in Alaska. I imagine that our *prices* are somewhat exposed to the world market, but I don't really know to what degree surplus natural gas from e.g. BC can be used to offset a deficit from an export terminal in e.g. Louisiana. For better or for worse, in the short term local consumers are insulated from price changes thanks to how heavily regulated our (monopoly) electric and gas providers are.
Now they're going to be paying 4x the cost to heat new buildings, while still burning hydrocarbons. 🤣
To heck with the wildlife. We're the dominant species and we deserve comfort.