OK- so what I lack in poetic prose at the moment I hope can be made up with the beautiful shrubs ‘n’ flowers of my front garden.

Note that four bean poles await the upward arrival of edible greenery…

…that is , if Igor the Garden Gremlin doesn’t nosh on them first!

Hopvines cover the front trellis, and cucumbers, basil, tomatoes and  peppers weave their way in and out of the drought-tolerant evergreen shrubberies.

A layer of stinky compost ws alid down in early spring (just ask the neighbors about the smell) and a top layer of bark mulch laid over that to keep things moist.

(Of course, we are assuming that the Rain Man guardian, wearing his jaunty leaf hat is helping. Then again, given all the rain we had in June, perhaps he was helping too much!

OK- In part one, I said I hadn’t calculated my flying CO2 footprints for 2007-2008-2009. Now I have… and yikes!

All those 2009 airplane trips to the San Francisco Bay Area to attend to an ill and dying parent add up in CO2 emissions.

So, here are the raw numbers:

2007 Airtravel:           14,581 miles     3755 lbs CO2
2008 Airtravel:              4740 miles     2245 lbs CO2
2009 Airtravel:           14,799 miles     6496 lbs CO2

You’ll notice that the miles traveled in 2007 and 2009 are only 218 miles different, but that the CO2 emitted is roughly half. Why? Because in 2007,  nine thousand seven hundred of the 14,485 miles were from a one-shot, round trip to Copenhagen, Denmark as opposed to numerous short-hop trips to the Bay Area to take care of my Dad in 2009. Long-haul jet travel emits less CO2 than short hops, as the bulk of the tailpipe emissions occur at take off and landing.

2008 represents a more typical flying year for me- three or four short hops to the Bay Area and maybe one vacation trip somewhere in the continental US, whereas the 2007 Europe Trip and the 2009 year-of-Dad-dying, with lots of miles and/or many trips (14 air trips in 2009 alone… and folks wonder why I am burnt out)

I can’t change the trips past nor change the fact that my mother is still in the Bay Area. But I can root, root, root for more fuel- efficient planes, the building of high-speed rail (oh, but that we were like Europe and Japan!) I can opt to drive to CA at least once this year , lieu of flying,  in my fuel-efficient Honda Civic instead of taking the plane, and lastly, buy carbon off-sets, as I have done, to try and make up the difference.

Some websites I used to make my calculations:

www.terrapass.com
www.treehugger.com

(Like I said, yikes!)

OK-so the whole point of this blog is to force me to not merely talk about reducing my carbon footprint, but to actually *do* it. And I am proud to say that I have cut my driving and household CO2 emissions by nearly half since 2007!

Follows are the details:

Hyper-miling, getting an electric car and walking more are what have caused this significant drop in gallons used.

A solar hot water system, a new, triple-stage Energy Star efficient TRANE furnace, and  insulating the basement (!) are what have caused *this* significant drop in natural gas usage!  Can you imagine a December gas bill totalling only $11.71? It’s true! 

Please note that this chart reflects Jan-Feb-Mar, when the basement project was imcomplete, and the old furnace still roared. With a Dec (and  an already similar January 2010) bill so low  an amount has me looking forward to next year’s chart like you wouldn’t believe! I can already tell you that in January of 2010, the therm usage at my house was 1.1 therms for the whole month. It was *60.0* therms in January 2oo9!

I am lucky to live in Seattle, WA, where the bulk of our electricty is produced by hydro-power, a clean, mostly CO2-less  method. Seattle City Light claims to be the first zero-carbon city utility in the country. 

However, they also mention that about 1.3 percent of their energy production *does* come from coal. (The rest is hydro, nuclear, wind and solar). Thus, despite the very low percentage of coal-produced power, the fact there *is* some, tells me that we’re not quite 100% carbon neutral. Close, yes, very close, but not quite.

Even if were were, though, I still track my energy usage, although I have not included what is a small amount of CO2 outpout in my General Outputs Chart. I still do not have a reliable source of mathematical information that tells me exactly how much or not how much CO2 is produced (one formula I have, whose source I have forgotten and thus cannot cite, said that hydropower in fact, does produce a bit of CO2- .008 lbs – tiny amount, yes, but existing.)

Please note that I said “household and driving CO2 emissions” at the beginning of this post for a reason: I regret that my gains in lessening my output were unfortunaltye negated by multiple airline flights this year that were out of my control, as I had to travel back and forth from Seattle to San Francisco to care for an ill and dying parent. 

I plan to post  the CO2 outputs from those flights in my next post…since I did make them… however, be it known that I *have* purchased a pile of carbon off-sets from Terra Pass to try and  make up for the airline CO2, (whether or not I am convinced that carbon off-sets are the right thing to do…)

________________________________________________________
Formula source: “I Wanna Go Green: Show Me The Math!”
http://www.scientificblogging.com/science_mom/i_wanna_go_green_so_show_me_the_math

Not much going on- except for a side sewer replacement at the end of July.

OK-that *was* a  big job and not an  expected one, on top of all the other remodeling.

And while everyone needs a working sewer, this is not particularly a “green’ thing.

(OK- I take that back!)

Anyway, we can all flush at my house now…

Deb with Washington Governor Christine Gregoire

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 was a proud day for Washington State and a historical day as well: House Bill 1481: Regarding Electric Vehicles was signed into law by Governor Christine Gregoire at a signing ceremony held at the Seattle Aquarium.

In attendance were Representative Deborah Eddy,  the sponsor of the bill, Representative Reuven Carlyle,  Senator Jean Kohl-Wells, Senator Fred Jarrett, SEVA Member Jeff Finn (who brought EV’s to Rep. Eddy’s attention), SEVA President Steven Lough, Plug-In America President Daniel Davids, Jim Johnson, Owner of MC Electric Vehicles, Pamela Burton and Jeremy Smithson, Owners of Puget Sound Solar, and many others from the House Transportation Committee and Senate counterparts.

Oh, yes, and yours truly in the green paisley jacket…do remind me to take off my fanny pack next time for the shot…what a dork…

But I am an excited and happy dork, who is elated that her time spent lobbying for building electric car charging stations and infrastructure across the beautiful state of Washington bore fruit.

(The fanny pack was OFF during the public hearings!)

Hurrah for Washington State! And TRIPLE HURRAHS for all the dedicated legislators, lobbyists, utility companies and professionals who stepped up to the plate to make this happen.

PLUG IN and GO!!!

House Bill 1481 Signing Ceremony

By Scott McCredie
Special to NWautos/Seattle Times, Sunday, May 9, 2009

“This is my favorite feature,” says Deb Seymour, a Ballard Web designer who has owned a Zenn NEV for about six months. Its license plate reads: “OHM GIRL.” She flips open a cap on the side of the car to reveal an electrical outlet, to which she plugs in a standard extension cord to recharge the lead-acid batteries. An eight-hour charge, she says, gives the car enough juice for 30 to 40 miles of driving.

NEVs are surprisingly zippy, thanks to the characteristic instant power of electric motors. And because of the car’s small size, you feel like you’re going faster than you are.

Washington state law mandates that NEVs not exceed 35 mph, which is adequate for most in-city driving. The vehicles could easily go faster, says Steven Lough, spokesman for the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association. But because NEVs are not crash-tested and don’t have airbags, state and federal governments require that governors be placed on the motors to limit their output.

“The car weighs 1,200 pounds, so it’s more vulnerable if somebody in a 6,000-pound Escalade runs into you,” says George Robertson, a Beacon Hill architect and Zenn NEV owner. He says the 80 percent reduction in his carbon footprint over using a gasoline-powered car is worth the reduced safety. The 50 cents’ worth of electricity that it costs to recharge his batteries comes mostly from hydroelectric power, a relatively clean source of energy.

When Robertson bought his car last year for about $18,000 (other models can be had for as low as $10,000), he knew it was a good way to conserve energy, but he wasn’t sure how much he would use it day to day. His initial expectation was that maybe a third of his trips could be made with the Zenn. Instead, he was surprised that the car fulfills roughly 90 percent of his and his wife’s driving needs.

Driving an NEV requires a shift in thinking, according to owners. Becky Beemer, of Bainbridge Island, says the 20-mile range and other limitations of her Miles NEV force her to plan out her day a little more carefully. For instance, she says, she has “specific pull-out points on the way to work to let cars pass on the hills.”

Robertson says he has “learned all the back ways, the non-freeway ways, to get to places.”

Scott MacGowan, who owns a landscaping company in Seattle, uses a Miles NEV truck to haul gravel, dirt and plants around the city. He’s impressed with the size of the payload, but says that carrying extra weight reduces the vehicle’s range. Once, running low on electricity, he had to pull over and knock on a stranger’s door to ask for a charge.

Despite the drawbacks, NEVs seem to fill a useful transportation niche in their owners’ lives. They’re ideal for people who want to “go green” on short jaunts around town. “It’s shockingly good at meeting most of our transportation needs,” Robertson says.

TRANE XC95 Gas Heating Furnace-3 Stage

OK- so, while it might seem as if I am doing nothing but electric cars, electric cars, electric cars…in fact, much other greening activity has been happening in Deb’s World, right here at home:

April 30, 2008:

-Old 88,000  single-stage  BTU Natural Gas Furnace (Ran at 100% or 0% meaning “on” or “off”)
-Programmable Thermostat, but only for  different times of day
-Un-Insulated Basement
-End-Cap missing from a basement heating duct (Oops! Didn’t know!)
-Average daily temperature: 45 degrees
-Therms used for the month: 31.1
-Average daily use: 1.1 therm
-Gas Bill:  $59.11

April 30, 2009:

-New 60,000 BTU   TRANE XC95  3 Stage Natural Gas Furnace (runs at 40%, 75 % and 100% as needed)
-New thermostat,  programs for different times of day & for different schedules on different days of the week
-Basement walls insulated
-New End Cap
-Average daily temperature: 47 degrees
-Therms used this month: 1.1
-Daily Average use: too low for PSE to  bother calculating (0.036 terms, according to my calculator)
-Gas Bill: $12.97 (this mostly covers taxes and fees for PSE as opposed to actual gas)

WHAT THE FRIG’ WAS I THINKING ALL THESE PAST YEARS? Yikes!

[FROM THE SEATTLE  TIMES, April 24, 2009 6:25 PM]
Posted by Jennifer Sullivan