The Empire State Building and Its Related Buildings Are Now Powered By Wind (thehill.com) 192
The iconic Empire State Building that has crowned Midtown Manhattan since the early 1930s is now a game changer in American architecture in a different way: by becoming completely powered with renewable energy. The Hill reports: Announced on Wednesday, Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) confirmed that it struck a three-year contract with Green Mountain Energy to power its entire commercial real estate portfolio with renewable wind electricity. This reportedly makes ESRT the largest user of green power in U.S. real estate. Green Mountain Energy, based out of Vermont, is a leading sustainable energy provider, offering plans with public and private real estate groups using solar panels and wind turbines as the source of electricity.
ESRT controls more than 10.1 million square feet of real estate, all of which will be powered by renewable energy for the next three years. This switch will spare about 450 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere. This is roughly the equivalent of every New York State household turning off all of their lights for an entire month. Prior to this partnership, the Empire State Building underwent renovations a decade ago to help convert the building to be more environmentally friendly, resulting in a 40 percent reduction in energy usage prior to the contract with Green Mountain.
ESRT controls more than 10.1 million square feet of real estate, all of which will be powered by renewable energy for the next three years. This switch will spare about 450 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere. This is roughly the equivalent of every New York State household turning off all of their lights for an entire month. Prior to this partnership, the Empire State Building underwent renovations a decade ago to help convert the building to be more environmentally friendly, resulting in a 40 percent reduction in energy usage prior to the contract with Green Mountain.
Many commercial property owners doing this (Score:3)
Landsec in the UK has been doing this since 2016, for example:
https://landsec.com/sustainabi... [landsec.com]
And then there's RE100 which has 288 members and is well beyond property. These are the kind of market signals that will drive quite significant and rapid change, in my view
https://www.there100.org/re100... [there100.org]
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Many residential customers do this too. A company called Ecotricity was the first in the UK to offer 100% renewable energy, but now several do. They do net zero gas as well.
It used to cost a bit more but nowadays it's cheaper than the companies that offer a mix of sources, if you a suitable smart meter and the ability to say charge your car when prices are low or even negative (i.e. they pay you to use electricity).
I expect there will have to be some kind of mandate to use dirty energy eventually, otherwise
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Yup.
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they can't alter their output fast enough to be of much use in a highly renewable grid.
What are those big Tesla batteries for then? Pretty sure they are there to make up for differences in supply and demand. We can use batteries to remove the need for nuclear power plants to change their output quickly, just like we do already for windmills. You think windmills just crank up their output to match changing demand? Or solar panels? Of course not, We mostly use natural gas for that but the plan is in the future to use Tesla batteries and other storage.
If you are going to argue against nucl
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Wind is cheap. With current management, wind and renewables are reliable, at least outside of California.
I don't think so... (Score:4, Funny)
What's it doing when there is no wind?
Batteries?
Tapping politicians' speeches?
Re:I don't think so... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, there is ALWAYS wind. You just need to spread the turbines geographically
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Actually, there is ALWAYS wind. You just need to spread the turbines geographically
Indeed. Additionally, there are many locations that are always windy: Many mountain valleys, ridges, and escarpments. Any ocean north of 40 degrees of latitude. Northern prairies are almost always windy.
The wind blows more reliably higher above the ground, so efficiency increases as turbine towers get taller.
With modern HVDC lines, we can move wind power from the North Dakota prairie to Minneapolis and Chicago.
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So I wonder if it would be possible to integrate wind turbines in to the actual design and construction of high rise buildings, say by having a floor or two nearer the top that contain a se
Re:I don't think so... (Score:4, Informative)
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You think somebody that owns (Score:2)
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So I wonder if it would be possible to integrate wind turbines in to the actual design and construction of high rise buildings, say by having a floor or two nearer the top that contain a series of wind turbines and which can be used to generate power for the structure?
The rough "floor height" of a building is ten feet....So, at best, "a floor or two" gets you 20 feet of blade diameter for your wind turbine. You also cannot pivot the building as wind direction changes. IOW, you wouldn't produce useful power in terms of the investment you'd have to make.
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Actually, there is ALWAYS wind. You just need to spread the turbines geographically
But then is the output constant? It is not. There's always going to be too much or too little wind. I'll see people suggest overbuilding wind generating capacity but then that increases cost.
Onshore windmills are a great source
The USA may have the luxury to spread out windmills for some moderately reliable electricity production but that of energy. They are generally cheap to build. They don't deny use of the land beneath them for crops, grazing, or other productive uses. It's a proven technology that
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I don't know how that middle paragraph got mangled. It should have read more like this...
Onshore windmills are a great source of energy. They are generally cheap to build. They don't deny use of the land beneath them for crops, grazing, or other productive uses. It's a proven technology that doesn't require a lot of specialized infrastructure, which is one reason why it's cheap. What wind lacks is any reliability on being there when needed. The USA may have the luxury to spread out windmills for some moder
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Nuclear fission has been proven to be too expensive to seriously factor into any conversation about future energy production. Solar and wind are already cheaper than nuclear, and all the nuclear power plants currently in production are over budget and suffering from delays. Battery technology is continuing to improve, with the largest battery in the world being built in Australia right now. Nuclear seems like yesterday's news.
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Nuclear seems like yesterday's news.
Solar and wind power won't get us to Mars, only nuclear power will.
The future is nuclear powered.
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Check and mate.
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What's it doing when there is no wind?
Easy. Just turn on some fans.
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What storage does Green Mountain Energy use? (Score:4, Interesting)
That is great news but I cannot find what kind of energy storage Green Mountain Energy uses when wind is not blowing and sun is not shining or how their customers cope with intermittent power. Does somebody know? Because if they borrow dirty energy from the grid and later return it back using clean energy then they do not provide clean energy overall. They provide clean energy sometimes and clean marketing otherwise.
There seems to be a similar company (Green Mountain Power) which uses customer batteries as a backup for peeks (variable energy rate and the energy provider controls how your batteries are charged and discharged). No mention of a solution for longer term low output from wind/solar in their introductory web page. Only an unspecified claim "we will help you".
Who knows how this works?
Re: What storage does Green Mountain Energy use? (Score:2)
Re: What storage does Green Mountain Energy use? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see that as some kind of "compromise" because this is not a system that is sustainable. The more people that make these "green washing" power supply agreements the more it just shifts the accounting around until there's no more "green washing" electrical generating capacity to sell. Then what?
This isn't aiding the transition away from fossil fuels because the only viable backup power we have to new wind power is natural gas. Wind and solar power are mostly just proxies for natural gas. Because this backup power is less efficient single cycle turbines, instead of the more efficient combined cycle turbines, there is often no savings on CO2 emissions with this additional wind and solar generating capacity.
We aren't building enough wind and solar power to keep up with growth in electricity demand. There is no transitioning off of fossil fuels in the USA. Not yet. We are seeing lowering CO2 emissions from switching from coal to natural gas, and an economic decline. The USA will not actually be seeing a reduction in the reliance on fossil fuels until we see more nuclear fission power plants.
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Being a smart "backside" (Score:3)
Pumped storage is limited by the number of suitable geographic locations.
Also, pumping water in and out of a reservoir makes the land area unsuitable both as land and for recreation. Don't know how wildlife react to this.
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Why would a reservoir water height changing by perhaps 6 ft screw up recreation or land use any more then having the reservoir there to begin with? There's a couple of dams and their reservoirs by where I live, they're not used for pumped storage but still regularly vary by perhaps 6 ft in water depth and it doesn't seem to screw up the recreation use and I doubt wildlife as they're careful when the salmon run.
Occasionally they have to do draw downs for maintenance and that can screw with recreation a bit,
I'Re:What storage does Green Mountain Energy use? (Score:2)
I've tried to find out but can't be sure. Typically, this is done through REGOs. All electrical energy is inherently fungible, ie the power comes in from a grid connected to many generators and you can't know where any particular kWh has come from; there are some direct connections but relatively few. But REGOs ensure that the mix continually improves as more customers demand more renewable power.
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Yes, REGOs will help to improve the mix. What I would like to know how contracts like these handle situation when there is not enough renewable power. An easy solution is just charge variable rate per kWh which changes e.g. each minute. Then the provider can just increase the rate per kWh to e.g. $10 and I'm sue many customers will rather switch off their devices. That would decrease the consumption and free some REGOs for those who are willing to pay. But I cannot imagine ESRT just switching of electricity
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I'd be curious too. Isn't the general principle that they annualise and average, ie that ESRT buys say 100MWh p.a. of power from Green Mountain, Green Mountain add 100MWh of power p.a. to their total generation, which they add into the grid, but there's no direct connect between Green Mountain and ESRT so there's no need to load-balance for ESRT in particular?
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Well, Green Mountain Energy does not need to balance ESRT specifically with REGOs. There is no point in that. But they should balance at any given minute all the green energy customers together against all their REGOs. If they do not do it then they just use fossil fuel power stations on the grid as a free energy storage. And the advertisements that some customer uses purely clean energy would be misleading because sometimes (when there is not enough clean energy generation) they would be obviously using "d
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That is great news but I cannot find what kind of energy storage Green Mountain Energy uses when wind is not blowing and sun is not shining or how their customers cope with intermittent power. Does somebody know? Because if they borrow dirty energy from the grid and later return it back using clean energy then they do not provide clean energy overall. They provide clean energy sometimes and clean marketing otherwise.
I have heard of Green Mountain Energy, but hadn't really looked them up before. I don't think they own the generating stations (or at least not all of them) - they seem to be more of a broker with a mission. They support quite a few clean energy production sites around the country - wind, solar, and some "gas-to-energy" projects at dumps.
There seems to be a similar company (Green Mountain Power) which uses customer batteries as a backup for peeks (variable energy rate and the energy provider controls how your batteries are charged and discharged). No mention of a solution for longer term low output from wind/solar in their introductory web page. Only an unspecified claim "we will help you".
Who knows how this works?
Green Mountain Power is the power company for a lot of Vermont (I'm one of their residential customers). A lot of their energy comes from hydro or other clean power. Th
Stop applauding this (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing of significance happened, except some electronic certificates went through the email system.
The only electrons which took a different path because of these certificates are the ones lighting up the screen showing those certificates.
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Um, what's significant is that they are paying for it. That money will justify increased the capital investment in wind turbines. So yes, it's significant.
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Electrons do not cause global warming, production of energy does. This movement of a certificate is accompanied by money that makes green energy ever cheaper and punishes production methods which do cause global warming.
Dismissing this as nothing significant is as stupid as saying that taxes, tariffs and subsidies have no impact on the world. The certificates are an economic lever that has a direct impact on the world.
To the mods: Please get together and decide what it is you believe. Slashdot is a place wh
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"Please decide what it is you find insightful and stick with it."
You are asking a moderation community of hundreds with very little in common who never communicate to present a unified message. I think you will be waiting a long time for this.
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Nothing of significance happened, except some electronic certificates went through the email system.
Which is of great significance in this case.
It's ridiculous for supposed nerds to downplay the significance of certificates.
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Which is of great significance in this case.
You cannot run a building on certificates. You need actual power, which in this case comes from the same power plants that everyone else in the area use.
Green certificates are modern indulgences.
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You cannot run a building on certificates.
Correct.
You need actual power, which in this case comes from the same power plants that everyone else in the area use.
The power comes from the grid. The more "green" power people buy, the more of such is added to the grid. Buying more green power makes the power cleaner. It doesn't matter who's actually using electrons pushed around by green power.
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The power comes from the grid. The more "green" power people buy, the more of such is added to the grid.
There is no shortage of certified green power. There is way more certified green power than there are certificates bought. There is no economic reason to add more green power to the grid just because people buy more certificates.
The only thing certificates do is make other people's power slightly more black. There is nowhere in the world where green certificates account for a large enough fraction of actual green power production to make any difference what so ever.
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Nothing of significance happened, except some electronic certificates went through the email system.
The only electrons which took a different path because of these certificates are the ones lighting up the screen showing those certificates.
It allows people to pay extra money to green energy companies for the right to virtue signal.
If people are dumb enough to do that, and the companies make money off their stupidity, then fine. Whatever.
This is a business deal (Score:2)
So this is quite a bit more than "Some electronics in the Ether".
Nobody mentions the building is empty. (Score:2)
Add the fact that the building
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But the more people and companies buy green energy, the more green energy is produced.
No. The amount of green energy being produced is vastly larger than the amount of green energy certificates sold. Adding certificates is free.
If you look at the certificate market, Denmark is powered by something like 50% coal and 30% nuclear. Even though coal is practically gone from Danish electricity production and there are no nuclear reactors in the country. Yet in reality, Danish electricity from wind turbines and biomass. This happens because Danish consumers do not buy into the scam market, instead
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This funds investment into renewable energy, meaning there will be more of it and the path to net zero is a little shorter.
But it does not fund anything. It gives a bit of money to one of the many green scam companies.
Green certificates are practically free. The article even hints at it: "saving ESRT more than $800,000 in electricity costs within the first year of the deal". Green certificates do not have any practical influence on how much renewable energy is built. The price is waaaay too low for that.
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Are you saying they are not actually buying renewable energy? Because if they are buying it then that is money that would otherwise have gone into the general mix, including fossil and nuclear power.
If there are tax benefits or whatever that doesn't change the fact that renewable energy is receiving more funding that it otherwise would have. Are you sure the savings are not from the renewable energy? In the UK it's the cheapest form of energy now, you can save significant amounts if you are able to make goo
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If there are tax benefits or whatever that doesn't change the fact that renewable energy is receiving more funding that it otherwise would have.
This bit is wrong. It does not fund anything except bureaucracy. Renewable energy certificates are priced around the cost of the administrative work to issue them, plus a small profit.
Lots of companies are issuing those certificates because it is basically money for nothing, so prices are very competitive.
Are you sure the savings are not from the renewable energy? In the UK it's the cheapest form of energy now, you can save significant amounts if you are able to make good use of it.
The buyers of the certificates do not change which electricity they actually buy. There is only one grid to connect to, and the buyers do not have to make any effort towards getting their energy consumptio
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I read about these certs and it says that to get one they have to feed 1MW of renewable energy into the grid. Is that not the case?
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Yes of course. But many times that are flowing into the grid, with the certificates just sitting unsold. When you go to an electricity company and buy a certificate, they take one of those unsold certificates off the wall and hand it to you. Except it's all electronic, of course. You get that certificate really cheaply, because it literally costs nothing to produce and the stock is enormous.
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A quick google reveals them for sale at $8 per 1MWh, or an additional 0.8 cents/kWh. That's not huge but it's not insignificant either, especially for commercial users who consume a lot of energy. That price suggests that are not simply giving them away for the admin cost alone.
Wind turbine (Score:2)
Haven't been to NYC since 2019, have they added wind turbines on top of it?
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Yes. You didn't read the article?
Re:Wind turbine (Score:4, Informative)
This is slashdot. We're lucky some people read the title before posting.
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Haven't been to NYC since 2019, have they added wind turbines on top of it?
Sorta. the wind turbines are elsewhere, but the Empire State building is using the upper floors for pumped storage as backup for the turbines. Because the water is only 3 feet deep, those floors can still be used as offices for the call center people.
THis is bogus (Score:4, Insightful)
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The electricity may be wind powered, but the entire building is very much a consumer of fossil fuels. Take the food & drink containers, all that foam & pet bottles were made from oil etc.
Well that's certainly one way to take the Green movement to Vegan levels to all but guarantee everyone will ignore it.
Let's take this one step at a time, unless you truly think the pandemic hasn't done enough to unemployment. (If you thought killing 10K pipeline jobs was impactful, kill plastic manufacturing overnight and see what happens.)
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You fail to understand why i mentioned this. The problem with stupid announcements like this is people fail to appreciate the big picture. Its the same problem with EV cars, the idiots think that because theres no smoke out the pipe, somehow EV cars are perfect and green completely ignoring the fact that significant amounts of oil are required for an EV car. Those mines with those big machines also run on oil. The real problem in both cases is of course being completely honest and not focusing on stupid crap and being dishonest abiout the entire problem of excessive and selfish consumption without respect for the planet we share with others including the creatures.
It takes 7 gallons of oil to make one car tire, so we're not even off the damn ground yet with a "green" EV being truly green. That doesn't mean that vehicle won't still reduce gasoline and oil consumption considerably.
There are over 7,000 high rise buildings in the city. Chance are we'll piss away millions green-fittiing a 1930s building just to tear the damn down soon, because it doesn't "meet code". Yes this is political theater. We know this. My point is you can't approach going green with extreme
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This is precisely the false focus im referring too. Tyres are a tiny oil cost for any car including EV. The real OIL cost for an EV car as i mentioned are the mining costs to dig and move those raw materials.
> That doesn't mean that vehicle won't still reduce gasoline and oil consumption considerably.
Thats utter bullshit, the OIL cost to make those batteries is signific
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That doesn't mean that vehicle won't still reduce gasoline and oil consumption considerably.
Thats utter bullshit, the OIL cost to make those batteries is significant, in fact its equiv to many years of ICE cars OIL consumption.
Oil, is NOT the only pollution problem with an ICE vehicle. And how much oil does it take to manufacture an ICE car? I stopped at one tire. Let's compare apples to apples here. Then we can decide what is ultimately better, but it really doesn't matter. In 75 years or less, oil won't even be an option to choose for energy. Adapt, or die.
The real solution is of course to significantly reduce people travelling in cars, for so much of their lives. Its insane that people travel hours and hours a week for work, there are many better solutions that should be attempted.
This is very true, and I couldn't agree more. The average employee doing an hour commute into work every day is not only contributing to the pollution problem, but is
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> Thats utter bullshit, the OIL cost to make those batteries is significant, in fact its equiv to many years of ICE cars OIL consumption.
We can use CO2 emissions as a proxy for petroleum consumption, since consuming petroleum results directly in CO2 emissions...
https://theicct.org/sites/defa... [theicct.org]
Actual emissions vary a lot since there are so many variables in battery manufacturing - including the ability to use renewable energy, which is something petroleum production can't do - so let's use the most pessi
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It takes 7 gallons of oil to make one car tire, so we're not even off the damn ground yet with a "green" EV being truly green. That doesn't mean that vehicle won't still reduce gasoline and oil consumption considerably.
The next generation of EV cars will be powered through the courtesy of Fred's two feet.
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> And when it comes to the big picture, America is hardly the problem on this planet. We should probably be focused on the other 36.2% of the human race condensed inside two countries. America's pollution problem is a fart in high wind by comparison.
Difficulty: The reason places like China and India create so much pollution is because they are manufacturing things for the American market. Just because we've outsourced our pollution doesn't mean we get to be completely blameless for it.
Difficulty 2: Despi
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> And when it comes to the big picture, America is hardly the problem on this planet. We should probably be focused on the other 36.2% of the human race condensed inside two countries. America's pollution problem is a fart in high wind by comparison.
Difficulty: The reason places like China and India create so much pollution is because they are manufacturing things for the American market. Just because we've outsourced our pollution doesn't mean we get to be completely blameless for it.
True, but you will need to manhandle Greed to overcome this. There is no reason to purposely manufacture disposable electronics that are utter crap by comparison to the products of yesteryear. The only reason we do this, is Greed. The world over. (The US is hardly the only country outsourcing manufacturing)
Counterpoint: We've been at this for 30+ years now. The only reason things might seem "extreme" to you is because we've been collectively dragging our feet so much in that time we're too far behind where we need to be, and need to do some catching up. =Smidge=
Reality: If we've been dragging our feet for 30+ years, then we haven't actually done jack shit about this problem. The last real thing I remember about fixing the environment was reducing the size of
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> True
Well I'm glad you acknowledge that what you said was complete bullshit. Moving on, then...
>Reality: If we've been dragging our feet for 30+ years, then we haven't actually done jack shit about this problem.
Hey, you seem to have gotten it! Correct, in the grand scheme of things we (the US especially) have done virtually nothing to address the problem of carbon emissions. It's only been in the past ten years or so that industry is finally getting around to it, and in large part due to government i
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The shuttering of the keystone pipeline is another good example of not taking on a fair and paced approach to shifting jobs away from polluting industries.
I agree with this. A better approach would have been to clarify that the owners of the pipeline are 100% responsible for cleanup of any spills or other ecological damage, and to require them to escrow substantial funding for cleanup. Even without those actions the keystone pipeline is on the verge of economic insolvency because the cost of oil is so low that tar sand oil isn't very competitive, appropriately internalizing the externalities would have sealed the pipeline's fate.
And when it comes to the big picture, America is hardly the problem on this planet. We should probably be focused on the other 36.2% of the human race condensed inside two countries. America's pollution problem is a fart in high wind by comparison.
This is wrong, though. The US
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You fail to understand why i mentioned this.
You failed to understand his point as well.
Consider this analogy. You're running a marathon. When you complete the first mile, there is a sign and people cheering you on. Do you stop and castigate them because you still have more than 25 miles to go, or do you smile back at them and begin working on the next mile?
No one is claiming that having shifted a few buildings to renewables means we're done. No one is claiming that CO2 emission is the only environmental issue we need to be concerned about. Scre
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There's nothing wrong with consuming fossil fuels. The problem is burning them which puts CO2 in the atmosphere. But if they get buried in the ground after use, no harm is done. In fact, good is done by raising the demand for oil, which raises its price and discourages its burning.
really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Electricity is nearly the perfectly fungible commodity. The only way to differentiate "green" vs. "non-green" electrons at the point of use is where the money goes.
By buying power from specific sources, they create the necessary financial incentives to develop those sources instead of further investment in competing sources. In this case, Empire State Realty Trust is buying wind power, which means more money to develop wind power and less to maintain and develop natural gas, coal, oil and nuclear power.
I'm
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Isn't New York largely powered by Hydro? This, https://www.nypa.gov/power/gen... [nypa.gov] says 70% of power generated in NY is hydro, though it sounds like 75% of power is imported, likely from Ontario and Quebec, which are mostly hydro.
This, https://eportfolios.macaulay.c... [cuny.edu] says 17% of the total is hydro.
Hydro combined with wind and solar works well, a dam can be spun up and down fairly quick and store the water until needed due to low winds etc. Easier to convert to pumped storage as well.
Renewable Energy isn't necessarily wind (Score:4, Informative)
Unlike...the title of the article blowing smoke up readers asses.
Green Mountain Energy doesn't generate any power and they are actually owned by NRG.
" Green Mountain Energy once operated as a standalone subsidiary of NRG, but now operates as one of NRG's many brands. With the acquisition of Green Mountain Energyâ(TM)s renewable offerings, NRG became one of the largest retailers of green power in the nation. NRG derives 93% of its energy from burning fossil fuels'' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So, if you expected to see how the Empire State Bldg is all the sudden powering itself via prevailing winds or rotor action, we were both wrong.
So GME produces nothing except retail and commercial contracts, most likely combining RECs and trade of carbon offset certs so as to show a carbon neutral balance to customers. Here's how NRG generates energy. "Out of its total 27,895 MW of electric generating capacity in 2005 (2.61% of the U.S. total), NRG produced 52.9% from natural gas, 31.0% from coal, 15.9% from oil, and 0.2% from biomass. NRG owns power plants in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas; 49.9% of the company's generating capacity comes from plants in Texas.'' And yes, it's dated but how much do you think it's chaged today... especially considering how much cheaper dino is today [it's the freshest I could find]. https://www.gem.wiki/NRG_Energ... [gem.wiki]
Full blown sales hype. The fucked up part is that we believe if we pay someone that has a green logo for energy [that doesn't produce or store shit], that participates in a carbon offset market and is basically a brand of company that produces the majority of the energy provided to the grid from dead dinosaurs, that we're fine with our consume, dispose and repurchase mentality.
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I call BS, and hatred of renewables. Rather than link to a wikipedia article about Green Mountain saying they don't generate any power and are a brand, or linking to an article from 2007, why don't you link to wikipedia's article about NRG or link to their page stating they generate 383MW (2% of their portfolio) of renewable energy.
So, in summary, they do generate renewable energy, and you're not telling us the truth.
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Yes, but you should provide the links to back your assertions.
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The people here have some irrational fear of new technology for some reason. Electric cars? Oh fuck those things my 1979 Chrysler LeBehemoth is the pinnacle of engineering. Finding ways of generating electricity from natural occurrences like wind or ocean waves? You're wasting your time when coal and oil is plentiful!
The majority of the comments are now people with room temperature IQs trying to sound smart by contradicting a lot of the stories. Most of the actual smart people left this site years ago.
Re:Renewable Energy isn't necessarily wind (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe a little more focusing on the reality would help. From wikipedia:
"Green Mountain Energy’s customer demand has helped spur the development of over 50 wind and solar facilities around the U.S., including more than 35 solar facility donations funded by Green Mountain Energy Sun Club members (previously Big Texas Sun Club).[18] Green Mountain Energy also purchases 100% of the renewable generation from the Green Mountain Energy Winds Farms—Langford and Elbow Creek to supply their consumers and businesses. Jointly, these two West Texas wind farms can produce up to 270 megawatts (MW) of clean power.[19][20]"
Green Mountain in name only (Score:2)
I was excited that a Vermont company could have made such a big splash but alas, the company though founded there seems to have had nothing to do with Vermont for 20 years. They're in Austin and just using Vermont's name. (Green Mountain Coffee is good by the way!)
Improved Efficiency (Score:3)
The real story is how they improved efficiency. Sadly, these details aren't in the TFA(s). I'll make a guess: they made improvements to HVAC, Water-Heating, and Lighting systems.
No, still powered by whatever feeds the grid (Score:2)
They're just paying whatever extra so that their power provider buys sufficient wind power into their distribution system.
The actual electrons powering the Empire State Building come from wherever in the grid generated them. It's not that the Empire State Building goes dark when the wind stops blowing.
It's just a shell game (Score:2)
The Empire State Realty Trust got a deal to cut their electric bill, at least for now.
They pay Green Mountain Energy as their supplier.
Green Mountain doesn't actually actually generate energy, they buy renewable energy certificates (RECs) on your behalf to offset the carbon footprint created by fossil-fuel generators.
As a consumer, these are the terms Green Mountain offers you on price. I especially like the last sentence.
Fixed for 12 bill(s) and then variable. A fixed price contract features a supply pric
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I especially like the last sentence.
Fixed for 12 bill(s) and then variable. A fixed price contract features a supply price that stays the same for the duration of your contract term.
The variable supply price will be determined in our discretion based on many different factors, which may include competitive prices, industry charges we are responsible for, applicable state and local taxes, profit margins, or other business conditions. Events beyond the company's control, including fluctuations in weather, may impact the variable price. The variable price will not increase in any month by more than 30% from the prior month.
Eye-wateringly honest.
Example (with domestic pricing):
January 2021: Bill = $100
February 2021: Bill = $130
<snip$gt;
January 2022 Bill = $2330
Re: (Score:2)
We've been through this B.S. before (Score:2)
Anyone here old enough to remember Enron? The whole thing was predicated on the notion of being able to buy power from anyone you wanted like a cellular service. Too bad one local company installs and maintains the distribution system for every customer. This B.S. is no different and will fail just as hard.
Amd now for something completely the same. (Score:2)
Lawyer 1: Oh my god. Some companies are achieving what we sue them for, renewable energy! Our money is drying up, now what?
Lawyer 2: Sue them for claiming the energy is renewable, because technically no energy is renewable, and the universe is on an eternal wind down! They will settle out of court for a description change.
well... (Score:2)
They're actually powered by what ever Green Mountain Energy says they're feeding power from.
Might actually be wind sourced... But if they don't have renewables available for supply the demand, they get it from the grid.
Re: So each room has a pannel? (Score:2)
For those with humour deficiencies Heh. Don't give up your day job, Jerry.
Re: (Score:2)
He should look into Bloomingdale's management training program.
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For those with humour deficiencies, i'm kidding!
Wouldn't it be better to joke for those without humour deficiencies?
Re: (Score:2)
There's a special mouth shaped panel for that Barefoot guy on here.
Re: Thank you, Mr. President (Score:2)
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Oh, I don't know. That big glowing hydrogen ball in the sky seems to have some uses...
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There was nothing wrong with it, this is just those damn hippie communist liberals messing with another American Icon.
Re: Thank you, Mr. President (Score:2)
Hence why the US reduced its emissions the most of all countries in the last 4 years.
The Empire State Building on the other hand is simply paying a premium to get supposed wind power, they arenâ(TM)t actually off-grid and powered by their own windmills. The largest energy drain for those buildings however is heating the damn thing, which is still done by steam through power plant cogeneration, which is one of the most effective energy production methods.
Re: (Score:2)
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Certainly you don't think the project started two weeks ago?
Re:Thank you, Mr. President (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot has gone to shit.
Building powered from a wind farm obviously means we should discuss politics.
I'm pretty sure this tendency to bring up politics when energy is discussed is universal.
Wind farms are not practical for dense urban areas.
Which is why we put the windmills in rural areas and run high voltage wires to population centers.
Investing in modern nuclear plants is the cheapest, cleanest and most sustainable energy solution.
I'm a HUGE advocate of nuclear power and even I'm not going to claim nuclear power is the cheapest way to produce electricity. Keeping currently operating nuclear power plants open might be the cheapest source of electricity but that's not how to plan for future growth in demand. Source:
https://www.lazard.com/perspec... [lazard.com]
Before anyone brings it up, because I know someone will if I don't comment on it, the cost estimate in the Lazard report includes decommissioning costs. If you want to call this cost estimate bullshit then bring your own link to a contrary report.
Nuclear power is not as cheap as natural gas. It can be once we allow ourselves to develop the technology. Development means building them. There is no developing a technology until it is built and tested in the real world. I'll hear people say we should not build a new nuclear power plant until we can prove the technology to be viable. But we can't prove anything until we build them. Which means they are simply saying we should not build nuclear power plants.
Remember, Trump fans HATE nuclear energy
Why would you think that?
because they are anti-science.
And why would you think that?
If you read the national party platform documents from the Republican and Democrat parties there is one place I found where they agree. They both agree that we need nuclear power. Individual politicians within the party might not agree with this but they will be in opposition of the party platform and therefore their opinion will not carry the same weight. This wasn't always the case, the Democrats were officially silent on nuclear power before the change last August in their policy to be supportive. The policy of high ranking Democrats, like Speaker Pelosi, is in opposition but these people were outvoted. We are getting more nuclear power plants in the USA because the largest hurdle to building more, Democrats, has just been cleared.
Here's a bit of commentary on the Democrat energy policy change last August: https://www.forbes.com/sites/r... [forbes.com]
Re: Thank you, Mr. President (Score:2)
The idea that switching away from fossil fuels leads to people out of work is false.
Wind turbines don't make themselves.
Re: Thank you, Mr. President (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh you wanna play like that.
How about you have a look at how much fossil fuel gets sourced and refined in America then.
I'll wait right here.