Retracting my previous statements

Oh dear, my appalling math skills have let me down again. Basically when I wrote about switching to wind power recently I said it was cheaper to go direct to Community Energy than to go through ConEd. However now I've done the math, I think I was wrong. Here's my new reckoning, in answer to an email received via the Bowery Babes email group list as to whether NYC peeps are better off going direct to Community Energy or through ConEd:

"From the research I've done I think it's a pretty close run thing but in the long run you're probably slightly better off staying with ConEd and switching to their wind power option. Your alternative is to go direct to community energy, which is the company which supplies ConEd with wind power, but ConEd offers a good deal with them.

Basically, if you go direct to Community Energy, they charge $2.50 per block of 100 KwH (min 2 blocks) and if you go through ConEd they charge 2 cents 50 per KwH - i.e. exactly the same. Both charges are on top of your current electricity charge as renewable energy is more expensive.

However ConEd also offers a $25 sign-up rebate and NY state taxes are waived once you've signed up (this might also be true going direct to Community Energy but am sure would be a pain to organize). You also pay for exactly what you use with ConEd as opposed to having to buy blocks which might be innaccurate.

So from what I know, which of course is not loads, it seems ConEd might be cheaper over the long term (when I wrote my blog on this I actually thought the opposite - but think I was wrong). Community Energy are very nice and easy to deal with, though!"

Sorry. Repeat after me, 2+2=4, 4+4=8....

Offsetting our carbon

The good thing about having this blog is it's making me feel compelled to actually do all those worthy things I've been thinking and talking about doing for years but hadn't. For example, we flew to the UK last night (lots of fun, flying with a 3 month old baby. Actually she was doing just fine till we had to sit on the tarmac at Heathrow for an hour with Dot restrained by a seat belt, poor little love). I found out it's 3,458 miles one-way from NYC to London, so this morning I went onto carbonfund.org and paid $20 to offset 20,000 miles-worth of carbon emissions. You get to choose how they offset the carbon, so I chose reforestation - it's the easiest to get your head round and I like the idea of planting trees (actually I've just realized that I thought I'd totally overbudgeted but that's because I forgot that was a one-way trip till I wrote it down here so I'm about 700 miles short - will plant own trees when we get home to make up for it. Doh).

I really can't believe how easy and cheap it was to do this. Makes me wonder what took me so long.

Right, I have a very important date with a pile of back-issues of my favourite UK gossip mag Grazia to keep before the jetlagged bubba wakes up. Don't worry, they're ones our friend Sally has finished with. So technically this counts as recycling and as such could be considered greening.

Oh, by the way, if you were thinking of getting me the carbon offset for Xmas, no worries - there are plenty of other bad things i do which need offsetting too so it won't go to waste.

Tilting at Windmills

I'm proud to announce that the Williams Delaney Lethbridge household is now powered entirely by wind. This will come as little surprise to those of you better acquainted with my husband. In fact, you may be wondering what took us so long. Ho ho!

OK, crap jokes aside, I'm feeling extremely smug because after an excellent morning's work, I've converted our house to run entirely on green energy generated by windmills. I'd like to tell you I've got my own one in the back garden, but actually it was easier and much cheaper, if more prosaic, than that.

I got the idea from an email I was sent last month encouraging me to go to www.conedsolutions.com/greenpower and sign up, but I was leaving New York and ConEd isn't our supplier up here, and me being of little faith, I was convinced Pennsylvania wouldn't be enlightened enough to offer the option. Well, there I go again with my NY snobbery. After only an hour or so of the type of research I can't normally be bothered with, I was all signed up with the exact same supplier Con Ed uses in NYC, but by going direct to the source, even more cheaply (am becoming a real little Consumer Reports shopper out here. Next thing you know I'll be clipping coupons).

So basically I went to my electricity co (PPL)'s website and learned that since the eleccy industry was deregulated , you can now choose your supplier (you can't change the grid, just the energy source, I think). From there, like a good eco-geek, I clicked through various consumer reports until I figured out that my only green option was to sign up for wind power with Community Energy.

It says on the website that they charge $2.50 per block of 100 kWh (you have to buy 2 minumum) and that you pay this direct to them on top of your usual eleccy bill. I found this a bit confusing so had to phone them for an explanation. The friendly bloke on the phone did his best. "You buy the power and we tip it into the grid you're connected to," he said. "What, so I'm paying but I don't know if the green stuff is coming to me?" I asked. "Well ma'am, we can't control the electrons, so no," he replied patiently. "Oh," I said, deflated. But then the light dawned. "It's a bit like when you buy those vouchers to offset your carbon emissions from a flight" - which I will do before I head to the UK next week- I said, deciding I quite liked the socialist feel of it all. He confirmed it was something along those lines.

The next step was to figure out how much eleccy we use a month so I'd know how much wind to purchase. I phoned PPL and apparently in the last 30 days we used 351 kWh (compared to a national household average of 500 kWh a month).

So I was going to round down to 300 and buy 3 blocks in anticipation of our reduced consumption, but then I figured that was like buying those size 8 trousers (that's a US size 4 people) before you've been on the diet, and you know damn well they'll be in the cupboard till they go to the charity shop unworn (not to mention being also terribly cheap), so I signed up for 4 blocks of wind, 400KwH, a month, at a total cost of $10. The online calculator let me know this would save 5266lbs of CO2 per month - equivalent, apparently to 4568 miles not driven or 358 trees not planted. Not bad for $10, eh? And really ridiculously easy - though I have to admit that if I was working at the moment, I would probably have given up before I got it all figured out. This being green is a full time job.

But now I've done the figuring out part for you, what's your excuse? Join me, friends! You can do the same thing in most US states (all on the same site) . If you're in NYC, you can go through ConEd and get a $25 rebate, they waive the NY sales tax and they only charge an extra 2.5 cents per kWh (though I think it's cheaper still to go direct to Community Energy and cut out ConEd). If you do this, by the way, make sure you go for the 'wind only' option because they also offer a 'green power' option which is 60% hydropower and I heard on the radio yesterday they now think hydroelectric damns somehow cause methane to be released into the atmosphere which is even worse for the greenhouse effect than CO2 - bad! Oh, and in the UK you can do the same at www.ecotricity.com.

So join me and my windy spouse - if nothing else, it'll also give you endless opportunities to make truly appalling jokes. (and by the way, if you do, please would you let us know? Would be good to keep track of any +ve changes made as a result of this blog. One day I'll figure out how to have a running tally on the site - the opposite of naming and shaming. Also please share this tip with anyone and everyone you know. Think how much CO2 we could save.)

Mother's Ruin

Dot is an extremely easy baby. She sleeps for nine hours straight at night (she said, tempting fate), she almost never cries and she's generally speaking a smiley, giggly, scrumptious little thing. But even so, by the end of a day keeping her happy, mummy is jonesing for the one (ish) glass of wine a breastfeeding woman is allowed. So around 6 o'clock most evenings, T offers to hop in the car and pop to Michael's wine shop in Narrowsburg to pick me up a nice bottle of red.

Tonight I wanted to drop in on my friend Anna who's just opened a fantastic store, Nest, there (you'll here more about this anon but basically it's a fantastic assortment of home stuff, toiletries, clothes, books, linens, candles etc. and lots of it is either fairtrade or organic. Dangerous), so I thought I'd go to the wine shop myself. I also had my own agenda: I wanted to see whether Michael stocked organic wine.

Why? Well, last week, I sudennly realized that wine is really heavy so is probably horrendous from a carbon dioxide perspective, especially since we live nowhere near the places our wine is produced (you UK readers are fine - France is just across the pond). So I figured if I was boycotting Mexican Butternut squash, it was a bit hypocritical not to give up the Auzzie and French vino too (god this being good is a Pandora's box).

So we'd been sticking to the slightly less long haul Californian stuff, but I figured we could do better and last night got on Google. I discovered there were in fact a couple of vineyards within 60 miles of here (one in Hunter in the Catskills) so was planning a nice little tasting day trip today, till I discovered they're closed for the week - bummer! Undaunted, I decided to research organic wines. Since organic farming uses half the energy of traditional methods (via Ideal Bite), I figured the same had to apply to viticulture, and apparently I was right (I can't find the evidence now, must have been that glass of wine going to my head so you'll just have to trust me on this).

Hence the Narrowsburg mission. Michael didn't look impressed when I told him what I was after. But to my surprise, he graciously showed me his selection of five organic reds. He said he had them because some people are allergic to the sulphates in normal wine. He shrugged when I asked what he'd recommend - clearly not his favourite section of the store; we settled on Oreleans Hill, a Californian Zinfandel with a hippy-ish label. Thought that way I could do a fun taste-test with the remainder of last night's Zin when I got home (listen, you have to make your own fun in Milanville and oh god, I am turning into my parents). To add insult to injury, I then tried to bring up the topic of local vineyards. Michael was having none of it. "When your palate gets used to a certain calibre of wine, it's hard to go back," he said. "Your husband and I have very similar taste." Which I took to mean, 'if that's what you call wine, you should leave the wine choosing to the men next time love'. Fair enough, good wine is his business but saving the planet is mine, so I'm prepard to try anything once. Well, almost. And you have to agree it's impressive he even had the stuff at all.

I brought Anna and her husband Kelly by and we had our little tasting. The verdict? Oh god, how do you write about wine without sounding like a pretentious twat? Er, in a blind test, I reckon I'd pick the non-organic. But it really isn't half bad and apparently you don't get hangovers from it. So I'll keep working my way through the selection and keep you posted.