A Zealot

I'm not exactly sure how, but somehow I ended up being the de facto chairperson of my school district's state-mandated "energy-management team." I think I ended up in that position because one of the state-mandated requirements of this energy management team is that it create a district wide "energy management plan." 

I am an English major, so I end up chairing lots of things just because I can write the plans.

But that's not the point. I'm not here today to complain about the work I have to do (That's a blog entry I have planned for another day coming soon, but not today). What I wanted to talk about today is that--because I'm on this energy management team--about six weeks ago I attended an "Energy Management Institute" at Morehead University. I'll be honest--I had a really difficult time focusing on that day. I mostly just wanted to enjoy Morehead's beautiful campus.

There were three of us there, though, and we split up to attend sessions throughout the day. I ended up attending the curriculum sessions which supplied us with information we could take back to teachers. I learned a lot of information during these sessions, including the fact that Kentucky leads the nation in energy created by drilling into garbage dumps and mining the methane inside. Lots of useless stuff like that. But one useful piece of information I learned was about how much better the new compact fluorescent light bulbs are compared to the old standard light bulbs. I always knew the CFL's were MUCH more energy efficient, but I also thought they gave off ugly, bright, glaring light. And it's true; the cheap ones do just that. But I found in that session that the newer bulbs give off more of a "soft white" light that we're used to seeing from our standard light bulbs.

Ever since that day, I've become a zealot. Every time we go to the grocery store I pick up another multipack of bulbs, and I'm working to change the entire house over to the new CFL's. And the presenter at that conference was right--the bulbs labeled "soft white" do look pretty much like standard bulbs once they warm up. The only downside is that they come on dim and take maybe 60 seconds to get up to full strength, but you'll generally save about 75-80% in energy usage by switching. 

My goal is to switch the entire house over by Christmas. I guess I could do it en masse in an entire weekend, but those darned bulbs are so expensive (about $4 apiece for the ones that have the glass covers to make them look like standard bulbs) that I hate the idea of buying them all at once.

Just doing my part for the planet.

And my wallet.