Re: Europe, the US, and Environmentalism

[Julia Thompson]

On Mon, 2 Jul 2001, Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote:

> In the Netherlands the product 'renewable energy' has today gone into
> the free market phase and as far as I got it, it is a succes.
> Different companies are already competing with each other to get
> costumers for this product. By chosing to pay a little more for your
> electricity you help finance new projects for renewable energy. Looks
> like 'green energy' can be sold to the public. Yes, and I realise it
> would never work like that in the US. :o)

Well, City of Austin Utilities seem to be making a little progress in that
department, actually.  They have programs where you sign up to have your
electricity generated in a specific way.  Your bill may be higher,
especially at first, but as a method becomes more efficient or temporarily
cheaper (due to fluctuating fuel costs as we've seen so far this year),
your bill may at times be lower than the average.

I was seeing an ad on TV sometime in the past few days about getting power
from landfills.  I'm not sure how that works, but I like the idea of
getting power from our waste.

        Julia