This morning, I surfed the Memphis Daily News site and came across an interesting article: The Daily News is going green. That means that they committed to buy 25 “blocks” a month of green power, which is power from renewable energy sources such as solar energy, wind power, and methane gas. “Green” power sources do not produce the emissions associated with traditional fossil fuels.
Residential customers can buy “blocks” of power as well. Each block costs only $4, added to your MLGW bill as a line item. Using one block of green energy per month over the course of a year will produce environmental savings equivalent to recycling 7,661 cans, planting half an acre of trees, recycling half a ton of newspaper, or not driving a car for 2 months. Signing up to buy blocks of power takes about 1 minute to do online – here’s the link to more info and to sign up.
This morning I got online and signed up to buy a block of power a month. They say each block delivers 150 kilowatt hours, which is about 10-12% of a home’s average monthly power consumption. Since I live in an apartment (and therefore have lower bills) I just signed up for one block, but may increase it in the future. As you can see above, even one block makes a tremendous difference.
So, I’d like to invite all my readers to sign up for the program as well. Working together we can fight back against global warming. If you decide to sign up, send me an e-mail after you do (paul.ryburn@gmail.com) and tell me how many blocks you bought… I’m just curious to see how much of a difference this blog can make.
I’d be pleased to see other Memphis bloggers take this idea and run with it as well.
Going to delay my one remaining BBQ Fest post for a day… this is more important.