I read an interesting piece from Marketplace entitled “It’s not easy being green when you’re poor” discussing how poor neighborhoods fear being left behind as Pittsburgh enjoys a surge in renewable energy home heating resources that accompanies the current local tech boom. While we are far from poor, the problem still resonated with me. The primary heat source in our house is electric, two heat pumps to be precise. While heat pumps have come a long way in the past few decades, they are still far from perfect and when it gets below 25 or so, we need to use the propane back-up to warm the house. I plan on using the wood stove more next year, but anyone who’s heated with wood knows the frustrations involved with that. This house is much tighter than our (literally) old house in Charleston, so the temperature is more stable. In Charleston, we ran on natural gas, and the temperature indoors, if graphed, would resemble a classic sine wave. But even in this relatively new, well-insulated house, compared to the in-laws’ house across the street, this place is a yo-yo. They installed a geothermal heating system, and it works wonderfully well, providing a steady, quiet heat. We don’t have solid numbers yet, because they moved in halfway through the heating season, but I’m betting that their electric costs will be dwarfed by ours, even though they seem to keep their house on the warm side of tropical.
We don’t plan on going anywhere, so we would of course love to install a geothermal system and would be prepared for a long term recoupment, it’s just that we don’t have $25k sitting around. We are considering installing some solar panels, but while they have gotten cheaper, they are still by no means cheap. And our moronic President is not helping anything, either, with his—and I hate to use the same word again so quickly, but it works so well with him—moronic policy of putting tariffs on foreign (Chinese) solar panels. A policy that means little to the Chinese, but a lot to US solar installers and maintainers, I might add. Here in Appalachia, solar energy seems to have done the impossible: bring the GOP around to the plight of the poor. Here, for example, Tyler White, the President of the Kentucky Coal Association, does some impressive concern trolling over how the “elite” are taking advantage of the poor by installing home solar systems. What a guy!
Naturally, I’d be pleased by a lower electricity bill, but that’s not my primary concern with wanting a more economical heating source, it just seems like the right thing to do. But how come the right thing is so expensive?
Oh, and happy spring! It’s snowing.