An Action You Can Take From Home? Upgrade Your Electric to Renewable via Your Electric Company
When my family lived in Madison, we used MG&E and for the ten years we lived there, we powered our apartment 100% on wind and solar energy. MG&E offers a renewables program which allows households to purchase renewable energy options, and we took advantage of it. The more people who enroll in renewable energy programs through their electric companies, the more affordable the program becomes for everyone.
When we moved to a small town that rests on the shores of Lake Michigan and purchased our home, I checked with our local electric company to see if they offered a renewables program, and they did! The upgrade from standard coal to renewable was a negligible amount after all things considered--only an increase of $5 to $10 a month with our average kilowatt hours.
As a result, our household's electric is powered 100% by wind and solar energy, generated by local wind and solar farms.
This means that our Lettuce Grow Farmstand and my Nissan LEAF are both powered with 100% renewable energy, along with our phones, computer, TV, lights, refrigerator, and all other electronics. It's a small action that doesn't require any time from me aside from the initial call to my electric company to make the change.
In the city of Sheboygan, where my family currently resides, there's a coal power plant on the south side of the city along Lake Michigan. When we moved here, we actually put an offer in on a home near the power plant, but I'm so grateful our offer was rejected, because that area of town smells awful! Have you ever smelled a coal plant? It smells like an outhouse.
In addition to unpleasant-smelling air pollutants, the fine particulate matter spewed from these smoke stacks are known carcinogens. From a study by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, it's estimated by the year 2025, 1.37 million cases of lung cancer around the world will be linked to coal plants. For every 1-kilowatt increase of coal capacity per person, the risk of lung cancer increases in men by 59% and in women by 85%.
In May 2020, Alliant Energy announced plans to shutter the coal plant by yearend 2022, much to my delight. This followed plans for the company to invest 1,000 megawatts of solar by the year 2023 and is the next step in plans for Alliant to move to renewable energy.
In the meantime, I'm proud to run my home on 100% renewable energy, and to encourage others to do the same.
Sources:
Charlie Nichols is the founder of WHE and a staff contributor. Charlie studied Journalism & Mass Communication, Marketing, and Psychology at Madison College in Madison, Wisconsin. She has practiced witchcraft for over two decades and is a certified spiritual empowerment coach, a certified ethical psychic, and a certified crystal healer. Charlie lives on the shores of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, USA with her partner, daughter, and animal companions.
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