How "enlightened" is your area?

[asd109]

http://www.18seconds.org

I saw one of the people behind this (also one of the producers of "An Inconvenient Truth") speak a few weeks ago and the campaign is launched now. I think it's kind of interesting.

Comments

[eanja]

Massachusetts is ranked 48, which surprises me. I wonder, in general, if places with higher rental rates do worse at this. For myself, not only am I not paying for electric (so if I put in expensive bulbs, it nice for the environment, but costs me money rather than saving me anything), but because I have only the light fixtures that came w/ the apartment, either I can't use regular size light bulbs (like these), or I've got halogen torchieres in an effort to actually get some light in the whole room. I see these bulbs cheap at building 19 now and then (though usually when I'm in a hurry), but I'm honestly not sure I have more than one lamp in the house that I could put them in.

[asd109]

I was surprised to see how low the NE was too. I would think that the high rent thing would be offset by the very high price of electricity in the Northeast in general.

My speculation was that this is only tracking purchases since 1/1/07 and lots of people in New England might have already replaced bulbs, or that less shopping in general has happened since it's been cold and snowy?

[eanja]

Ah- if it's not considering prior use, that could have a huge effect. Or it could depend if they are tracking only one brand of bulb as well. After all- pretty much every supermarket round here carries those bulbs, and I'm pretty sure there are multiple brands- that wouldn't be the case if people didn't buy them. So maybe the statistics are just essentially skewed.

I'm not sure what the price of electric has to do with high rent thing- if you are paying, there's no reason for the landlord to change the fixtures, and if he's paying, there's still no point unless he has some way of ensuring the tenants are going use the expensive but energy efficient bulbs. It might make whoever is paying bitch more, but unless the same person controls fixtures, bulbs, and bills, I suspect it isn't likely to be economically sensible to redo them.

[asd109]

It's not brand specific. It's just sales of CFLs reported by major retailers.

What I meant by the high price of electricity was that there would be more demand for energy saving bulbs by people who do pay for their electricity, so that would offset the fact that a lot of people rent and maybe don't pay their own utilities. That is, the non-renters (or renters who do pay utilities) would be more likely to put them in because they'd save more money than people somewhere with cheap electricity (like Kentucky).

[jenniferm]

[asd109]

There are 358 cities (well, metropolitan statistical areas) listed. So 85 is pretty good. From what I remember, the State College MSA includes pretty much all of Centre County.

It's all based on per capita sales. I'm not sure why the website isn't more clear about that.

[box_of_rocks]

The city closest to me is #299 - not too great.

[clickie]

LA sucks...#312 out of 358. Wow.

I don't think I have any incandescents left...I think they're all CFLs. I also installed an Energy Star-compliant thermostat this weekend. We're so energy-conscious!

[asd109]

I love our programmable thermostat.