Dear friends,

If you have been watching the recent Frontline program, then you recognize that we cannot count on our bought-and-paid-for federal government to do anything substantial about climate change. But this is not the end of the world. We can do it ourselves! We don’t need them. It's simple if everyone would do as Jill and I have done, our planet would already be out of the red and headed into the green. And it isn’t like most of us couldn’t afford it. And in the long run, it turns out to be a good investment.

In 2012, we bought a Nissan Leaf. People would stop me in parking lots to ask how I liked it. In 2015, we purchased a Toyota plug-in hybrid. In 2019 we installed 16 solar panels at a net cost of $8000. In 2020, we bought a tankless water heater when our original 40-gallon gas one died. Now, today, my SolarEdge app tells me that we have prevented 57,501 pounds of CO2 from being spewed into our atmosphere from our coal-fired, now gas-fired WPS plant. Another metric says we have had the same CO2 saving as would have been saved by planting 434 trees. I love that!

So now we drive our cars on sunlight and wait a few seconds for hot water with a minimum of natural gas use, but we are still heating the house with natural gas, so we still have more work to do. Over this next year, we will purchase an electric water heater and set the temperature on that a little bit higher than the temperature on the tankless water heater, so the tankless will only come on when there's extra heavy use of hot water, which may be never. Still, I'm not going to throw the tankless water heater away. We are also looking into replacing our inefficient air-conditioner with an electric heat pump to both cool and heat our 1900 sq ft ranch. We'll keep the gas furnace as a backup but only use it in emergencies when the temps drop so low that the heat pump can find no heat to extract. Under this scenario, our gas water heater and gas furnace should last forever, given how seldom they would be used.

So OK, I'm getting close to the bottom line. I have to remind myself sometimes that these solar panels are not only paying for themselves, they're also paying for the gas that I'm not using in our cars, and soon will be paying for the natural gas that I'm not operating in the water heater and furnace. Win, win, win. So here are some rough estimates of how much the solar panels have saved us. I believe Green Bay customers pay $0.09 per kWh for electricity. That’s cheap! Less than a dime for a thousand watts (volts X amps) for an hour! Using that value, I calculate that we have saved $2812 in direct savings for electricity for these past 4.25 years. But that's only the immediate savings in electricity costs; our panels often generate more electricity than needed. When we generate more than we use in a given month, WPS pays us back $012 per kilowatt-hour. I remember estimating our fuel usage based on MasterCard records before we put the solar panels in that we spent a dollar a day on gas. So we have two cars that's $0.50/car per day. So wait, we have also saved about $1580 on gas since we installed the solar panels, and that is based on gas prices that were much lower in 2011 than they are now.

So when you think about it, we are saving money, and we are saving the planet at the same time! And almost everybody I know can afford to do what we're doing. So, let's face it, our government is never going to do it for us. We have to do it for ourselves and our children and our children’s children's children. And, we can do this. And right now, there are so many cool electric cars and plugin hybrids out there that I'm kind of jealous that our vehicles are still in such good shape it is nowhere near time to replace them. I mean, both the all-electric car, which is now a 2015 Nissan Leaf, and the 2015 Prius are going on 7 years old, but they are almost like new. Because the electric motor not only propels the car when it is in EV mode, it also works along with the little gas motor once the EV battery is exhausted. This cuts way down on wear and tear on the gas motor. And, because the electric motor turns into a generator when the car is coasting, or you hit the brakes, there are tremendous savings on the brake linings. The only maintenance we have had to do on the Prius is annual tire rotations and oil changes. Yes, I use Mobil-1 oil and change it only once a year. Why? Because the gas engine runs a lot less often per mile traveled, and it gets help even when it is running. I might switch to a change every 6 months this year as the engine is well past middle age. Now, the Leaf is a totally different story. The electric motor has only one moving part! It never needs motor oil. The only “maintenance” I do with the Leaf is an annual systems check for $80 and a tire rotation for maybe $32. And the Leaf’s brakes get used only during panic stops and/or the last 30 feet or so of a normal stop. Savings upon savings upon savings! And now that the demand for electrics and hybrids is up, I can sell or trade in our cars for more than half what I paid for them seven years ago. And the buyer would still be getting a great deal!

So, after we install the third row on our solar array and put in the heat pump and the electric water heater, we'll be either net-zero or even net-negative for CO2 production. And there is another new technology coming online right now. It is a car charging port that works both ways so that if/when the grid that powers your house goes down, your car’s batteries can provide backup power for the whole house for two days if you are careful. And, if you have a plug-in hybrid, you can power the home for as long as your gas holds out. How is that for a sweet and inexpensive perk? No need to install a special battery in the basement for backup. You already own one.

I have a friend who said he’d get solar, but he was not planning to stay in the house long enough to get the full payback. I just said, “Huh.” I should have said, but you’ll get your payback when you sell the house, and if you leave it to your kids, they’ll get the payback. But even more importantly, we citizens have already spent millions and millions pitching to finance 350.org or other green initiatives. Why not just take the initiative ourselves. Do we love our children that much? Do we love them enough to bite a small financial bullet now to save them from having to face climate chaos? I think we do. It just hasn’t been practical until now. Now is the time. WE CAN DO THIS. WE CAN DO THIS NOW!