A lot of blogging about Al Gore’s electricity, today. In a fairly typical example, Brian Doherty at Hit and Run writes:
…Gore’s whole deal is that civilization-saving absolutely and vitally requires an action on everyone’s part that he seems to refuse to do himself…
As I understand it, most of the changes that Gore calls for are more global than individual in nature. But in his own life, Gore attempts to lower his carbon usage — for instance, by driving a hybrid car, purchasing “green power,” and flying on commercial airlines when he can — and then buys carbon offsets to make up for the rest.
So that’s that Gore does himself. Now, what actions does Gore suggest everyone else take? Note the big lettering behind Gore in this screencap:
You can watch the full video here. Doherty’s accusation of hypocrisy appears unfounded; Gore isn’t asking more of the rest of us than he’s doing himself.
In addition to the Gristmill post I already linked to, which is excellent, Jim Henley and The Anonymous Liberal have good posts on this faux-controversy (or should I say FOX-controversy?). Curtsy to Robert Hayes, whose ad hom attack on Gore alerted me to this issue.
Out of curiosity, what’s the “ad hom attack” in my original post? I said that his motive isn’t environmentalism, but a desire to put more power in the hands of governments. I don’t think speculation about motive is an “attack”.
“But in his own life, Gore attempts to lower his carbon usage…”
He isn’t attempting very hard. (Hint: sell two of the three mansions.) Driving a Prius is awful nice of him, but is a drop compared to the energy being vacuumed up by his tens of thousands of square feet of residential space.
And out of curiosity, where is Gore flying that he can only go commercial “when he can”? Last time I checked, the commercial air grid covered pretty much the whole inhabited world. Is he giving slide shows in wildest Borneo?
“If you don’t have a good argument, change the subject . . .” And thus the topic of conversation changes from a real and substantial issue, global warming, to a false and trivial one, whether Al Gore is doing absolutely EVERYTHING in his power to combat it, even though he is presently doing more than just about any other human being on the planet, particularly if you include the impact his actions have on what other people do.
Is anyone saying that Mr. Gore uses LESS energy than the average person? Would the problem go away if everyone lived the same lifestyle as Mr. Gore?
I’d be willing to accept that all of his travel is defensible on the grounds that it’s a necessary price for spreading the message. But completely ignoring that travel, his personal lifestyle isn’t consistent with his proported beliefs. The question isn’t whether or not he’s a hypocrite. The question is whether he actually believes what he’s saying. By his actions, the case could easily be made that he doesn’t.
And if Sphen really believes that, I have a great bridge in Brooklyn that’s for sale.
Anyway, my understanding is that one of those houses belonged to his wife’s family, and one is their residence in Nashville. I am speculating that he also owns a vacation home. Maybe on balance owning three homes uses less energy than staying in a hotel and eating out. Maybe it houses a caretaker family who otherwise don’t have their own house. Who cares.
There is a long list of hypocrites on the environment. Robert Kennedy Jr., telling everyone to drive a prius while taking private limos and jets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvfVVKpllgI
Take a look at Streisand’s mansion
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-streisandmansion.htm
They tell us to cut back and lecture us on our “McMansions while they feel justified by their lofty status to burn more fossil fuel than a dozen families like ours.
Of course there is my favorite environmental fraud. Bonus points if you can guess the number of mansions and total square feet of space utilized by John Kerry and his wife.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_kerry_homes.htm
That they are also wrong about global warming and how to alleviate it is beside the point.
Barbara,
Are you saying that the problem would be better if everyone lived the same lifestyle as Mr. Gore? Personally, I use about 160kWh of electricity per month at home, I don’t even have a gas hookup, and I commute by bike, about 150 miles per week. Am I somehow less environmentally friendly than Mr. Gore? Would the world be more polluted if everyone lived as I do, or as he does? If he truely believes what he preaches, why does he live as he does?
I’ve made no personal attack on you, or anyone else. I’d appreciate the same curtesy.
Ummm, since he can afford the “offsets” he is somehow justified in his gluttony? Looking forward a few years, a scenario where only the uber-wealthy who can afford to pay the tarriff on energy are gonna be the only ones to have a warm or cool house, is my no means out of the question.
If he’s only asking for people to do what he’s done, that doesnt meet the definition of hypocracy.
G-mann, you’re bring up an entirely separate issue. I wasn’t talking about if Gore is right in his actions; I was talking about if Gore can fairly be called a hypocrite.
Personally, I think the Gores are living too extravagant a lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean he’s a hypocrite. As Gore isn’t going around hectoring people to live in tiny homes and give up having vacation homes, I don’t think it’s fair to call him a hypocrite for having multiple, large homes.
Also, you don’t have to be ultra-wealthy to afford offsets. I used the calculator at this websites, and found that offsets for me would cost $24 a year. (Admittedly, I have a well below-average energy use profile.)
pheeno,
I’m missing something. What has Mr. Gore done that he’s asking the rest of us to do?
As a consumer, Gore buys the low-energy alternatives when they’re available (green energy, energy efficient light bulbs, etc). And then he buys energy offsets for the remainder.
And that’s also what he suggests the rest of us do. (See the video I linked to in my post).
Robert, you attempted to undermine Gore’s argument by attacking his (alleged) motive for making the argument. That is a classic ad hominem argument.
Is it the word “attack” you’re stumbling over? I didn’t mean “attack” as in cheap insults, as if you said Al Gore’s mom dresses him funny; I meant “attack” in the debate sense of “attacking an argument,” which can refer to perfectly polite attempts to show why an argument should not carry weight.
No, of course not, if by “lifestyle” you mean extreme wealth. Are you suggesting that any valid environmental policy must include a wealth ceiling, so that no rich people are allowed to live outsize lives?
If you’re not saying that we must outlaw the practice of living in mansions, then I don’t see what the basis of your objection is.
If everyone but the extremely poor lived as the Gores do in the sense of taking reasonable steps to reduce their carbon footprint, that wouldn’t be a complete solution in and of itself, but it would certainly be a very significant step in the correct direction.
* * *
I should mention that I do think there’s some sense in having a wealth ceiling, or at least extremely high taxes on extremely high wealth. But I have to doubt whether the Gore-haters in this thread would be wiling to endorse such a policy.
His record doesn’t show that he makes any meaningful effort to conserve energy. A single one of his multiple homes uses 115 times as much electricity as mine does. The fact that he can pay for that privellige doesn’t alter the fact that the energy is still being used. The total amount of available “green” power in this country is far less than the current power usage. Therefore, Mr. Gore’s use of that power simply forces other people to use more polluting sources. The net environmental benefit is zero, unless he’s actually increasing the amount of availible “green” power.
He’s simply using his wealth to push the burden of his policies on to the less fortunate among us, who can’t afford to pay for indulgences. The practice is the same as the one that brought about the Protestant Reformation.
If Mr. Gore truely believed that CO2 emissions would lead to the deaths of billions of people, and if those deaths mattered to him, he would not choose such an extravagant lifestyle. As I don’t believe him to be in favor of such destruction, I can only conclude the he doesn’t believe it will really happen.
I have no intention of telling him how to live his life, and I sincerely hope that his taxes are reduced, as I have that hope for everyone. All I ask is that he not tell me how to live my life. The fact that he lives in a way he wants probibited to all but the extraorinalrily wealthy, is simply an additional slap in the face.
His record doesn’t show that he makes any meaningful effort to conserve energy.
What about the solar panels that he’s installing on his home? Do those count?
The total amount of available “green” power in this country is far less than the current power usage
Right, but I suspect that’s at least in part because there hasn’t been enough of a demand for it yet. Accordingly, Gore’s purchase of green power may indeed be contributing to the increase of available green power.
He also purchases carbon offsets, as has been mentioned. Here is an interesting discussion of them. The strongest ones invest in developing the infrastructure for renewables, thus bringing about the aforementioned “increase of available green power.” The ones that invest in tree planting are viewed as less effective for obvious reasons, e.g trees are a temporary carbon sink, their continued life and growth isn’t assured, etc.
The whole thing troubles me. 20 rooms for a household of two members (not counting any servants) is extravagant. It’s nothing more than a status symbol. A hybrid SUV is still an SUV, and gets comparable gas mileage to a regular combustion sedan, not a hybrid sedan. For urban dwellers, choosing an SUV over a sedan is all about the appearance of status.
You can buy all of the offsets that you want, people can’t see offsets. What they can see is conspicuous consumption. When the mantra of environmentalists has been reduce, reuse, recycle for decades, no one can look at a huge mansion and an SUV and prodigious travel and see reduction.
It would be nice if more of the wealthy who are trumpeting environmentalism were actually living lives that set an example. The huge houses and the rest don’t encourage people — particularly those who are just making ends meet — to change their lifestyles. It becomes a “do as I say, not as I do” situation and most adults are highly resistant to that, for obvious and understandable reasons.
Should Al Gore live in a shack? No. But I’m willing to bet, just bet, that he and his wife could get by in 10 rooms rather than 20. One house, rather than 3. A Prius instead of a Lexus RX.
I don’t think that a wealth ceiling is necessary. You can be as rich as King Midas, that doesn’t mean that you have to buy, buy, buy, get, get, get, and have bigger and costlier things just for the sake of having bigger and costlier things. We’re not talking about the difference between generic and name brand, between a Buick and a Mercedes here.
If your focus is environmental improvement, then a smaller, environmentally progressive new home is quantifiably better choice than a larger, older house or even a new house built to the same environmental spec but much larger than the size of your family warrants.
When the SUV that gets 30 mpg seats the exact same number of people as the sedan that gets 50 mpg, the sedan is the better choice.
When you have the potential and the freedom that is associated with wealth, you can make better choices and when you don’t — while encouraging much less wealthy people to do so, sometime at great cost to themselves — you should be called upon to answer for it.
Meanwhile, look at W’s house…
Is Bush a closet green?
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/is_george_bush.php
You can buy all of the offsets that you want, people can’t see offsets. What they can see is conspicuous consumption.
I don’t understand why people can’t see offsets. Gore has been quite open about his purchase of offsets. There is nothing inherent in carbon offsets that is any less visible or accessible than any other measure someone might take to decrease their footprint. But if all someone is looking for is the consumption, I suppose that’s all they’ll see.
It might help if he wasn’t buying the offsets from himself.
It might help if he wasn’t buying the offsets from himself.
Assuming 1) the Tennessean article is correct and 2) that’s the only entity from which he purchases offsets, he’s still not “buying them from himself.” Your comment seems to imply that his purchase of offsets is a shell transaction through which no carbon is actually offset. There is no evidence for that in the link you cited, or in the Tennessean article, which states that he purchases them through Generation Investment Management, LLP, a green investment company he founded.
This article in Wired observes:
The Gores and all the employees of Generation lead a “carbon-neutral” lifestyle, reducing their energy consumption when possible and purchasing so-called offsets available on newly emerging carbon markets.
I’m not sure why it offsets any less carbon to purchase an offset “available on the newly emerging carbon markets” through Generation, a limited liability partnership he founded and in which he holds a partnership interest.
Also note that the Wired article observes that the Gores offset the carbon produced by their travels (that presumably they undertook in their work on the global warming issue) “by giving money to an Indian solar electric company and a Bulgarian hydroelectric project.”
But if your point is not that Gore isn’t really offsetting his carbon production, but that his purchase of credits through Generation is complex enough that it’s ripe for innuendo and obfuscation, I’ll happily grant you that.
I would also note that the post you linked claims that Gore’s “house gets its electricity from Nashville Electric Service, which gets its from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which produces most of its power from coal-burning power plants.”
Actually, the Gores are registered for 100% green power with Green Power Switch. So in fact, the Gores’ power comes from sources “generated by renewable resources such as solar, wind, and methane gas — to Valley consumers.”
Pardon my error, but this paragraph should have been italicized, as it was a quote from the Wired article:
The Gores and all the employees of Generation lead a “carbon-neutral” lifestyle, reducing their energy consumption when possible and purchasing so-called offsets available on newly emerging carbon markets.
What I meant by my comment, Trailhead, was that from the perception-is-reality POV, it looks odd for his offsets to be purchased through a company he himself owns. There’s nothing wrong with that; hey, I lease a computer to my own company quite legally. But I’m not out there stumping for corporate governance reform, either.
It’s very sweet that Gore is registered for “green power”. But electricity is fungible, and he gets his juice off the grid, same as most everyone else. Unless the power company went and added a million kwh of capacity when Gore placed his order, his profligate electricity use is burning coal.
And that, in the end, is the point. If you believe that the environment is endangered by human activity and that we need to reduce that activity, then you kind of have to reduce your activity if you also want to be the guy on the stage credibly saying “reduce, reduce, reduce”. Saying “oh, but I’ve compensated for my energy use by paying other people to use less” is perhaps economically sound, but is a political non-starter. Notice the first part of the advisory Amp’s photo contains: REDUCE. Then, offset.
What I meant by my comment, Trailhead, was that from the perception-is-reality POV, it looks odd for his offsets to be purchased through a company he himself owns. There’s nothing wrong with that; hey, I lease a computer to my own company quite legally. But I’m not out there stumping for corporate governance reform, either.
You may be quite right that it “looks odd,” even if there’s nothing wrong with it, which there really isn’t — at least, there’s no evidence I’ve seen yet that there’s anything awry with it. For that reason, for anyone who cares to look at it honestly, it wouldn’t look odd. But like I said above, I’m certainly willing to acknowledge that there may be many unwilling to do so.
As for your latter point, that electricity is fungible, that’s absolutely true. But that fact does not support your conclusion. My understanding of green power (at least with my power company) is this: As many kilowatt hours as you use, the power company purchases that amount in renewables. So you’re contributing green power to the pool of electricity. It nets out. Green Power Switch apparently sells its renewable power in blocks. Gore purchased enough power to cover all of what he uses. So your point:
Unless the power company went and added a million kwh of capacity when Gore placed his order, his profligate electricity use is burning coal.
is not accurate. Because when Gore ordered those blocks, the TVA in fact did order that amount of renewable energy, that otherwise would have been produced by burning coal.
I don’t know if that’s how the power company in Tennessee works, but if it is, then you’re quite right, and my point is accordingly deprecated.
So you’re saying that the utilities fail to uphold their end of green power arrangements, and that this is Gore’s fault.
Although it isn’t done on this micromanagement level (I don’t think)
is exactly what the power company has promised to do for green power buyers. The power company buys from green sources (or develops green plants itself) to provide power to meet the demand for green power.
Green power, unlike carbon offsets, are a pretty straight forward arrangement, and directly achieve (except for the inclusion of natural gas as green power, which is pretty problematic from a CO2 perspective) the reduction in CO2. You can use as much electricity from solar and wind as you please, without increasing your CO2 footprint.
Gore advocates decreasing your carbon foot print, not decreasing your electric power usage.
If Gore were using the same sorts of unusual methods of cutting electrical usage that the Bush ranch does, I suspect he’d get people saying “Oh sure, he’s rich and can have his house built to his exact specifications, so he can do all those things, but what about the rest of us who live in generic houses, what are we supposed to do?” and “See, he just wants to destroy the economy!”
Instead, he lives a perfectly normal rich person’s life, and cuts his carbon foot print to a very small size, demonstrating that any random rich person can have a small carbon footprint, and so he gets accused of being a hypocrite because he lives the same lifestyle as most rich people (except without the carbon footprint).
And yes, carbon offsets and green energy subscriptions are complicated enough that you can obscure their meaning sufficiently to cook up some inaccurate rumors about Gore, and use that to slip in some anti-environmentalist digs on the back of inaccurate and salacious rumor mongering about a celebrity on the evening news. Congratulations to all the partisan hacks with zero integrity!
cross posted that last one.
Wait,
Robert, you posted an attack on Gore for this, without bothering to figure out what green power was or how it worked? Shameful.
Gore advocates decreasing your carbon foot print, not decreasing your electric power usage.
Gore advocates decreasing your carbon footprint, and the first word of his instructions for doing so is “Reduce”. YMMV as to what that means; it seems clear to me.
I know what green power is; I don’t know what the specifics of Gore’s power company’s green power arrangement are. I’m not sure where the shameful part comes into play. If I have to have perfect information before making a post, I’ll have a very quiet blog life.
I’m glad you mentioned it, though. I’ve looked at the figures subsequently, and someone is playing silly buggers. There’s no way Gore is buying 100% green electricity – his bill isn’t high enough. I’ll have to do some research and do another post over at CD.
Well, I’m not sure why you think the numbers don’t add up. According to the Green Power Switch website, green power is sold in 150 kilowatt-hour chunks. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research claims the Gores used 221,000 kilowatt hours in 2006, adding up to annual power bill of roughly $30,000. I don’t know how much each kilowatt hour of non-green power costs, but Green Power Switch says each block of green power adds about $4 to the bill. If Gore used 221,000 kilowatt hours of power, that means he needed to purchase 1,473.33 blocks of green power. At 4 extra dollars per block, that’s an extra $5,893.33.
So the question then becomes, is $24,106.66 too cheap for 221,000 kilowatts of non-green power from the Tennessee Valley Authority in 2006? I don’t know that it is.
Pingback: Is Gore’s Electricity 100% Green? « Creative Destruction
I ran the figures and it doesn’t add up, Trailhead. (And you’ve got some wrong numbers in your back-of-the-envelope calculation, too.)
Gore’s paying 7.5 cents, but with the green power initiative thingie he should be paying a little more than 10 cents. See the CD post at the trackback. I’ll refrain from posting the link again. Electrons aren’t free. :P
That seems like it would be rather a blatant lie for Gore’s staff to be trying to pass off, if your calculation is correct.
I suspect a bit of Clintoning. They buy a little green power; the rest is ordinary juice. That’s just a guess, though.
Given the different numbers being reported in the media, I looked for the actual utility bills but they don’t appear online. According to the Tennessean, which looked at a summary of the utility bills for the last three months:
Gore purchased 108 blocks of “green power” for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills.
That means he purchased 16,200 kilowatt hours of green power for each month. Using the 191,000 kWh per year number, he used about 15, 917 kWh per month.
Could be that he’s buying 100% green NOW, but wasn’t last year.
Perhaps, but I don’t see any real evidence for it.
Gore did tell a staff writer for Grist magazine in August 2006 that he “does in fact take advantage of the green power options his utility offers.” So I don’t think you can conclude that he’s only done it for the last three months for which the Tennessean has reviewed the bills.
Also, according to the Green Power Switch website, the green power is billed via a line item on the monthly bill, so I’m wondering whether that was taken into account by those reporting on the annual cost.
I don’t think there are enough facts to conclude that Gore is somehow lying about purchasing 100% green power. You do. I suppose we just disagree. Imagine that.
If you drive behind Mr. Gore’s SUV or drive past Mr. Gore’s 20 room home, you will have no way to be aware of his purchase of offsets.
What Gore is doing is buying “Green” power that would otherwise not have a label attached to it so that he gets the “Green” power and the people who’d have otherwise gotten the “Green” power and not known about it, no longer do.
If there were (just as an example) 1 megawatt being produced that’s not green, and 1 kilowatt that is, we’d all be getting our 0.1 percent of green power (more or less — ignore rounding, okay). Instead, Gore pays for the privilege of patting himself on the head, and now the rest of us are no longer “getting” our 0.1 percent of green power, we’re now getting something less.
It’s an elaborate shell game — he pays his $4 per block for what we all used to get for free, he gets to pat himself on the head and the rest of us are no longer as “green” as we were (shame on us) because instead of having 0.1 percent of our power “Green”, it’s a lot less green.
Meanwhile, if y’all are serious about greening up your house, I suggest you look into replacing all of your incandescent lamps with compact fluorescent lights, and replacing your thermostat with a programmable one. Those two changes alone can make a significant dent in your electric consumption.
I’ve had a programmable thermostat for 15 years. I’m not sold on the fluorescent bulbs because they are made in China with mercury. I have a feeling the latent enviornmental issues associated with their use are rather larger than we’ve been led to believe. They also really don’t give as much light, so I use them in places other than where I read or cook, that is, the places where I really value light.
I continue to believe that harping on what Al Gore does is a little bit like trying to figure out George Bush’s sincerity in pushing religion based on whether he personally goes to church. It’s a nanodetail in the larger picture. The real issue isn’t so much Al Gore personally as it is the expectation of both individuals and the culture they live in that if they have money, of course, they’re going to have a big house, maybe even two houses, and so on. As a person who lives well below my means in terms of both house and car, I see this as the real affliction, and it doesn’t surprise me that Al Gore exhibits it, so does most of so-called Hollywood royalty, Bono, Brangelina and the rest of their ilk. While it might be fun to make fun of them, and I’m not going to put words in anyone’s mouth, I hazard a guess that a call for EVERYONE, and not just Al Gore, to reduce their energy consumption would be met with a lot of disdain, as in, how dare you attack the American lifestyle. Over time, I expect that it will be more and more obvious that this is in fact the real problem.
Robert:
Well, I’m glad you got that guess in the open. I’m glad your guess, which is based on absolutely no evidence, is so important to you that you bring it out to oppose Gore. Color me convinced.
Second of all, you know there is a significant amount of power usage required for his security detail because he’s, you know, the former Vice President of the United Fucking States. Just a guess.
But your right, he should fire his entire security detail, sell all his houses and move to a studio apartment. Otherwise, global warming doesn’t exist.
Barbara, I share a lot of your concerns about the mercury in compact fluorescent lights and wonder if people will actually recycle them like the package says they are supposed to.
I do have to take issue with the “They don’t create as much light” because I’ve found just the opposite — that if I replace a 60w incandescent with a 60w “equivalent” CFL, that I might well wind up with a lot more light than what I had before. Indeed, I might even wind up with more than I want. The key, though, is to see how much light it takes and make sure you aren’t using less. And if you aren’t getting enough light, go up a size. My vanity light used to take 360 watts and it now takes 84 watts and is just as bright as before. But if that wasn’t enough, i could double the wattage and still be saving power, at which point I’d have more light than in my entire garage …
FCH,
I think you are wrong about “green” power. Wind power, waste methane, and solar are all currently more expensive than coal, hydro and nuclear, so without the added payment specifically for purchasing green power, the utility would not buy from those sources. They would buy cheaper power from cheaper sources instead.
Where the power plants are owned directly by the utility, the issue becomes more complicated, but there is still a legitimate benefit to paying extra money so that the utility will choose to build clean plants.
Note also that it isn’t simply a higher rate, but that you purchase blocks of power. This is because that is how the utility itself is buying the power. Basically, you are agreeing to pay the difference between the cost to the utility of buying coal power versus the cost of buying wind power.
Obviously, the electricity from green sources doesn’t feed your particular house (as that isn’t how power works), but green power gets bought by the utility, and used by someone as a result of your purchase.
Charles,
The energy would be put on the grid because utilities must buy whatever is made. If I put solar panels in my back yard — nice and green — and grid tied my house, the utility would have to buy it, no matter how much it cost me to produce. My neighbors would then have some nice green electricity flowing into their houses and wouldn’t even know it. The rate the utility pays isn’t set by the producer, but neither can the utility (in all the jurisdictions I’m aware of) refuse to purchase it at some price related to wholesale energy prices.
Some of what you described, like waste methane and hydro, can be byproducts of other activities, such as landfill gas or flare gas, both of which are used to produce electricity, or hydro which is often produced as a byproduct of flood control or reservoir maintenance projects.
I knew if I looked I’d find some info —
PV Systems and Net Metering
Distributed Generation
Tennessee does not appear to have regulations requiring buy back (net metering) of power from consumers (at least according to this list).
Also, while net metering is a good concept, it is far from the only form of green power (and it isn’t even necessarily green, if I ran a diesel generator and hooked it up to my household power, it would still be covered under net metering). Utilities are definitely not required to buy power from anyone who hooks a power plant into their lines, and they don’t buy power from non-cost effective power providers (such as wind farms, large co-generation plants, and solar plants). Even if there are regulations requiring utilities to buy anyone’s power at fixed retail price, that won’t justify a solar plant being built if the solar plant costs more per unit energy than the retail electricity price.
Green power (particularly the pre-purchased power block type) ensures that the utility will buy power from non-cost effective green power plants that would otherwise not be able to sell power to the utilities at a profit.
Charles,
Net metering isn’t the only way that utilities can buy power. Under federal law, utilities must pay for power from independent producers. Net metering is a specific implementation of that, if you will. It’s a customer that is both a producer and a consumer. So, to answer your question, yes, utilities are required by federal law (that’s from the DOE website link I pointed you at) to purchase the power.
In many instances cogeneration can become cost effective because some part of the cost of generation is a sunk cost, whereas if it weren’t, that cost couldn’t otherwise be justified. For example, if you operate a manufacturing plant that requires a certain volume of steam be produced, you could use the heat from that steam to generate electricity instead of just venting it to the atmosphere. Another example might be where the fuel is free, such as if you operate a plant that produces sufficient waste vegetable oil or methane gas that you can then burn to produce energy. Cogeneration has many ways to be cost-effective and has been around longer than the demand for green energy.
Finally, just because a manufacturer produces energy at some cost does not mean the utility has to buy it at that price. So far as I can tell, a utility does not have to pay more than the wholesale price for any energy put onto the grid.
FCH,
You’re right about the power market.
However, the supplemental charges for green power are used to support the non-cost effective green power sources, that would not otherwise be able to operate profitably in the power market, so I still think it is inaccurate to say that purchasing green power merely nominally changes who gets to claim they are using the green power. The green power surcharges result in the utilities financing green power plants (either through long term contracts or through construction by the utility) that would otherwise not be built or run.