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Campaigns for Sustainable Energy
Individuals & Household
Anyone can use this mechanism to fund the production of new wind energy. The U of U will apply the donations to the purchase of green-e certified credits/offsets - i.e. to the building of new wind turbines. The U of U retains formal ownership of the offsets, which means that your donation is tax-deductible. For those that care, this also means that you can claim to have "funded new wind power through a donation to the U of U", but not that you actually "purchased new wind power".
100% Wind Electricity
To correlate your donation with the amount of energy used in
your home:
1) Identify your annual home
energy usage in mhw (1 mwh = 1,000 kwh)
2)
Multiply by $3 to get the appropriate annual donation for 100% wind-generated electricity.
For example, a typical value for US households is close to 10,000 kwh/year. This is 10 mwh/year = $30 donation for a year's worth of wind-generated electricity. This cost is much lower than other programs we have been able to find, and corresponds to less than a 5% increase in a typical Utah residential electricity bill.
Climate Neutral
You become "Climate Neutral" when you offset all of your direct fossil fuel use. The exact definition is subjective, but typically includes home electricity, gas (heating), car travel, and air travel. You can use a "carbon calculator" to estimate the total amount of CO2 produced and the appropriate offset. Many good Carbon Calculators can be quickly located from a Google search. Most of them are based on data provided by the EPA. Some include air travel and some include effects of waste disposal and recycling.
One convenient Carbon Calculator is provided by BEF. You can use this site to estimate the amount of CO2 produced. Divide the lbs of CO2 by 1,400 to get the equivalent value in mwh of wind-generated electricity (reference). Multiply that number by $3 to get the corresponding donation for the CSE/ASUU fund. For example, an average one-car US household that does not fly at all produces about 42,000 lbs CO2/year from home electricity, heating, and car use. This corresponds to 42,000/1,400 * $3 = $90-/year for 100% offset by the CSE/ASUU mechanism. One average round trip by air produces about 2,200 lbs of CO2. Note that the cost of an equivalent offset via the BEF site would be much greater - BEF is a good program, but the fund established by ASUU provides considerable economy of scale.
Please send email if you have any questions.
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