Group questions level of energy use at Gore home
High electric billing records show 'green power' also was purchased
By ANNE PAINE
Staff Writer
A day after a film about his efforts to combat global warming won an Oscar, former Vice President Al Gore was called a hypocrite by a Tennessee group that said his Belle Meade home is consuming too much energy.
The home's average monthly electric bill last year was just under $1,200, according to bills that The Tennessean acquired from Nashville Electric Service.
"As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk (the) walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use," said Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, identified as a free-market think tank.
Gore's power bill shows, however, that the former vice president may be doing just that.
Gore purchased 108 blocks of "green power" for each of the past three months, according to a summary of the bills.
That's a total of $432 a month Gore paid extra for solar or other renewable energy sources.
The green power Gore purchased in those three months is equivalent to recycling 2.48 million aluminum cans or 286,092 pounds of newspaper, according to comparison figures on NES' Web site.
NES joined the TVA program in 2000 to give power customers a way to support environmentally sound sources of electricity. The Tennessean could not determine when Gore signed up for green power.
NES gets its electricity from TVA. Most is produced from coal, which emits carbon, a greenhouse gas. A lesser amount comes from nuclear power and a small amount from hydroelectric.
An Inconvenient Truth, the movie about Gore's global warming battle, details how greenhouse gases are trapping heat next to the earth, causing a changing climate with melting ice caps and more violent storms.
"Every family has a different carbon footprint," said Kalee Krider, a spokeswoman for Gore. The Gores' 10,000-square-foot house on Lynnwood Boulevard has a large one.
The Green Power Switch program isn't all that Gore and his wife, Tipper, are doing, Krider said.
They use compact fluorescent light bulbs and are in the midst of a renovation project that includes having solar panels installed on their home to reduce fossil fuel consumption, she said.
Their car? A Lexis hybrid SUV.
"They, of course, also do the carbon emissions offset," she said.
That means figuring out how much carbon is emitted from home power use, and vehicle and plane travel, then paying for projects that will offset that with use of renewable energy, such as solar power.
Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe, she said.
Johnson, whose group usually focuses on government spending issues, said he "doesn't differ much from Al Gore on his environmental concerns."
"We went into this just asking the question, 'Is the leader of the environmental movement basically living up to his word?' Given that he's a Tennessean, I thought it's a question we should ask."
What they found is someone whose home uses as much power in a month as an average family would use in a year, he said.
In addition to the electric bill, the natural gas bill for Gore's home and guesthouse ran $1,080 per month last year, Johnson said.
"For someone in his position not to take steps to reduce his own energy consumption is disingenuous," he said. "He's simply not taking all the steps he can take and should take as the leader of the environmental movement."
Rather than attacking one man — Gore — Johnson and his group should be taking a larger view and trying to make a difference to reduce global warming, Krider said.
That should include helping to get government and corporations, which are big energy users, on board to reduce energy and move to renewable resources, she said.
"They're trying to single out one person rather than look at the big picture," Krider said.
Hypocrite? Maybe not, but it's crystal clear from my perspective he is a hypocrite.Gore gets heat for his electric bills
Staff says he uses compact fluorescent bulbs
By ANNE PAINE
Staff Writer
[...]
They put money into an investment company that Gore co-founded with a man named David Blood and it, in turn, sends the money to pay for solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe.
If you look at the above ... I guess what Gore is saying is that big Corporations can spew as much stuff in the atmosphere as they want ... as long as they invest in themselves for future green energy like he does?
How does this help the planet?