Stop Purchasing Our Product
The letter from Apple arrived via snail mail, itself a worrying sign, and began ominously:
Your household efficiency rank is in the bottom quartile and declining. You are spending more money on apps, purchasing more music, and using more bandwidth than your neighbors. Our data show that you also have more Apple products in your household than is typical in your area.
Please log into your account at LessAppleForLife.com for customized tips about how you can save money by reducing your demand for Apple products and services.
Why would Apple admonish its customers for purchasing too much of what it is in business to sell?
It wouldn't. Neither would Google, Facebook or Twitter. Yet each month my neighbors employed by these enterprises and I open a report like the one at right from our local energy utility. The idea is to shame us into conserving energy by comparing our consumption to that of "more efficient" households in our neighborhood.
Purchasing less is absolutely essential. To save the planet, don't you know.
However, it's not so simple. In typical left-wing fashion, saving money in my neighborhood first requires "investment" in a money-no-object ecologically advanced dwelling of the sort dancing in the heads of Greenpeace executives on Christmas Eve. In short, a low energy bill hereabouts is another way of telegraphing, simultaneously, that you are very, very rich, and also incredibly caring.
My Silicon Valley neighbors overwhelmingly favor deterring consumption, except when it comes to the products and services responsible for their own considerable financial success.
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Comments:
Mar '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
George Savage: Yet each month my neighbors employed by these enterprises and I open a report like the one at right from our local energy utility. The idea is to shame us into conserving energy by comparing our consumption to that of "more efficient" households in our neighborhood.
To save the planet, don't you know.
Interestingly, I have heard through the grapevine that another way many utilities can help the environment is by not letting their pipelines explode and needlessly burn off gas into the atmosphere for several days.
Edited on December 12, 2012 at 6:08amSep '10
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
While this sort of thing seems like a no-brainer slam dunk, it's not. It's...complicated. I work in at a water utility and we've sent out the same kind of notices. Water and power aren't like usual products; there is a hard system limit. Peak demands can tax these systems to the breaking point and new resources are scarce and expensive. And then you have governments limiting price increases and / or demanding they use increasing percentages of "renewable" sources. Which are expensive and usually require federal government subsidy. Conservation helps stretch resources. But...it certainly can also hurt revenue. It's a delicate balance, not easily negotiated. It's not always about "saving the planet", sometimes it's just "being able to function reliably".
Mar '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Ironically, in Germany the utilities (especially water) have to plead with their customers to consume more - for the customers' sake.
Northern Europeans are so eager to conserve resources that the unit prices of water and gas have started increasing to cover the utilities' fixed maintenance costs. Of course, that price increase just makes people consume even less, and now many local utilities are seriously worried that a vicious spiral of increasing prices and decreasing consumption might make them insolvent.
Edited on December 12, 2012 at 6:17amSep '10
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Mendel,
Yes, that's the nightmare scenario - shrinking revenue leads to cost hikes which lead to use contraction which leads to shrinking revenue...and so on. As I said - it's a delicate balance. Complicated stuff is complicated. There's no easy solution.
Oct '10
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Portlanders were asked to conserve water and were so good at the effort the utility had to raise rates cover basic operations. That fee increase never went away when supplies returned to normal.
As a sidebar, when the Trojan Nuclear Power plant was taken offline, PGE did not take the loss lightly. They sued and won the the right to bill consumers for power they never provided for decades. Ghastly at best.
Feb '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Maybe they don't want the regulatory headache and expense of getting approval for new power plants.
A long time has passed since Reddy Kilowatt used to encourage consumption by telling us that electricity is "the biggest bargain in your family budget."
Edited on December 12, 2012 at 7:09amJul '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
A friend of mine had a device that measured energy expenditure in real time amounts. It would likely have reduced consumption by 10-20%. The power companies fought him tooth and nail. They are mandated to have energy saving, actually carbon saving, policies. What they do is send a letter no one reads, well almost no one, and give money to cousin Vinny's never gonna work solar farm. It's like asking the coke dealer to self police his junkies.
Mar '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
I can certainly understand this with regard to water--there is a natural cycle there and drought conditions etc can affect supply. In such a case demand must be adjusted accordingly.
With regard to electricity, however, public utilities and local governments have long been in collusion to limit supply. We could be resolving these scarcity issues by building more conventional power plants, or by building more nuclear plants. Instead, our governments and utilities have decided that these options aren't green enough--and therefore have regulated their building almost to extinction meanwhile funneling monies from the public fisc to politically connected green energy groups that make a bucket-load while their products routinely fail to deliver.
Saving energy can save me money, so I'm happy to turn the heat off when I leave the house. But let's not pretend that we can't affect the supply of electricity.
Feb '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Crow's Nest
With regard to electricity, however, public utilities and local governments have long been in collusion to limit supply.
I think you're giving utilities a bum wrap. I know of examples of utilities attempting to build new supplies but were stopped lawsuits or green-lobby funded local opposition.
I blame the government, and more specifically the people who run the government- the left.
I think they are mortified that Americans are able to use so much electricity, water, gasoline, etc- and want to stop it. Since people are generally not receptive to arguments that go, " we despise you and want you to shiver in the dark like peasants should" the left has managed to come up with something different.
That is, "we heart efficiency and you should too". But just wait. When everyone has an electrical "smart meter" that can measure usage in real time if you exceed your miserly ration of electricity you'll be cut off.
So people will read these efficiency ratings with rapt attention, attempting to keep the lights on as long as they can.
Welcome to Obamaland, folks.
Oct '10
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Unintended consequences can be so delicious.
Starting on January 1st, 2012, the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel where I live instituted a volume-based tax on garbage. The only garbage bags which will be picked up are specially marked ones which sell at a substantial premium: the 60 litre bags I use cost CHF 3.40 each (about 3.65 Yankee greenbacks). These bags collected in my region end up at an incinerator in the commune of Colombier, which produces heat for homes in the vicinity.
Well, as soon as the bag tax went into effect, the amount of garbage arriving at the incinerator dropped like a rock, and has not rebounded. The volume is insufficient to heat the homes they're contracted to supply, so the incinerator has had to import garbage from adjacent cantons to meet the demand.
An article about this in the newspaper contained a subhead, “Taxation Changes Behaviour”. Who knew?
Apr '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
John Walker: Unintended consequences can be so delicious.
Starting on January 1st, 2012, the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel where I live instituted a volume-based tax on garbage. The only garbage bags which will be picked up are specially marked ones which sell at a substantial premium: the 60 litre bags I use cost CHF 3.40 each (about 3.65 Yankee greenbacks). These bags collected in my region end up at an incinerator in the commune of Colombier, which produces heat for homes in the vicinity.
Well, as soon as the bag tax went into effect, the amount of garbage arriving at the incinerator dropped like a rock, and has not rebounded. The volume is insufficient to heat the homes they're contracted to supply, so the incinerator has had to import garbage from adjacent cantons to meet the demand.
An article about this in the newspaper contained a subhead, “Taxation Changes Behaviour”. Who knew? · 10 minutes ago
Yeah, macroecon 101, who knew?
Mar '12
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
George Savage: In typical left-wing fashion, saving money in my neighborhood first requires "investment" in a money-no-object ecologically advanced dwelling of the sort dancing in the heads of Greenpeace executives on Christmas Eve.
In an obtuse kind of way it may be that these people are trying to save us from the hefty price increases we'll be seeing as Obama drives up the cost of electricity. It may be a kind of self-defense because we'll blame the local power generator instead of the real culprits, Obama and his EPA and whomever else he has seconded to drive up costs while he dismantles the economy.
Apr '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
ctruppi
Yeah, macroecon 101, who knew? · 12 minutes ago
Good thing you have all those really smart people in government making these decisions for you. Gaia only knows what kind of shape you would be in if, as free people, you were allowed to come up with solutions for yourselves.
Aug '10
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Others have touched on these points, but as someone who used to be involved in lending to utilities, let me contribute my two cents. Indeed, electric utilities are not like other businesses. They do not want their product to be consumed to the point of scarcity. They are heavily regulated and are allowed only a stipulated return. They maintain a base load capacity (preferably fueled by coal or nuclear) and a prudent (again, regulated) amount of peaking capacity (usually fueled by natural gas or, in the case of ConEd in NYC, oil). A utility, in concert with the regulators, tries to ensure system reliability and adequate capacity, particularly in the summer. An important part of this is demand management, of which the customer notices are a part. In time, when smart meters are in place around the country, such notices may not be necessary, because customers will be freer to choose how much energy they consume, when they consume it, and at what price.
Apr '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Just wait until the government sends you a report like this about the food you eat.
Also why do you get your energy bill through the mail. How antiquated. I get mine through e-mail, but I don't open them with any regularity because I have an auto billing setup. I just check my bank statements to see what I am paying.
Jun '10
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
I've been working lately on solar systems, a sort of part-time gig for extra cash. Most of our clients are wealthy liberals. The boss is currently bidding on a solar array that will provide power for a Nissan Leaf. Makes about as much sense as building your own gas station for a customer base of one. But then what we're really selling is the equivalent of medieval indulgences. I should pick up some clerical garb. Or make my own costume? Something that looks like a cross between a witch doctor and an ent?
May '10
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Bet Apple recommends we consolidate all those wasteful Apple products into a single, new, efficient, do-everything Apple product.
Jul '11
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
There's another facet to this as well: here in the northwest—where power is plentiful and cheap—our demand can and will exceed supply, at which point the utility has to purchase additional supply on the open market. Since the feds have determined how much profit the utility can make on its customers (as well as what percentage of the energy they produce and purchase is "green," i.e., way more expensive), the utility's best bet is what they call "demand-side management." Basically, that's just trying to limit consumption to capacity.
Bottom line? Blame the feds, not the utility.
Jul '12
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Much of this discussion is missing the real underlying problem: the fact that public utilities are heavily regulated monopolies that cannot adjust their prices in accordance with market forces.
We've had several droughts around here in the last few years, and I always roll my eyes at the measures the municipal governments put in place to reduce consumption. Complicated schemes like allowing people to water their lawns only every other day, or banning the washing of cars. In a sane world, the utilities would simply raise the price of water, and like magic, consumption would drop. But they can't do that; they're constrained by rigid price regulations, which pretty much guarantee shortages.
Apr '12
Re: Stop Purchasing Our Product
Wow, we get those notes, but they never mentioned Apple products! I don't lose sleep over them. We spent our money on having kids instead of putting up solar panels. Sorry.