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P.U.R.E.* News, No Spin
*People Using Renewable Energy
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Pure Power Newsletter
1st Quarter 2009
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Dear Neighbor,
P.U.R.E. Genius isn't just about being in the know but also about staying in the know. It's about keeping up with our community's renewable energy advances and keeping tabs on our neighbors who are working to make a difference.
Because your busy lifestyle can make it difficult to stay plugged in to information coming from a multitude of sources, AmerenUE's Pure Power is excited to launch a new newsletter designed to do just that.
P.U.R.E. News, No Spin will be delivered to your inbox each quarter, packed with news and information we hope you'll want to read and recycle.
In this, our inaugural issue, find out what two hometown sports clubs are doing to reduce their carbon footprint. Learn about the wind farms generating clean, green energy... right in our own backyard. Get the facts about Proposition C. And see the absolutely shocking electrical impact of your morning routine.
Not a member of UE's Pure Power? Visit our new Web site to enroll today. It's quick, it's easy and it's, well, P.U.R.E. Genius.
Sincerely,
Your Friends at Pure Power
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Cards green up their game on Earth Day
St. Louis Cardinals knock carbon emissions out of the park
 Earth Day is a global holiday celebrating the wonder of life on our planet, and there are countless ways to celebrate in St. Louis, from local festivals to organized clean-up efforts across the region. This Earth Day, our hometown boys at Busch Stadium are getting
their green on for Mother Earth, too.
On Wednesday, April 22nd,
when the Cardinals meet the Mets, they'll reduce their carbon "cleat"
print by fully offsetting game day electricity at the stadium with
clean, renewable energy, compliments of AmerenUE's Pure Power.
Believe it or not, the electricity required to power just one home game is enough to supply 35 St.
Louis homes with electricity for an entire month. So to lighten
the team's carbon contribution, the Cards club has launched "For a Greener Game," a new sustainability program that includes a
massive recycling effort both in and around the ball park and the offset of electricity at several home games. Offset game dates include the Earth Day game, as well as May 5th, June 28th, July 24th, August 27th, and October 2nd, and will offset enough electricity to power 210 St. Louis homes for a month.
Cardinal fans can celebrate Earth Day by enrolling in Pure Power at the game. Visit our Web site to learn more about this and other Pure Power events.
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Measuring your morning jolt
Your a.m. routine isn't powered by caffeine alone
From the time you hit that snooze alarm in the morning, your meter is running. But just how much juice does it take to get you from "bed head" to beautiful? To calculate that, you first need to understand how electricity is measured. When you buy gas, you're charged by the gallon. When you buy electricity, you're charged by the kilowatt-hour (kWh). So when you use 1000 watts for 1 hour, that's a kilowatt-hour.
On any given workday morning, your clock radio sounds (.05 kWh). You turn on the lamp (.16 kWh) and stumble to the bathroom, where you turn on the lighted vanity mirror (.66 kWh). After a hot shower (water heater 13.3 kWh), you dry your hair (.33 kWh), put on make-up and turn on the TV (6 kWh) to watch the news while you iron your clothes (.22 kWh). Then you microwave a bowl of oatmeal (1.2 kWh) and fire up your computer to check e-mail (2.66 kWh). Finally, you grab your cell phone from the charger (.26 kWh) and race to the garage, where you use the garage door opener (.16 kWh) and depart, having already zapped a whopping 25 kWh in the first 90 minutes of your day.
AmerenUE charges 7.07 cents per kilowatt-hour, so your routine costs a little over 13 cents a day. Of course, inexpensive fossil fuel energy still comes at a cost. In the course of a year, that workday morning routine alone pulls 487.5 kWh of brown energy and releases 773 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Offsetting that energy use through Pure Power will have a similar environmental benefit to the CO2 reduction from not driving a car for nearly one month.
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MyPurePower.com
New Web site empowers Pure Power customers
When the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) named Pure Power the "most successful" New Green Power Program of the year, we had to admit our customers actually deserved the accolades. After all, what got the DOE's attention in the first place was the fact that Pure Power has more enrolled customers than any other green-pricing program in the Midwest. So we recently launched a new Web site with tools to help members of our award-winning program get the most out of their membership. Bookmark MyPurePower.com and visit us when you need a P.U.R.E. Genius gift for an eco-savvy friend, coworker or neighbor. Just click on the green "gift" box in the tool bar on the left side of the home page to learn more. You can also do cool stuff like calculate your carbon footprint and even offset the carbon emissions of your next party or corporate event. Explore the site, share the link with a friend and you'll both be plugged in to something P.U.R.E. Genius. |
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Did you know?
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Hey, Genius. Did you know that Blue + Yellow = Green?
Okay, maybe you did. But when the blue-and-yellow-clad St. Louis Blues offset their electricity use for the 2009 season by purchasing blocks of UE's Pure Power, the resulting shade of "green" is simply spectacular!
We're talking about a reduction in carbon emissions equal to taking the cars of all 27 Blues players and 4 of their coaches off the road for an entire year. That's roughly 167 tons of carbon dioxide that will not enter the atmosphere this season.*
March 24th was Pure Power Night at Scottrade Center. Blues fans were encouraged to wear green to the game to show support for a better environment.
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* Source: EPA Green Power Equivalency Calculator Methodologies
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Featured Event: Eco Expo, April 18-19
Green event promises an eco-education for the entire family
You're never too young or too old to learn how to tread lightly on the planet. And Eco Expo 2009 provides an opportunity for the environmentally conscious of all ages to learn to do just that. Presented by the Missouri Botanical Garden, this two-day event will offer ideas and inspiration for greening up all aspects of work and home life, from home building and construction to eco-fashion and beauty. Attendees will have an opportunity to speak with experts and vendors about their eco-friendly products and services. There will be several hands-on green activities for kids, too, including a Pure Power interactive area where children can learn about wind farms and create a pinwheel turbine to add to our onsite "farm." Free and open to the public, Eco Expo runs from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., April 18-19, at the Saint Louis Science Center. Renewable Energy Certificates equal to 100% of the electricity used at the event will be provided courtesy of Pure Power. For directions and more information about the event, visit the event Web site. |
Homegrown clean, renewable energy
Missouri farms find new "cash crop" in wind
Driving along an old country road in rural Missouri, you'd expect to see fields of green. After all, soy beans and corn are top row crops in our state. But sprouting out of the soil on three Missouri farms is a crop of a different shade of "green": dozens of majestic wind turbines, 262 feet tall with rotors spanning 289 feet in diameter. The first of Missouri's three wind farms, Bluegrass Ridge, is situated in the northwestern corner of the state and is capable of producing enough clean, renewable energy to power about 15,000 homes. But Mother Nature's not the only one cashing in on this crop of local turbines. The 14 farmers who leased a combined total of 9000 acres to Bluegrass Ridge project developers are finding that wind power also generates a steady, secondary income stream. Together, Missouri's three wind farms generate more than $1.1 million in county real estate taxes, provide sustantial savings for rural electric companies and can produce enough electricity to power 45,000 homes. Want to learn more about the clean, green energy plants in our backyard? Click here to take a virtual tour of Bluegrass Ridge. |
Pure Power and Proposition C
Two programs chart parallel paths to renewable energy in Missouri
Last November, Missouri voters passed Proposition C, the Missouri Clean Energy Initiative. Now many are asking, "What does Prop C mean for Missouri and how does it relate to Pure Power?"
Prop C will require the four Missouri investor-owned utilities to get 15% of their electricity from clean energy sources by 2021, with 2% to come from solar power sources. It also includes a rebate to customers on solar systems installed after 2009 and caps the average retail rate increase to build these projects at 1%. The process of defining how the state will implement this new law began in March, and only time will tell what this initiative will mean for renewable energy growth in Missouri.
UE's Pure Power complements Proposition C by giving customers the choice to support new renewable energy sources for 100% of their energy use today. So Pure Power customers are leading the way on the path to renewable energy!
For a more in-depth comparison of the two programs, click here to watch a taped, one-hour Webinar.
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