In Stephen J. Dubner's book, Freakonomics, he talked about how blood donation rates go down when you offer money to donors. It's the sense of altruism that drives donation, and when you take that away, you're left with a seedy way to make a few bucks.
I looked into going green for energy. Switching to solar cells for home energy needs that is. Not out of a sense of conservation but because I don't like the idea of not having power for weeks after a hurricane.
Of course at 960$ for a 208watt panel I can't afford it. Now if they had it down below 500$ I'd start to switch.
IIRC, there's a tax credit good through 2007 that lets you claim up to %30 for the installed cost of solar cells up to a max of $2000 I believe. Solar technology right now runs about $4/watt.
Well that's about 4k$ out of pocket for 6k$ worth of panels. Which isn't enough to tak over a large part of the house. During the summer months our house peaks at 2400kWh. So I'd need about 5 times that amount.
A solar water heater would help reduce energy usage significantly as they usually run about 30% of total household electricity. Ever see the energy star tags on those things, a 40 gallon costs about $440/year to operate, almost $40 a month. Compare this to the fridge which costs about $25/year to run. So you could add that and some panels for backup emergency electricity (don't just expect to run appliances/AC at predisaster levels). But it also depends on how long you plan on living in that house before you'd recoup your investment in terms of energy savings.
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Of course at 960$ for a 208watt panel I can't afford it. Now if they had it down below 500$ I'd start to switch.
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