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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (145836)	4/22/2002 12:16:39 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1575395

Tim, sorry, if anything your latest explanation confuses me more. Let me make it simple. Normally, you spend 1k on gas per year, However, this year you conserve and only use half, you save $500 per year. Yes in your example you save money. I didn't say that you couldn't save money from conservation, or even that you would not save money more often then not, only that you would not always save money. I gave the general case with variables (you save X money ect.) but if that confuses you I can use specific dollar amounts. Conserving energy is sometimes done simply by doing less, for example driving less miles; but it can also be done in ways that require you to spend money. Imagine that you had recently bought an efficient heating and cooling system for $5k. You spend $300 for heating and cooling a month. Now a new more efficient system comes out and its also cheaper then the one you bought. It only costs $4k and it will reduce you heating and cooling cost to $280 a month saving you $240 a year. But the $5k for your current system is sunk cost. You don't consider that when evaluating if the new system can save you money, so the fact that the new system costs less is irrelevant. So you save $20 a month, but have to spend $4k. It would take you 200 months or over 16 years to pay back the investment. The system might not last 16 years and in any case even more efficient systems might be created over that 16 years. Also you might move and not get the cost savings (and not get a complete return of the investment in terms of higher house prices). And all of this is not even considering the time value of money. Chance are you will never break even on this investment. It will save energy but it will cost you money not save money. Tim, although I think they are great, I never mentioned energy saving devises which give a much quicker pay back than your example allows for. Nonetheless, I was just talking about old fashioned energy conservation. Keeping your heat somewhere between 55 and 60 degrees, and wearing a sweater instead, or taking the bus instead of the car, or turning down the heat on your water heater, or recycling your plastic products or walking to the store instead of driving or installing power mgmt software on your pc etc. In addition I recommend when its time to replace your appliances that you buy those that are most energy efficient. I consider those normal purchases and should not be tagged onto the bill for pushing energy conservation. ted