The Problem with the Laundry - Entropy, Part 4
February 1, 2020

     No, it's not that it's never all done – although that's a problem too.  The problem is that, unless I do all of my laundry by hand using creek water and lye soap I made myself without the aid of electricity, then I have almost certainly, in our current energy system here in the United States, created more disorder in the world, through the act of laundering my clothes, than I have created order.  And I am responsible for that, no matter how little control I exercise over the energy system as a whole.  

     Hang with me here; this is going to get a little technical.  

    My house runs on electricity only, meaning that we don't use any direct fossil fuel inputs to heat the house, turn on the lights, and run the appliances.  But before anyone thinks that I'm congratulating myself for that – I'm not – remember that electricity is not an energy source at all; it is only a delivery system.  The energy that is delivered to me through "the grid" (as industry folks call it) is created by other sources – a mix of other sources, in fact.

     And it just so happens that my best friend from college is an expert on the electricity grid, having spent the better part of the last two decades trading and managing the movement of electrical power through the U.S. grid.  So I asked her to help me understand the particular mix of energy sources that generate the electricity that powers my house, and thus my life – the electricity that is powering my ability to write this reflection right now, that heated my tea kettle on the stove a little while ago, and that will power my washer and dryer when I  wash the bed linens later today.

    Turns out, I'm running on 66% fossil fuels – or at least I did in 2018, which was the most recent year's worth of usage data Carrie could quickly pull up for me (and she assured me the current numbers will be very similar).  Aggregate electricity usage for my part of the grid in 2018 was fueled by 42.4% coal, 23.4% natural gas, and 0.2% fuel oil.  Wind made up nearly one-quarter (25%) of the mix – this is Oklahoma, after all, "where the wind comes sweeping down the plains" – with nuclear and hydro-electric power combining for just over 10%, and solar and "other" accounting for less than half a percent.

     Okay . . . so . . . .???

     Here's the problem I see with this picture: if 66%, or two-thirds, of my life is running on fossil fuels (and it's actually more than than when you take into account the fossil fuels I use for transportation and those required to produce and deliver the food and other "consumer" products that I use, but we‛ll tackle those later), then roughly 66%, or two-thirds, of any order I create using the energy from those fossil fuels – assuming I create any order from them at all – is cancelled out by the disorder created by burning those fuels in the first place.

     What???

     Like I said, hang with me here.  This is going to take a little time to unpack.