Environment & Energy

I also have an electric cordless snowblower, because I have finally reached an age where shoveling the walk will screw up my joints.

I have an corded electric hedge trimmer I use two or three times a year. Electricity on my grid has a carbon intensity 361 grams CO₂/kWh over the last 72 hours according to the electricity map as of this writing which is likely to typical for the time my mower is in use. I have show by appeal to a paper that on my grid, an electric car has a greater carbon impact than a gasoline car, if as one does in an LCA study, one includes embodied energy.

Since a lawn mower is much smaller than a car, it may be true that the embodied energy will be smaller, and thus the carbon impact lower. I let my lawn and yard go wild in places, and hose parts I do mow, I mow infrequently. I'm sure my neighbors are unhappy at times, but that's just too bad.

Most people around here use lawn services. I would never use them. Sometimes they mow wild plants, and their always doing stuff like pouring fertilizer on grass, "weed killers" (The "weeds" on my property are not weeds if I like them) I cover my poison ivy outbreaks with mulched grass.

I'm not happy with my grid, of course, but my candidate for Governor, Mikie Sherill is open to new nuclear reactors in New Jersey. That would make electric devices cleaner.