After all the talks and reading I've been doing, I've realized there is a contradiction going on in the clean/green world. Corporations definitely are not going to pay any green premium to "green" their operations. I heard Ann Feldhusen from HP talk about converting a site in San Diego to solar and the criteria to sell to upper mgmt was showing no green premium.
Yet I keep hearing about how consumers are willing to pay a green premium for food, laundry detergent, etc etc which is supposed to encourage new companies to enter the market. My feel is that it depends on if the premium is a few cents here and there or a significant investment.
I know I am one consumer who has very little tolerance for green premiums. In my ongoing home remodel, I looked closely at solar and decided that although it was the green thing to do, the costs were still too high. A payback after 20 years for what is basically a small expenditure and to plunk down a lot of cash - No way. My gas and electric is only $100/month. My personal feeling is that I need a 3 year payback - it's just a gut feel - for any change I'm going to make.
Is it only people with very large bills that are getting into solar? Have they really conserved the energy they can before doing the math and seeing if it's worth it? I guess so. I hope so.
In the remodel we had to decide on flooring. The old floor was Douglas Fir covered in ancient vinyl tile was some kind of tar paper underneath and there were areas that needed wood to be filled in. The other option was to rip out the floor entirely and replace it. I quickly determined that FSC certified wood was not going to work - couldn't find it in Doug Fir - other woods would be very expensive - over $1K green premium. Instead, we had to use lots of horrible chemicals and get the vinyl hand scraped. Saved at least $2K and had to cut down minimal amount of trees. But did we harm the environment more with the chemicals? I don't know.
If someone knows how to calculate this, I'd love to hear it. To weigh which was less worse for the environment and price it.
In my reading I see that the idea that there is no green, there just is sustainability is starting to be talked about for some sectors.
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