arbyreed's Flickr photostream/Creative Commons

The laws of thermodynamics tell us that everything we do expends energy. Conversion efficiency, as it’s called, can never be 100 percent, which is why there’s no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. However, nowhere in those laws does it say that conversion efficiency must be as low as 36 percent. Which is the efficiency rate of power plants.

At present time, two-thirds of all energy that enters a power plant is lost before it creates the electricity we use. The technology used in coal processing is cheap, but incredibly inefficient. New technologies and energies, such as natural gas, could boost the efficiency rate to closer to 50 percent. One report prepared for the California Energy Commission has the efficiency rate for creating methanol made from natural gas at over 68 percent.

I know that this is a little science-y, but I, for one, never stopped to think about how inefficient the energy process is. takepart to read the New York Times article about the waste that is inherent to energy production, and to view a pretty sobering visualization. You can also takepart to read an article about the “politically risky” Senate bill on global warming that will be debated soon, and contact your Senators to ask them to put environment above politics. For once.