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Gore's energy bills higher and greener than average home

Former US vice president Al Gore knows a thing or two about the vicissitudes of public life. Six years ago he was virtually written off as a has-been vice president after he won the popular vote only to lose the 2000 race for the White House.

On Sunday night his rehabilitation was completed as he was crowned the moral mouthpiece of Hollywood, receiving an Oscar for his global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

In front of the cream of the movie industry and the world's cameras, he stood alongside fellow eco-warrior Leonardo DiCaprio and proclaimed the ceremony the first in the Academy Awards' history to be run on "environmentally intelligent" lines.

By Monday night Gore found himself back in that all-too familiar place -- the eye of the storm.

A little-known group based in his home state, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, looked up Gore's energy bills for his large estate in the Belle Meade area of Nashville to see whether he practiced what he preached.

The headline figures, released to the group under federal freedom of information rules, were striking. Last year the Gore household consumed 221,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

His household consumption of energy rose between 2005 and last year, the bills showed, from 16,200 kilowatt-hours a month to 18,400 kilowatt-hours last year.

By Tuesday morning Gore's team responded.

Kalee Kreider, his environmental adviser, said that "you can attack the messenger but the message remains the same."

She said Gore's fuel bills did not tell the whole picture. All the energy used for the Nashville home came from a green power provider to the Tennessee Valley that draws its energy from solar, wind-powered and methane gas supplies, among other sources.

The Gores were installing solar panels on the roof, Kreider added and Gore had adopted a "carbon neutral" life whereby any emissions for which he was personally responsible were offset by buying green credits such as parcels of forests.

"The point about vice president Gore is that he's devoted 30 years of his life to educating people about global warming. That says something about the man," she said.
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