Interesting news on the "green" front: The DMN is reporting that Current Energy‘s Knox Street store is biting the dust and that Lakewood shop Green Living will be selling some of Current Energy’s retail products.

If you’ve ever been in the Current Energy store (street view here), you probably noticed the same two things I did on my several trips there: The store carried lots of cool "green" stuff, and most of it was unaffordable for anyone interested in a timely payback. I went in there a few times on the way to the Apple store (another pricey place), and I tried very hard to buy some LED lightbulbs to replace some of our home’s halogen hot-running energy-suckers. I found a few that seemed workable but $30 was near the low-end price for a single bulb, and it was pretty easy to crack $70-$100 for a single bulb, too. And try as I did to find something that made both economic sense and threw off enough light to replace the halogens, the store simply didn’t have it.

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I asked about the payback on a bulb that costs that much, and the people behind the counter — usually two of them, which also usually outnumbered the number of customers in the store (myself included) — clung to the storyline that the bulbs were a good deal with a good payback. They were nice, they were moderately knowledgeable but just about everything I saw in the store was pretty darn expensive, which I imagine contributed to its demise.

Current Energy plans to continue energy consulting, and hopefully Green Living will figure out a way to make some of the energy gear more affordable.