Our local electricity provider has been running “power smart” adds where strangers suddenly appear in your home or office cheering when you turn out the light as you leave the room, or as you turn off the powerbar to your computer.  The message is that you should be encouraged for such conservation.  I have in the past mindlessly accepted the idea behind these ads as valid, since I have for my adult life turned out the lights I’m not using, but recently I’m coming to question some of what I’m hearing.

Sometimes you might leave a light on for a feeling of security, or if you were to turn off the powerbar, your appliances might lose track of the date or time.  So there are valid reasons for leaving these on when you are not using them.

In TV-Land, all the switches and powerbars are easy to reach (although ugly lying on the desk etc).  In my life I don’t have VERY convenient powerbars, and am more likely to have to reach behind your appliances to find the power bars to turn them on and off (shock hazzard from loose plugs you can’t see clearly is so remote I won’t address that at all).  So the activity isn’t as free as it appears in the ads.  It costs me something.  Convenience (when the remote controls can’t make the appliance wake up), time (running around the house turning things off as I leave).  There is a cost to me.  The concept of power leaches or vampires, that suck a tiny amount of energy constantly has been a popular topic in the press in 2008.

Additionally there have been a number of ads about replacing my old inefficient refrigerator with a new energy smart refrigerator.  I’ve realized that I need to do some research on my own.  What is the cost and what is the benefit to me to the utility and to the environment.

Now I am the kind of guy who turns the VCR or TV off when I’m not actively using them. The lights all go out at night (with the exception of the 0.3Watt LED night lights in the halls).  I turn off lights I’m not using, but I installed the lights so they could be used.  They work for me, not the other way around.   So with a heart that wants to conserve and show my thankfulness through not wasting what I’ve been given, I wanted to know where we were wasting energy.  I purchased a $17 (blue planet?) meter from my local hardware store that can show the Amps, Watts and Volts being used by an appliance in real-time.  Additionally it can log the electricity usage, showing you the total Kilo Watt Hours (KWH) consumed by the appliance over a period of many days.  After you enter the cost of electricity ($0.072 / KWH here) into the meter, it can tell you the dollar cost of your appliance for the time it has been plugged in.  I started making discoveries:

computer / adsl modem / router / UPS / printer : $0.25 / day

Old inefficient refrigerator from the last decade: $0.40 / day

TV / VCR / video game / stereo: $0.10 / day

Laptop computer: $0.05 / day

Microwave:  $0.02 / day

So this causes me to think carefully about what I’m hearing and being told.  I’m being told to switch off the power bar for my TV etc, when the use of the devices is only $0.30 / day.  So conceivably I might save 1 or 2 cents there.  Hardly worth the time is it?  Could I pay you a penny to stop doing what you are doing and spend 10 seconds coming over here and flipping this switch?  If you were paid $20/hour, that is 5.5 cents per 10 seconds.  Now its true, if you have nothing else to do it wouldn’t hurt for you to spend your spare time doing this, but the benefit seems really really minute compared to the cost?  Why is your utility spending $100,000s on this advertising?

My understanding of the issue is that it comes down to capacity.  If they need to build another power plant that is exceedingly expensive, but if they can continue to sell power from the existing power plants, that is a much more reasonable proposition for them.  The issue is nothing if we are talking about you saving $0.01 of electricity for flipping off the power bar.  The issue is really only significant thanks to the power of multiplication.  If you can convince 5,000,000 people to save that much electricity, you just saved $50,000 of electricity per day.  So the impact to your utility is huge, but the savings for you as an individual user of electricity is essentially nothing.

Now how about that refrigerator.  $0.40 per day to keep my food from spoiling seems like a good deal to me.  I don’t have to go down into a cellar, I don’t have to drop my food down a well, or deal with bricks of ice, or food poisoning.  I think it is a bargain.  Through my study of the new energy efficient fridges on the market it appears that the new fridges would use half the electricity per day.  Over the course of a year that would save me $73 in electricity.  However a new fridge costs around $800 (depending on what you buy).  So it would take me 10 years for the fridge’s energy savings to pay for the fridge.  I don’t know about you, but with the quality of manufactured goods dropping, I’m not sure I would expect my new fridge to last me 10 years.  This old fridge on the other hand, continues to work and looks after the food just fine.  So the marketting says “buy a new energy smart fridge”.  To do that, somebody needs to manufacture the fridge with all its glass and plastic and metal and compressors and chemicals and foam.  Then they need to ship it across the country or around the world, advertise it, house it in a store, get it here, and dump my old fridge in a landfill or recycling depot (landfill that sells metal).  It seems to me that the most environmentally responsible thing I can do is to make my existing appliances last as long as I can. 

So suffice it to say that the meter has probably paid for itself in debunking “new appliance savings” and in giving me some peace of mind about the little power leaches plugged in at my house.

 I am happy to say that we enjoy the light provided by the current generation of Compact Flourescent light bulbs (CFL)s  Instead of 100W we use 50W of light over our sink.  Instead of 160W we use 44W in our bathroom. The list goes on of the places we have installed these.  The hallway light behind me, the lamp in the corner.  They aren’t the best light for all situations, but we know that the 33W we are using right now beats the 150W we would have had otherwise.  To my mind this is a very smart energy saving, because apart from purchasing the bulbs initially, there is no incremental cost to turning on a CFL over a standard incandescent light.  It just saves me money and saves us all power without inconveniencing me or introducing an additional cost.

We need to take a very strong stand against “GreenWash” in all its forms.  Keep your brain engaged as you are urged to do this or to do that to save the planet.  Among the genuinely good information there is certainly hype that is designed to pad someone elses wallet at the expense of your own.

Over at FastCompany.com Charles Fishman wrote an insightful article about Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs and their growing acceptance. 

“For years, compact fluorescent bulbs have promised dramatic energy savings–yet they remain a mere curiosity. That’s about to change… For two decades, CFLs lacked precisely what we expect from lightbulbs: strong, unwavering light; quiet; not to mention shapes that actually fit in the places we use bulbs. Now every one of those problems has been conquered. The bulbs come on quickly; their light is bright, white, steady, and silent; and the old U-shaped tubes–they looked like bulbs from a World War II submarine–have mostly been replaced by the swirl. Since 1985, CFLs have changed as much as cell phones and portable music players.”

Personally we have put CFLs in our house in all the places where they make sense, and it feels good to be getting decent light for less money.  It even makes us feel better about leaving the lights on for safety or comfort without feeling like we’re being (as) wasteful.  So head on over and read about Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs .

The government of Canada initiated the One Tonne challenge as an exercise to get Canadian’s thinking about how they would reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide by one tonne (1000 KG) per year.

My response: No more gas, Less wasted water, Less drafts

The government of Canada initiated the One Tonne challenge as an exercise to get Canadian’s thinking about how they would reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide by one tonne (1000 KG) per year.

No more gas

I moved into a house that is lit and heated with electricity rather than natural gas. We have our gas meter locked off. We plan to light and heat the house entirely with electricity. We have 85% of our electricity produced through green means here in British Columbia. Huge hydro electric dams capture our abundant rainfall yielding a huge benefit from that investment in this infrastructure that was made years ago. We need to keep thinking like this. Principles before profits. My friends warn me that electricity is more expensive, so I’m trying to soften the blow by making my house more energy efficient.

Less wasted water

When water is wasted there is less clean water for other uses. When hot water is wasted it contributes directly to global warming through the C02 released to heat the water. We have replaced faucets, and replaced faucet cartridges for 6 taps. We believe that this represents 22,000 litres of water saved per year. As you know it is usually the hot water taps that leak the worst. We’ve installed aerators (little metal screens) over the faucets to limit the peak water flow. 1.5 gpm (gallons per minute) for the bathroom sink 2.2 gpm for the kitchen 2.2 gpm for our low-flow shower head, 2.2 gpm for the ensuite bathroom. We have committed to only watering the lawn 1 time per week if it needs it since frequent watering encourages shallow root systems and the quick death of your lawn anyways. We have turned down our hot water tank to 50 degrees Celsius from 60 degrees Celsius. We have read that this is hot enough to discourage bacterial growth, and the reduction in temperature means that there is a lessened chance of our children being scalded with host water. I am also continuing my practice of always washing my hands with cold water, requiring no hot water heating and no water wasted by waiting for the tap to “warm up”.

Less drafts

We have installed a door sweep under our front door with brushes to keep bugs and drafts out. We have tightened the weather stripping on our 3 exterior doors so that no light is visible around the door frame when it is shut and locked. (yes we keep them locked). We have injected expanding latex foam under our door sills (lots of space for bugs there) into spaces around anything that penetrates our house’s ‘envelope’ (entry points for vents and wires). We have put drapes up over our largest windows which we close at night to reduce the transfer of heat through those windows.

Irony or tragedy?

In an ironic twist I read this on the “one tonne challenge” website:

The Government of Canada Climate Change site is currently unavailable.

We appreciate your interest in the important issue of climate change and suggest that you visit the following sites for more information:

• Visit Environment Canada’s Green LaneTM for weather and environmental information. The Green Lane helps connect Canadians, exchange information and share knowledge for environmental decision-making.
• Visit the Natural Resources Canada site to learn about the role this department is playing in helping shape the contributions of the natural resources sector to the Canadian economy, society and environment.

Now I know Canada has been getting a black eye for its “very slow movement” on the Kyoto accord and the obligations it made, but perhaps this black eye is deserved? <<Addendum>> Perhaps these comments are in appropriate. Canada has done much in the area of natural resources given its vast land area, while having to overcome the challenges of distances unknown to all other countries except perhaps Russia. We have to communicate and transport further to move resources from source to “market” we have to move resources further to move them from market to market. We have some challenges that no European country has. However, it would appear that Canadians are waiting for something. Waiting for the government to make the first move, waiting for the pollution free car to suddenly be produced by the car manufacturing corporations, waiting for the garbage they put in landfills to magically dissolve. Some Canadians deserve credit for taking initiative and reducing their negative impact on the natural environment, but others are waiting for it to magically become more convenient and less expensive to do the right thing. In this respect it would appear that our brothers and sisters in Europe have us beat as they consciously try to do the right thing at higher cost and higher inconvenience.