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THE CYCLE – REDUCE
KICK THE HABIT
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for your tea in an electric kettle uses half the energy your stove takes. Do
you toast a slice of bread from a loaf or have a part-baked croissant which
demands more energy to heat it? Then there’s your
fridge
:
is it rated A+ or
A++ for its energy efficiency? How do you clean your teeth – with an electric
or a manual toothbrush?
You commute to the office: do you use your car or the subway? And at
work, a flat-screen monitor and laptop use less power than desktops and
cathode ray tubes. Lunch next. If you choose meat, that will normally have
taken more energy to reach your plate than vegetables or pasta. (Mean-
while, are you sure you have not left your computer – or any other appli-
ance – on
standby
in your office?) After work you have a quick snack,
Energy-hungry household appliances account for GHG emissions both in use and
during their production. Before buying, investigate different models and choose
the most efficient. Choose to pay more for quality that promises to last – you will
get a better deal than if you buy a cheaper model which you have to replace three
times. If it breaks, try to have it repaired before replacing it (see the calculations
of efficiency versus manufacturing emissions). Energy efficiency labels are useful
but sometimes misleading. They will tell you the appliance’s relative efficiency for
its size, but you would do better to take into account its absolute efficiency. The
biggest users of electricity in the average household are tumble dryers, refrigerators
and freezers, washing machines and televisions. And they are not always essential:
do you really need a tumble dryer, or could you manage with a clothes line?
The International Energy Agency estimates that standby mode could be causing
a full 1 per cent of world’s greenhouse gas emissions, close to what the entire
aviation industry emits. Standby power consumption for most devices is small
– typically ranging from 0.5 to 15 watts but the number of devices drawing stand-
by power is large. A European, Japanese, Australian, or North American home
often contains 20 devices constantly drawing standby power. A standard TV set,
DVD or CD player wastes up to 50 per cent of the energy it consumes while in
stand-by mode. As a result, standby power is responsible for 5–10 per cent of total
electricity use in most homes and an unknown amount in commercial buildings
and factories.
A simple way to reduce power consumption and the resulting emissions is to
use a multi-plug rail with a power switch and turn it off over night. A comple-
mentary approach is for industry to aim at reducing electricity consumption in
new appliances when they are on stand-by. The IEA has launched a campaign
aiming to reduce stand-by consumption to one watt.
www.iea.org/textbase/pa-pers/2005/standby_fact.pdf
.