Finally, somebody speaks logically and with credibility about how little actions have no practical effect on energy use or carbon output. Like he said, if you eat hot-cooked and/or refrigerated food, drive to work, and are socially acceptably clean, then frankly you use a ton of electricity. Disconnecting your phone charger does nothing.
Hopefully the mass media will report on this in the US.
I was surprised to learn that current nuclear technologies don't have the throughput to handle a lot of our energy needs in the long-term. Hopefully the new fission technologies (or even better, fusion!) get developed and put into practice.
I agree - it's overdue for someone numerate to analyze the options. I've downloaded the book and will read it this weekend. It's always astonished me that most mainstream journalists focus on stuff like not leaving your TV on standby, but never suggest turning the heating down a bit (or turning the A/C off for any of you lucky enough to live somewhere warmer than where I live)
I'd imagine it's because anyone who's paid a gas or electric bill in both summer and winter for the same dwelling knows how much heating and A/C cost. Thus, individual expenditure of comfort-related energy depends not on awareness but on willingness; and a TV news item certainly isn't going to make me turn off the A/C at night and wake up every morning with sweat-soaked sheets and a parched throat.
Devices that drain power while doing nothing useful, on the other hand, are an awareness problem. If a news platform can inform people of small power drains that are avoidable at nearly nil personal cost, the aggregate effect could easily be greater than a moral harangue about the social inequity of refrigerated food.
a TV on standby can actually use 40W of power. This is really an issue of product design that we should be demanding the manufacturers fix. While 40W may be small compared with the bigger picture, it is still energy that is completely wasted, and if you add up the savings from everyone in USA turning the TV off all the way, the energy adds up, and Americans just got a lot more exercise from getting up from the couch and walking to the TV.
Phone chargers and many other electronic devices are using less than 1W when unused but plugged in. Again, this is an issue that should be solved with better product design.
>While 40W may be small compared with the bigger picture, it is still energy that is completely wasted
The bigger picture is all that ever matters when we're discussing fungible goods such as power. The concept of an "order of magnitude" is fundamental to engineering discussions. 40W is just not significant when talking about the power consumption of an average American. Because of this, when you multiply 40W times the number of Americans and compare it to the total power used by all Americans, it is still insignificant on the important scale. It does not matter that if we all unplugged our TV sets when we're not watching them that we'd save enough electricity to power 10k households, because 10k households is insignificant when compared to the number of households in America.
>and Americans just got a lot more exercise from getting up from the couch and walking to the TV.
No, they didn't. A lot of Americans just got a tiny bit of exercise each. They're still all fat and out of shape (1). You're playing with the third decimal place here, or worse.
>Again, this is an issue that should be solved with better product design.
Due attention to the concept of orders of magnitude directs us to work on the things that matter, not the things that are marginal. This helps us overcome the all-too-natural urge to moralize over every trivial action. In point of fact, this issue _should_not_ be solved with better product design if that effort is better spent on things that really matter. If you could decrease power transmission losses by 50% over high tension lines, for example, you'd swamp the contribution of eliminating appliance standby power consumption many times over (I would guess).
Finally, this principle effects every aspect of one's life and is probably a very good indicator of the kind of person who would succeed in a startup environment. If the "We Must Do Everything We Can" principle invades you or your startup, you will be doomed to failure. You will not have a reliable way to sort out the important from the unimportant, the central from the peripheral, nor the vital from the irrelevant. You cannot afford to be fiddle-f@#king with trivial layout issues when you really need to be getting a product out the door, for example.
(1)This is just a bit of rhetorical license. Not all Americans are fat, nor out of shape.
These small savings do matter, because they are low hanging fruit.
Convincing people to turn a television off all the way (or better yet, making it automatic) has no downside with respect to quality of life. Not taking a bath on the other hand certainly affects the quality of life of those around you.
Being able to turn off one entire power station because soft standby has been disabled is a small step, but as the cost is insignificant why do you care that the step is only small?
One thing you see from incrimental programming is that waiting for the 'final answer' doesn't work, but a large number of small steps does. It's the same in all things.
Exactly. There are few places where we can get free energy. Making TVs more energy efficient is one of them, so we may as well do it since it is such an easy task.
If you do the math (40W * 24h * 365 * .09 $/kWh)
You end up with a savings of $30 a year
At 5 seconds to turn off the TV properly you are at $60/hour. Most people would think this is a good rate for their work.
Maybe if I try and generalize this to something that it doesn't really apply to by using abstract principles with no math behind them I can get more up votes...
Up next, on Scary News at 10: is cancer causing, radiation emitting nuclear power the answer to our energy problems? We'll interview several anti-nuclear activists masquerading as scientists to find out the answer. We'll also pluck the heartstrings by showing a mother and daughter who are dying of cancer, and vaguely suggest it's because of nuclear power without actually saying so.
And later: a miracle died you can use that lets you eat whatever you want, sit on your ass all day and still lose weight! Don't change the channel or you'll miss it.
I don't think nuclear is coming to the US any time soon.
Clarification: The upside of nuclear is obvious, but Joe sixpack is afraid of the China Syndrome, Three Mile Island scenarios and fears it being anywhere near them. Nuclear is far more environmentally safe and less life-threatening than any other form of energy production we have. The only referents we have of nuclear deaths we have are intentional (WWII) or communist idoicy (Chernobyl).
Agreed. Most of the little actions are pieties, designed to make people feel and look virtuous. Many of them aren't thought through.
e.g. Leaving a light on at night is a good idea. You're less likely to trip and fall. Breaking a pelvis (common with elderly ladies) and going to hospital is an environmental cost.
e.g. Leaving power adapters plugged in is convenient. Drudgery takes time away from our productive and recreational activities, which make life better for everyone and improve our environment. Also, in wintertime, the heat generated by adapters warms the house.
A lightbulb wastes watts, idle power adaptors waste milliwatts.
You can still save a few <currency> on your annual bill by switching the lights off when you don't need them and using energy-saving bulbs. OK, so that's probably in the order of 1% of your bill, but still, 1% for something that takes virtually no effort at all.
What he's shown is that not all energy-saving tips are equal. Unplugging your power adaptor isn't really worth the effort. Turning your thermostat down half a degree, using a colder washing machine cycle, driving 5mph slower or more evenly or without air conditioning and not reboiling the kettle when it's still hot are all little actions that can have a significant effect on your energy usage.
1% for something that takes virtually no effort at all
For any resource, including electricity, there will be an optimum level of wastage. Perhaps you would place it 0.1%? Attempting to reduce the wastage below this point, wherever it lies, will defeat the purposes that drive consumption in the first place: to live and enjoy a good life.
It's worth remembering that the reason greenies want to squeeze electricity are environmental rather than financial. Pages and pages of our media are filled with pious discussion of small lifestyle changes. This is wasted effort too!
I am not sure that there is a new idea, or that this guy is saying anything I didn't hear one of my engineering professors say 5 years ago.
However, the problem with these calculations is that they cannot take into account new technology that will be created in the next 30 years.
To fufill our energy needs, we only need to tap into 5% of the Sun's energy that reaches earth. So while discussions using current technology are important, lets make clear that the long-term goal is sustainable, low pollution (and radiation) energy, and that it can be achieved.
I agree about active reduction - not worth the effort.
However, I still like passive reduction efforts, like those newer monitors that don't draw any current when on standby. (I can't find a link at the moment.) Stuff like that can result in huge savings when adopted, because the tiny savings is multiplied over a huge number of devices.
we are desperately in need of nuclear energy. burning coal is just not acceptable and I'd like to see the anti-nuclear people sing the same tune after looking at the total output of a coal plant vs a nuclear plant.
I took a physics class like this ("Energy and Society") from Philip Taylor back at Case Western Reserve University ("a tradition of excellence that's even longer than our name"). To sum up the lesson of the class in a sentence: One of the most useful skills of the physicist is the ability and inclination to do simple back-of-the-envelope calculations, and to take the results seriously.
But if it turns out that these are the important numbers, you can fix them to an amazing extent. That's the very essence of the Pareto principle: Focus your efforts on the things that matter.
There are, if necessary, alternatives to the daily 5-minute showers of 5 gal/min. (Some people, as we all know but politely avoid mentioning, are used to the alternatives already. ;) It might be a combination of: fewer showers, cooler showers, shorter showers, better heat-recovery technology for shower water, more efficient shower heads that use less water but provide the same cleaning, improved shower techniques involving better soaps and high-tech sponges, special filters for water reclamation...
The transportation situation, of course, is more expensive and tedious to fix, but the answers aren't that hard: Design cities around public transportation. Live at higher density and/or with smarter zoning that leads to shorter trips. Build real bike lanes so that those of us who bicycle in Boston don't need such expensive insurance policies.
>more efficient shower heads that use less water but provide the same cleaning,
I think a lower flow but high pressure might be useful here; perhaps supplement normal water pressure with an electric pump. Another possibility is low flow with a trigger that lets you turn on high pressure/flow when you need it.
> The transportation situation, of course, is more expensive and tedious to fix,
I just got back from a trip to Portland. Free public transporation in the city center! Whoa!
As one of my professors once said, one the big reasons public transportation won't work in the suburbs (car-owning individual attitudes aside) is usually you can't walk through backyards (e.g. no regular street/crossover grids).
Ralph Roberts, founder of Comcast, once said that Americans want three things "TV, sports, cars". Take away any of the three and you have a problem...
I agree that we're not going to break Americans of their love of cars. Indeed, the love of cars is spreading! One of the reasons gas is getting expensive is that people in China love cars, too!
What could happen, though, is that cars will become a luxury item for more and more people. That's slowly happening now, as oil gets more expensive. Cars will get smaller. They'll emphasize efficiency. They will still be bought, but will be driven less and less. Perhaps there will be one car per household rather than two or three. A lot of cars will just be for show: They will look really fast, sitting there in their beautiful garage.
Eventually cars might end up where horses are today -- a few high-tech racecars, some recreational cars in upper-middle-class garages, some working cars in poor areas of Third-World countries, and a rich literary tradition -- tales of the wild Carboys and their lives on the highways of 1960s Las Vegas. (Come to think of it, we've already got the literary tradition.)
Or, cars might just become passe. People's tastes can change on a dime, if the price is right. Some of us were hip enough to hate SUVs before it was cool [1], but everybody is starting to hate them now. Large numbers of people used to be really into horses, square-rigged sailing ships, steamboats... but once gas got cheap there was no turning back.
Or maybe somebody invents Mister Fusion and we're all saved. Or it turns out that plug-in electrics plus breeder reactors plus solar panels make the car culture work for another two hundred years, which is rather more likely but hardly guaranteed.
[1] Or, rather, before hating SUVs became so mainstream that it was no longer hip. Perhaps the hipsters of the mid-21st century will all own enormous nuclear-powered SUVs.
The typical car carries 3000 lbs of car and less than 200 lbs of person. Even a fully loaded car with 5 adults is probably 20% payload, 80% vehicle. There's a lot of room for more efficient transportation without qualitative changes in how it's carried out.
The main issue here is I don't want a compromise in my shower. Not for hygienic reasons, that's a practical matter and can be addressed as such, but because hot baths/showers are a mark of civilization, of the fact that we live in the environment we choose.
The transportation problem at least can be solved. Besides public transportation I think one solution would be to think local more. When hiring somebody I'm factoring in their commute time - it influences a lot of their long term job satisfaction.
Very much agree with the order of magnitude argument. I never understood all this economic lighting fad: i use economical light bulbs because they save me money, not because they save the planet. Everything I save this way is probably less then one brake of a freight train.
What irritates me more is how much we allow people to push their irrational arguments over us and let them dominate the discussion. I strongly doubt Greenpeace hasn't made the same math, they just don't care. And still they can make someone be afraid to be labeled as pro-nuclear. Why? Why do we allow obvious flawed theories be pushed around until they become common sense?
Very fascinating. We sometimes forget that far from being 'clean' energy, the sun is actually a massive nuclear furnace. It just happens to be far enough away :-)
Hopefully the mass media will report on this in the US.
I was surprised to learn that current nuclear technologies don't have the throughput to handle a lot of our energy needs in the long-term. Hopefully the new fission technologies (or even better, fusion!) get developed and put into practice.