So if you want to conserve, you can see where are the likely highest priority places to start. Of course, these are national averages so you can make regional or personal adjustments. For example, if you live in the southern parts of the US, air conditioning is likely a bigger fraction of your total, while in northern climes, it's probably less. Similarly, if you heat with electricity then space heating is likely the biggest bar for you, whereas if you don't, it will be zero.
Still and all, if you start working down the bars in size order and replace anything that is old and inefficient with new and maximally efficient replacements, this will be a fairly rational approach. This is likely to save money in the long-haul, and at least in some states (like New York) you can get long-term financing which will mean that you can replace a bunch of your appliances with no cash up front - it's essentially new appliances for free (since the utility bill savings should exceed the loan payments). What's not to like?
26 comments:
What's not to like? The carbon footprint of the materials and energy need to produce all these energy-efficient replacements. Although undoubtedly carbon emissions are ultimately reduced by replacing with newer, efficient technology - we passed the point where such replacement was a feasible solution a long time ago. To get the necessary reductions to keep this planet below 2C requires not a new refrigerator - it requires turning off your refrigerator and switching to different older "tech" like fermentation for storing perishable foodstuffs.
Aaron:
I disagree: 1) no significant fraction of the population is ever going to agree to do without modern appliances except under the last extremity; 2) the embodied energy of appliances is generally small compared to the lifetime operating energy, and 3) I think we should apply a sense of boundaries and personal responsibility here. It's reasonable to hold homeowners responsible for the operating energy usage of their own homes. It's not reasonable to hold them responsible for the energy usage of vendor companies - which the homeowner has neither visibility into nor any control over. Instead, we should move towards holding companies responsible for their operating energy usage. Otherwise people will have no motivation to make improvements that they can because it doesn't meet an impossible standard.
Stuart,
I see that lighting used a fair amount of energy in 2001. In a number of countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, New Zeeland, Australia, Canada and EU it is not allowed to sell the old light bulb any longer, with some exceptions. What about US?
Stuart,
Regarding 1) I think the same would have been said regarding car sales, pleasure driving and the unrestricted purchase of food and fuel in late 1941. But by early 1942 a lack of agreement was no longer an option. The luxury of agreeing to make the hard choices in regards to mitigating climate change is quickly vanishing, IMO. 2) True, but the opportunity to mitigate climate change by making economic changes on the margin has passed us by - we no longer have the time to slowly ramp up reduced emission infrastructure. Severe and drastic cuts that are apparently unimaginable must be implemented immediately. 3) Am I my brother's keeper? I don't think silos of responsibility are going to get us where we need to be - we are going to succeed or fail together. Responsibility for emissions lies with no one and it lies with everyone - a failed civilization fails us all because we will have all failed to keep it.
You're probably familiar with Kevin Anderson's comments on the current situation but in case you're not: http://www.whatnext.org/resources/Publications/Volume-III/Single-articles/wnv3_andersson_144.pdf
Aaron:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE
Aaron's approach, which is consistent with some widely held beliefs, is to reduce energy use across society to levels that allow the atmosphere to recover a more normal carbon profile. At this point such a change is pretty well impossible at this population level. It would require the loss of so many conveniences that we consider commonplace at this point that there is no way you could get popular support for it, and if you imposed such a regime you would actually have to be killing people to make it happen, because there are a significant number of people alive at this moment that cannot shift to a spartan lifestyle and continue breathing. So how many lives is it worth?
The only solution is finding new energy sources that are less damaging to the environment and plentiful enough to supply all the energy we need. Pretty tall order, yeah, but we need to get started on it.
Stuart
I have always admired your thoughtful comments both here and on the Oildrum. Which is why I was somewhat taken aback by your response to Aaron. Perhaps you can help me out.
I take your response to Aaron to mean " don't turn the good into the enemy of the best". This is generally good advice. However, I'm not sure that it works in this case.
I think you first have to ask what is the minimum changes that would be necessary to avoid 2 degrees . If the "good" won't achieve that, and we slide by the tipping points, then the good really was the enemy of the best.
Anderson makes a strong case that it may take a war mobilization type effort to avoid 2 degrees. Or perhaps I am misreading you. Does your reference to Monty python mean that you think Anderson is too much on the fringe to be given credence?
Thanks for clarifying this
Walter
I'm surprised they left out swimming pool pumps. When I sold solar we looked for houses with pools because - in California - pumps are required to run a certain period to prevent inadvertent mosquito farms, and so pools can use up to another 200 kWh a month.
Also large aquariums, and EV charging.
Susan: If you check the link they consume 0.9% of household electricity (which fell in residual in order to make a reasonable graph). Guess although they are big hogs not that large a fraction of houses have them.
Walter:
To clarify a little further: I think the advice "everyone should give up all modern conveniences" (and by implication return to an eighteenth century standard of living) is directly counterproductive (especially when made part of a critique of those of us urging people to make their households more efficient). Getting rid of all modern conveniences is not going to happen regardless of how many degrees of future climate change it commits us too. I think advocating it shows an utter failure to grasp the mindset of the average consumer in the developed (and middle income) nations and puts one very far out on the fringe of the discussion spectrum, yes.
I believe very strongly that the only politically viable path that is also reasonably rapid to carbon neutrality goes through making cost effective efficiency improvements and subsidizing renewables to foster their very rapid global deployment (until their price falls far enough that they don't need the subsidy).
Stuart
Thanks for your reply. I agree that we will only do what "politically viable". I just wonder whther that will be enough. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on Anderson, some time.
Thanks again
keep up the good work
I've been struggling to quantify the effects of four degrees (Celsius) of warming.
Sure, some ecosystems will die quicker than they would have otherwise, but they're all pretty much "dead men walking" at this point, and they would die even without climate change.
So I've been focusing on the effects on humans: the risk to civilization. There are lots of sweeping statements out there on the internets, but I've found little that puts numbers to the impacts. What does a "20% drop in rainfall" actually matter, in terms of human lives blighted or shortened? Numbers for the impacts are hard to come by.
I've tried making my own estimates of excess deaths attributable to climate change, and the numbers I come up with are broadly similar to what we do to ourselves: deaths from heart disease and strokes, other deaths ascribable to smoking, deaths from road accidents, diabetes, and violence. We're bearing these costs, so they can't be a risk to civilization.
Aside from the risk of civilizational suicide by nuclear war, I can see only one really problematic issue: topsoil loss. That might take some beating--but again, climate change is just speeding up a process already under way. All other problems can be sidestepped with relatively small investments, taken over the century and the globe.
So: how bad is four degrees of climate change, really? What are we doing to ourselves, exactly? What are the numbers?
Interested people (well, a person, anyway) want to know.
BTW I don't think I'm in disagreement with Anderson at all (which I just skimmed very quickly) On appliances he says:
"Demand-side opportunities dwarf supply-side opportunities, and we can change demand in the very short term. Toasters have a one-to-two year life span, cars only about eight years in reality. Refrigerators and white goods about three-to-eight years. Real change could be brought about very rapidly through a stringent regulatory framework setting minimum standards."
He's clearly contemplating swapping them out, much as I advocate. Or on vehicles:
"Consider car e&ciency. The average car in the UK emits about 175 g of CO2 per kilometre. A new car emits on average about 144 g/km. In 2015, the EU plans to introduce legislation requiring 130 g/km as a .eet average (SMMT, 2011). This means the wealthy will be able to drive highly emitting prestige cars as long as the car manufacturers also sell some more e&cient cars. In 2008, however, BMW introduced a 3-series 160 horsepower diesel engine. It is a strong, sporty car with a sophisticated diesel engine, but it only emits 109 g/km. Less exclusive cars such as VWs and Skodas were already available with 85-99 g/km. In 1998 Audi had a diesel car that only emitted 75 g/km. It could still travel faster than the motorway speed limits and it did everything a normal car does. With 80-90 per cent of all the vehicle kilometres in the UK (and similar across the EU) covered by cars eight years or younger, existing standard diesel engine technology, tweaked for performance in terms of e&ciency rather than in terms of speed, could deliver a 50 per cent reduction of emissions from cars by the early 2020s, assuming the overall distance driven remains unchanged (it is currently stable in the UK). On top of this we could add new technologies, such as hybrids and electric cars. If we then reverse the recent trends in occupancy and have more people travelling together, we could probably see something like a 70 per cent reduction in emissions from cars by early next decade"
This is similar in flavor to http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/17/1377/0132
My disagreement is with Aaron, not with Anderson.
"The only solution is finding new energy sources that are less damaging to the environment and plentiful enough to supply all the energy we need." Good luck with that. Given the present laws of physics alone, it won't happen. Add the complications of finance and it really won't happen. The only solution is to get over the construct that you'll have all the energy you "need" - where that need is based on today's availability of energy to waste - and start living a much lower energy life. Happiness does not involve air conditioning - I grew up in Florida before it was widely deployed and had a happy childhood. One doesn't "need" a television set. Get over yourself and quit expecting the laws of the universe to bend so that water can provide the energy density of gasoline or coal. Eat well and be happy with the 2.4kWh a day you generate. Use it to do a little work adapting to a life where it may be the biggest source of power you have.
Stuart:
On page twenty Anderson summarizes,
"science tells us that for an outside chance of 2C, Annex I countries need to reach emission reductions of the order of about 40 percent by 2015, 70 per cent by 2020 and over 90 per cent by 2030..."
As a member of an Annex I country, how do you propose your household will accomplish this with "making cost effective efficiency improvements and subsidizing renewables to foster their very rapid global deployment"? I understand that you are working toward carbon neutrality - but I don't think you're going to achieve low enough carbon emissions within such a short time frame merely by swapping out one appliance for another or one energy source for another. A PV panel manufactured in a Chinese factory powered by a coal plant may eventually give a positive EmissionReduction-Return-On-Emission-Investment (to borrow and mangle another term) - but within the time frame required? I'd love to see the numbers.
We are returning to a world of less conveniences - conveniences that keep some of us alive. I'm daily dependent on modern medicine for basic levels of energy and well-being - I have children - I am not sanguine about what's occurring. But IMO the intersection of climate change and our lifestyles is much like death - it is inevitable that my body is not sustainable, that it will grow old and eventually decease. So it is with our lifestyle - it is not sustainable. Just as we cannot choose if we die, we cannot choose to keep our lifestyle. We can only choose how we lose it - gracefully or kicking and screaming. I'm willing to give up my refrigerator so that I can keep my meds and some notion that my children's future won't resemble Mad Max. And, yes, I'm an average consumer. I suspect most consumers are just like me - when push comes to shove, the hard choices become easier.
Aaron:
Me personally? We are sort of in the middle of a five-ish year plan to get to carbon neutrality on an operating basis. As I indicated, I don't propose to take responsibility for how solar panel (or any other) manufacturors run their businesses (though no doubt if/when we get to the point of having certified carbon neutral businesses I'd be keen to buy from them). The house itself is already pretty much there - we buy 100% renewable electricity and heat with wood. Efficiency projects are really just good housekeeping - ditto onsite solar which I plan to do next year. We currently drive hybrids/diesels, and will get to electrics or plugins over the next year or three. Personal air travel is going to be some mixture of less-of-it and offsets (eg we probably have the potential to fix 5-10 tons C/yr on our land versus pre-existing management of the land).
We shouldn't have any difficulty making 90% reductions in our operating carbon footprint in the course of five years.
Hi Stuart
Thanks for looking at the Anderson material and giving me your feed back. I give his views some credence because he is in the thick of it, - deputy director of the Tyndal Center. What caught my eye were his calculations of the reductions necessary in order to live within the “carbon budget”. He has three options depending on the peak date. 2115, 2020, or 2025 see page 8
http://www.whatnext.org/resources/Publications/Volume-III/Single-articles/wnv3_andersson_144.pdf
As you can see the slope of the down side after the peak are quite extreme. Somewhere between 10 and 20%. As he points out, we don't really have a historical analogue for this. The closest thing we have is the fall of the USSR, which resulted in a 5% decline. Then the curve flattens out at the bottom, corresponding to the amount of carbon which would be used by agriculture. (and nothing else?) !!
In light of those curves, I take his discussion of car technology to be saying “ Look at what it will really take to get there – and look at what we are doing. We can't even switch to off the shelf cost saving technologies like diesel!”
My take away is that yes, of course we should continue to push for reductions in energy use, and we should push for more use of other technologies. But, we should also recognize that despite those efforts, we (or our kids) are likely to see 2,3, 4? degrees.
Thanks for your time
Walter
Stuart
Glad to hear of your success on the carbon reductions. We're on the same road. We built a super insulated home heated by geothermal and wood. We buy the green-ish power that the utility offers. Solar hot water. Not sure about PV – we live about ten miles from the rainiest spot in Oregon. I'm curious about the offsets you buy. We bought some, then weren’t sure it was doing that much. Can you recommend an reputable outfit?
Walter
Walter: I've used Finger Lakes Climate Fund (fingerlakesclimatefund.org/) which is a local thing run by a non-profit in my area. They give grants for people to make efficiency improvements/fossil fuel replacements in my local area. My theory is that using a local fund I have some hope of understanding the kind of thing in the project portfolio and that it actually is beneficial (vs something happening off in Asia or Africa that I'd have no way to assess).
Also- I wanted to thank Aaron for his comments here - we may disagree but it's been helpful to have this discussion and flesh out the issues more.
"We shouldn't have any difficulty making 90% reductions in our operating carbon footprint in the course of five years"
I think it goes without saying that this is highly commendable. You seem to be fairly entrepreneurial - have you considered a starting a business that offers the average household consumer plug-n-play options for reducing their carbon footprint? Just an idea - the average consumer hasn't the time or expertise to make many of the changes you're implementing. They may be inclined to address their carbon emissions but the threshold for doing so would be much lower if there was a convenient way to begin the change. Even a clear outline of necessary steps that serve as a working model could help a lot of people.
I fully appreciate "the mindset of the average consumer in the developed (and middle income) nations" and their unwillingness to forego modern conveniences. I spent the last three years off-the-grid and just recently moved back onto the grid. The ease of having appliances that draw on an unlimited source of power is not something I can keep myself from utilizing to the fullest - I flush the toilet, run a load of laundry, run the dishwasher without a second thought since the cost now is merely a handful of dollars instead of the trouble and hassle of refilling a gas generator when several days of cloudy weather has prevented the sun from refilling the battery banks. Human nature seeks comfort and convenience - which is why I think emission reduction has to be mandated from a position of social authority and coupled with a narrative that serves to guide people to make the hard choices. Relying on consumers to make rational economic decisions when they are guided by natural impulses to make the easy choices, IMO, isn't sufficient. Although restructuring economic incentives can go a long way, I think the time lag for such economic signals to propagate through the system is too great. Essentially we need an announcement from the highest social authority coupled with a compelling narrative/propaganda of how and why we're all going to undergo radical economic restructuring (or be socially shunned for not participating in the effort).
I question carbon offsets - is it not sleight-of-hand to purchase carbon offsets with dollars earned from engaging in economic activity that emits carbon? If I earn dollars working in the tar sands of Canada and spend them on renewable electricty supplies to bring my household to carbon neutrality, have I achieved what I'm seeking? I know this argument isn't novel and I suppose we must all do what we can - but I think we all too often pat ourselves on the back while pushing the problem beyond our purview. We have strong environmental regulations in the US - and yet we enjoy Chinese products manufactured under lax environmental regulation. Carbon offsets appear to meet the same criticism since they cannot (easily) be purchased with carbon-neutral dollars.
Finally, I just wanted to say thank you for the time, effort and thought you put into your blog. It's nice to have a place to quickly check the pulse of the global situation since I don't follow current events quite as closely as I once did.
' The only solution is to get over the construct that you'll have all the energy you "need" - where that need is based on today's availability of energy to waste - and start living a much lower energy life. Happiness does not involve air conditioning - I grew up in Florida before it was widely deployed and had a happy childhood. One doesn't "need" a television set. Get over yourself and quit expecting the laws of the universe to bend so that water can provide the energy density of gasoline or coal. Eat well and be happy with the 2.4kWh a day you generate. Use it to do a little work adapting to a life where it may be the biggest source of power you have.'
For me, I can hack what comes, or I don't. The fundamental question I asked was ignored. The energy budget is what determines how many people can survive. If we reduce the energy budget, people will die. No way around that. Just for an example, My Wife is a very infirm human that could not possibly survive a summer or winter without HVAC, regardless of the climate we moved to. You make an exception for people like this, and how many more? Who decides who lives or dies? Or no exceptions, and people like this die. This is not a unique situation.
Eco-Fascism of the sort some are proposing here is not a winning approach. It is a loser from both economic and humanistic perspectives. I know my physics well, sir, and I am aware of the limits of renewables. In my opinion we need a crash program to solve the problem of controlled nuclear fusion. From what I can see, all other paths lead to much war and poverty amongst the people, and we both should be working to prevent these horrors.
What an interesting discussion.
My own two cents:
"I think the advice "everyone should give up all modern conveniences" (and by implication return to an eighteenth century standard of living) is directly counterproductive (especially when made part of a critique of those of us urging people to make their households more efficient)."
Counterproductive to what Stuart?
Your own vision of the future - the achievability of which cannot be proven to any greater degree of certainty than any other fantasy can?
***
"I believe very strongly that the only politically viable path that is also reasonably rapid to carbon neutrality goes through making cost effective efficiency improvements and subsidizing renewables to foster their very rapid global deployment (until their price falls far enough that they don't need the subsidy)."
I wonder if you have time to comment on this:
http://theautomaticearth.com/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=14&id=5865&Itemid=96
I also wonder how you reconcile efficiency gains, carbon reductions and the concept of "Jevon's paradox" with a growth dependant global economy?
***
"Eco-Fascism of the sort some are proposing here is not a winning approach."
I fail to see where "eco-fascism" has been advocated anywhere in this comment section.
To point out that the level of carbon reductions required simply to mitigate an already terrible situation requires the types of energy use cuts that could be achieved by adopting an 18th century lifestyle is not fascist.
Besides, if you look around you, you will see that it isn't "eco-fascism" you should be worried about but rather the good-old fashioned kind, which is already on the rise in places we used to think were great vacation destinations.
***
When a complex system grows to the point that it can no longer be entirely managed, it develops something like a life of its own.
I think it's already possible to demonstrate that control of this complex system that is our civilization has already slipped out of our grasp, and all our best theoretical plans will amount to not much more than slight mitigations and daydreams.
Under the circumstances, I don't think it's counterproductive at all to advocate for "politically incorect" societal changes any more than it is counterproductive for the cabin crew of an airliner to advocate that you begin to assume "crash positions" when the airliner's systems decide that straight and level flight is no longer an option - yes, maybe the pilots will diagnose the problem and restore the flight at some other altitude, but should that be assumed?
Lucas:
I glanced at your link but didn't read it all because it quickly became obvious that I don't share the premise. In particular, I don't think it's particularly likely that we are entering an era of sustained economic contraction at the moment or in the immediate future.
"In particular, I don't think it's particularly likely that we are entering an era of sustained economic contraction at the moment or in the immediate future."
Stuart,
I appreciate that you took the time to have a peek at that article.
As I'm sure you're aware, many strong arguments have been made in support of the idea that we are entering (or have already entered) an age of economic contraction.
Since many of the beliefs that you have expressed about the future are underpinned by NOT sharing in the premise of eventual economic contraction, I (and maybe some of your other readers) would be very interested in reading (at some point) your argument specifically against that position.
With all due respect, given the strength of your assertions about what path we should be on and what may or may not be "counterproductive" to "the discussion", I'm not sure it's enough to simply say that you don't believe in something so critical to the support of your other beliefs.
If you've already explained yourself in this regard, then apologies. Please point me to the correct page.
Lucas:
I haven't said too much about it recently, but it really goes back to the very first post I wrote on peak oil:
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/8/24/161535/296
where I basically argued that it's really the post-peak decline rate that controls whether or not the economy can grow faster than the decline (by becoming steadily more efficient). At that time, I had no idea about what post-peak decline rates would actually be, but now it seems pretty clear that they are likely moderate - we've seen that we've been on pretty much a plateau for the last seven years (upward sloping if you look at all-liquids), I've done enough work on Saudia Arabia to be confident they won't go into imminent all-the-way decline, Iraq clearly has the potential to increase a lot (albeit no doubt slower they they'd hoped at the outset), no doubt, too, the tar-sands can keep increasing for a long time, and now we've seen the US not only stop declining but even go up some in oil production. So at this point I just don't see any plausible story about how peak oil can lead to an abrupt decline. And if you don't have that, then you are back the basic fact that the long term control on the economy's growth rate is that labor productivity keeps increasing due to technological progress. And that's still happening. We still have some debt related problems - especially in Europe - but I see that as fundamentally transitory - it will get worked out over 5-10 years as it's basically a matter of negotiating who has to take the losses - painful, but not impossible. At some point, I think probably still some time off, we'll probably get a big China depression, but again that will be an episode, rather than entering an era of global contraction.
This is why I worry about climate change so much - I see the global economy as likely to keep growing and so emitting much more carbon unless we take steps to decarbonize it much faster (which I guess will take the weather getting worse to provide more motivation).
Stuart,
Thanks for the thoughtful reply.
I find your analysis of oil supply issues quite rigorous - which is why I read your blog.
I agree that it seems unlikely that "peak oil" by itself will lead to abrupt economic decline.
But I also think there are more determining factors than the effects of "peak oil" and labour productivity.
For example, debt growth has done a lot to fuel GDP growth. It will be interesting to see how the EU's debt problems resolve - Once "the can" can no longer be kicked further down the road, whether the effects of debt default will indeed be transitory or lead to a cascade of deleveraging.
In any case, one thing is for certain - time will tell ;-)
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