
People have no bloody idea about saving energy - sasvari
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/18/energy_idiocy_survey/
======
btilly
This is not a new phenomena.

I remember 20 years ago learning that styrofoam is one of the most recyclable
materials (very little energy to recycle, can be recycled many times), and the
waxed paper we make paper cups out of is one of the least. Yet the world
switched to paper cups because styrofoam caused unsightly litter.

I remember 10 years ago having a friend tell me about a conversation he
overheard between two co-workers. The upshot was that a woman was criticizing
a man for driving a gas guzzling pickup truck. As the argument progressed it
turned out that his 2 mile commute to his apartment in his pickup truck used
much less gas than her 15 mile commute to her colonial in an efficient car.
And she was so fixed in her view of the world that she couldn't accept that
her desire to have a large house was less environmentally friendly than his
desire to have a vehicle that he could use to carry a dead deer.

I can't count how many times I've heard environmentally active people talk
about how the forests are the lungs of the world. Yet they are wrong. True,
cutting down forests inevitably releases a lot of carbon. But mature forests
are at equilibrium. They both absorb and release large amounts of carbon with
little net effect. (This is especially true of jungles, slightly less true of
deciduous forests whose leaves tend to become part of the soil.) The _real_
"lungs of the world" that act as a carbon sink are the algae in the ocean.

I could multiply examples, but the trend is clear. When I hear someone start a
lecture on what is good for the environment I first try to verify how much
that person knows. Most of the time I'm able to ignore that person in good
conscience.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_Yet the world switched to paper cups because styrofoam caused unsightly
litter._

I thought the real issue here was biodegradability. Since most disposable cups
are not recycled, the ease with which they could be recycled matters a lot
less than the fact that styrofoam is forever. Then again, in the absence of
oxygen and light, I'm not sure that paper cups will ever degrade much in a
modern landfill....

 _The upshot was that a woman was criticizing a man for driving a gas guzzling
pickup truck._

I'm a pretty environmental fellow. But I cannot understand the psychology of
someone who would harass a stranger about their choices. I mean, what business
of it is mine how some random person decides to carry out their life. Even if
I'm right (which this woman clearly was not), it is not going to make a
difference -- it will just make people miserable.

 _When I hear someone start a lecture on what is good for the environment I
first try to verify how much that person knows._

My personal favorite is that we must prevent any new construction in the city
because we should be building parks and green space there because green space
is more green and trees are vital for dealing with climate change. That's why
we should ensure that there is no high density housing near public
transportation infrastructure.

~~~
InclinedPlane
_I'm a pretty environmental fellow. But I cannot understand the psychology of
someone who would harass a stranger about their choices._

There are, broadly, two kinds of environmentalists.

There are the pragmatic environmentalists, who value the environment and seek
to find the most effective ways to minimize damaging it through human
activity.

Then there are the religious environmentalists. A new type of puritan,
religious environmentalists seek to cast individual worth and goodliness in
the frame of environmental impact. It's not about results so much as it is
about intentions. It is an environmental sin to own a "gas guzzling" truck or
SUV, regardless of whether that truck is used for extremely short commutes, or
whether the SUV is used to carpool with 3 other people, or whether you walk to
work everyday and only use the car on the weekends (and thus have lower per-
person per day carbon emissions than the prius or smart car owner who drives
alone and commutes from the suburbs).

As this very article shows, such religious fervor is built, as always, on a
mountain of ignorance. And the faithful are zealous in spite of rather than
because of any practical knowledge in the subject.

There are lots of pragmatic ways we can be reducing humanity's environmental
impact, but the religious greenies aren't helping. They are building up
resentment that may eventually lead to a backlash.

~~~
nollidge
> There are, broadly, two kinds of environmentalists.

Not only that, I'd say there are two such kinds of advocates for _anything_.

~~~
stoney
_There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two
kinds of people in the world and those who don't_ \-- Robert Benchley

~~~
cema
Well, there are at least two kinds of people in the world then. -- cema

------
michael_nielsen
This article buries an important story beneath bombast. A much better read is
David MacKay's (free) book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air":
<http://www.withouthotair.com/> As the book itself says, it's an analysis of
sustainable energy based on "numbers not adjectives".

~~~
avar
That's an excellent book. I have a paper copy of it. While the article is
right about cellphone chargers things like this lack some context:

    
    
        Glass requires so much energy to make - or recycle - that it is
        always more eco-friendly to use aluminium cans
    

Firstly, that depends on _how_ you recycle things. Perhaps in the UK they melt
down their glass and make it anew, but in some other countries such as Denmark
they'll actually use the _same_ bottle again after cleaning it out.

If you buy a soft drink in a class bottle in Denmark you'll get a container
that looks like it's seen war.

Secondly, it's presuming that pounds sterling is the best way to measure
sustainability, and that just because something costs more now it's less
sustainable in the long run.

Which is just patently silly. We basically have infinite energy on this planet
as long as the sun keeps shining, but we don't have infinite easily accessible
aluminum.

In the future access to basic material resources is going to be a _lot_ more
important than whether someone expended a few extra joules back in 2010.

~~~
ugh
I didn’t know that there are places on the world where glass bottles are not
used several times. Even some PET bottles are used several times in Germany.
I’m drinking Coke out of one of those right now. You can even crudely gauge
how often one has been used by how clear it is. (Mine looks pretty new.)

Wikipedia tells me that those PET bottles are used about twenty times (and
then they are recycled). They were introduced in Germany in 1990 by Coca Cola.

~~~
RK
Where I live in the US, there is no bottle reuse, as far as I know. In fact,
while we have recycling pickup, the city will not pickup glass at all because
it is considered too dangerous for the workers. If you want to recycle glass,
you have to take it yourself to a recycling center.

In the past (30+ years ago?) glass bottles were routinely reused before
plastic and aluminum containers were widespread.

In general all of the schemes for recycling and bottle reuse vary by state and
city in the US.

~~~
ugh
Now that I think of it, there are glass bottles in Germany which are not
reused, wine and liquor. Actually those are the only two next to beer which
still commonly use glass bottles. Everything else is pretty much PET, nowadays
probably already mostly not reusable (despite a mandatory deposit for all
bottles, no matter if reusable or not). It will be very hard for you to find
anyone selling aluminum cans, though.

~~~
RK
The only place I've seen reusable plastic bottles has been in Germany. Are
they used elsewhere in Europe?

Also, it seems that most of the drink cans I've seen in Germany are steel
rather than aluminum.

~~~
noste
Most of the plastic bottles sold in Finland were reusable up until 2008 or so,
but now that the tax levied on non-reusable containers has been removed, most
of the bottles appear to be of single-use variety.

~~~
Ras_
According to PALPA, those single-use bottles do get returned (89%) nearly as
well as the sturdier ones did. They just aren't reused as such but in
production of plastics.

Finnish numbers:

Aluminum cans: 92% recycled (Germany 96%, Belgium 93%)

Glass bottles: nearly 100%

Plastic bottles: 89%

To reuse a aluminum soda can you need only 5% of the energy used to make the
can.

97% of beverage bottles are recycled in Finland. Glass bottle gets reused on
average 33 times.

Finland seems to be the world leader in this area.

Joining the Finnish beverage recycling scheme is very expensive. The
industries own PALPA. If you want to join, you'll have to pay upfront your
share of the investment expenses which the other have paid previously. The
bottle stock is also very expensive. Materials plus 0,20€ per 0,33-0,5 litre
bottle, 0,40€ for 1-2 litre bottle or 0,15€ per aluminum can. For example the
German retail giant Lidl chose not to join this scheme. They do recycle their
own bottles, but you can't return their bottles anywhere else.

------
jsdalton
The "easy" solution is for society to imposes higher taxes on energy,
particularly those forms of energy which we wish to discourage our reliance
on.

This would particularly useful in the realm of consumer purchasing decisions.

Which apples required less energy, the ones shipped in from Chile, or the ones
trucked over from California? There's no way as a consumer I can know that,
but if taxes on certain energy forms (e.g. carbon-based) are high enough, then
price becomes 1) a signal of how much energy was consumed in production and
delivery, 2) a factor which discourages consumers from purchasing products
which require more energy, 3) an incentive for firms to minimize their energy
usage to keep costs down.

Will such taxes ever be effectively implemented? Almost certainly not. For
such taxes to work they would need to be high enough that consumers and firms
"felt the pinch." This desired effect, however, is exactly what makes these
kinds of taxes politically unfeasible, at least in America.

~~~
orangecat
_This desired effect, however, is exactly what makes these kinds of taxes
politically unfeasible, at least in America._

Sadly true. The other factor is that conservatives won't like them because
they're taxes, and liberals won't like them because they're market-based.
("Rich people shouldn't be able to pay to pollute").

~~~
MichaelSalib
I don't know any liberals that don't like carbon taxes or cap and trade
regimes because they're market based. I mean, the EPA already runs a cap and
trade system for some pollutants. I'd say the bigger issue is that there are
some states represented by both liberal and conservative politicians that will
lose under a cap and trade regime, and those politicians are going to oppose
any carbon price because of that.

~~~
orangecat
I probably overstated it, but it does seem that the left prefers cap-and-trade
to carbon taxes, and they definitely prefer higher fuel economy standards to
gas taxes.

 _both liberal and conservative politicians that will lose under a cap and
trade regime, and those politicians are going to oppose any carbon price
because of that._

Very true.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_I probably overstated it, but it does seem that the left prefers cap-and-
trade to carbon taxes_

This confuses me. I thought you were arguing that liberals dislike cap and
trade regimes because they're market based, but now you seem to suggest that
they prefer cap and trade regimes to carbon taxes. What am I missing?

I think lefty think tanks and environmental groups do prefer cap and trade to
carbon taxes but only because of implementation issues. They seem to think
that more tinkering around with the tax code will not be helpful and that a
cap and trade regime will have an easier time getting through Congress without
getting gutted and sullied by unsavory deals than a carbon tax would. Plus,
politically, calling anything a tax is a killer. And that includes policies
that are revenue neutral. So they've basically decided that a crummy cap and
trade regime that passes Congress is better than a good carbon tax that has no
chance of getting passed.

Economists generally view carbon taxes and cap and trade regimes as
equivalent; there are differences but they boil down to implementation
practicalities. Its like arguing over whether you should use CPython or
Jython; they're mostly the same and the answer depends on a lot of gritty
technical details about your deployment environment, etc.

 _and they definitely prefer higher fuel economy standards to gas taxes._

I think this reflects a belief that raising the gas tax is political suicide
and completely impossible. At least, that's the sense I get from reading lefty
environmental wonks.

~~~
orangecat
A carbon tax is more free market, because it just puts a price on the
externality and lets the market decide how to respond. Cap and trade involves
setting a limit by fiat and allocating the initial permits. Some on the left
see those attributes as features, because they get to pretend to control total
emissions, and help "deserving" companies. In reality I expect cap and trade
would be corrupted by rent seekers to a far greater extent than a carbon tax
would be.

 _Economists generally view carbon taxes and cap and trade regimes as
equivalent_

I agree with Greg Mankiw that cap and trade equals carbon tax plus corporate
welfare: [http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/05/reading-for-pigou-
clu...](http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/05/reading-for-pigou-club_18.html)

 _I think this reflects a belief that raising the gas tax is political suicide
and completely impossible._

Could be. From the conservative wonks I read there's a surprising amount of
support for a higher gas tax, but you're right that it would be a hard sell to
the public, compared to regulations where the costs are much easier to hide.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_A carbon tax is more free market, because it just puts a price on the
externality and lets the market decide how to respond._

Ryan Avent, an economist who focuses on these issues and writes for the, um,
Economist, claims that there are no significant differences between the two
policies: <http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/?p=2011> I haven't heard your
explanation before though, so do you have any experts who support this claim?

 _I agree with Greg Mankiw that cap and trade equals carbon tax plus corporate
welfare:_

Um, do you really think that the US tax code is generally free from corporate
welfare giveaways? If you don't, then why exactly do you think that we could
pass a carbon tax that would not have corporate welfare exemptions included?
Do you think that corporate lobbyists are particularly powerless when it comes
to changing the tax code?

It seems that giving away permits initially is superior to including an
exemption in tax law. The giveaway is a one time cost; but exemptions live
forever.

Beyond that, I agree with conservative economists Tyler Cowen and Alex
Tabarrok that Mankiew's analysis is naive and incomplete:
[http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/05...](http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/05/the-
politics-of-cap-and-trade.html) ; that might be true for the ideal carbon tax
with no exemptions for anyone that everyone agrees could never pass Congress.
But there seems to be no point comparing a realistic cap and trade bill
against an impossible to pass carbon tax.

 _From the conservative wonks I read there's a surprising amount of support
for a higher gas tax_

Interesting. I'd be curious which conservative wonks support a gas tax
increase.

------
limist
As usual, unmentioned is an individual's biggest single energy impact: dietary
choices. Just a single semester's worth of thermodynamics study (the 2nd Law
in particular) would make that clear. Some background includes:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-
report-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-
free-diet)

<http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm>

No one who claims to be worried about energy consumption and climate change
should be taken seriously, unless they cut down on their meat consumption
first. Al Gore and "An Inconvenient Truth" was a case in point, but Gore
finally started changing his tune on his diet, to his partial credit:

[http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/11/04/al-gore-agrees-that-
going...](http://www.ecorazzi.com/2009/11/04/al-gore-agrees-that-going-
vegetarian-helps-the-environment/)

~~~
gaius
It is not that long ago that if you wouldn't use animal products or labour in
most of Europe you would starve and/or freeze. Veganism as a lifestyle is
utterly dependent on huge energy subsidies.

They love to play tricks with statistics too, comparing the calories in an
acre of simple carbs in crops to the calories in the complex proteins in a
cow. That's where the energy has "gone"...

~~~
kragen
Dried soybeans are 36% protein by weight. Muscle beef is 32% protein by
weight, although other parts of the cow are lower in protein. A steer is 4% of
the soybeans it's fed, by weight. So feeding soybeans to cattle is even less
defensible as a way of providing protein to people than as a way of providing
calories to people: you waste 96.5% of the protein that way.

The picture is a little less egregiously bad if you look at some other foods
(sweet corn is only 3.2% protein, so if you could get your cattle to grow on
corn without supplementing their diet with soy or other protein, you'd only be
wasting 60% of the protein). But it still isn't _good_.

The fundamental constraint here is that _animals can't produce protein from
carbohydrates or fat_. Animals can only produce protein from protein. In fact,
most plants can't produce protein from carbohydrates or fat or carbon dioxide
or water, either. They need to take up nitrogen compounds from the soil to
make protein. As far as we know, animals can't aminate carbohydrates using
other sources of nitrogen, the way plants can. So the protein that comes from
your crops is the most protein you can possibly get. Processing it through
animals can only _reduce_ the protein yield per acre of crops.

The complexity of the proteins in the cow isn't an advantage, either. You have
to break those proteins down to individual amino acids before your ribosomes
can use them to build proteins of your own. If foreign peptides (protein
fragments) get into your bloodstream, your immune system will destroy them.
From the standpoint of nutrition, the less complex the proteins are, the
better.

On the other hand, animal processing can make the protein and calories
considerably easier to eat. Ruminants' symbiotic bacteria can extract useful
calories (and massive amounts of methane) from cellulose, even if they only
pass 5% of them on to their predators; your body doesn't support these
bacteria at all. And cows have these massive jaws and teeth for grinding up
cellulosic material to extract the nutrients from it.

So, veganism _as a diet_ (I'm not sure what you mean by "as a lifestyle"}
isn't dependent on "huge energy subsidies". It's just dependent on crops you
can stand to eat and that provide you adequate nutrition. Eating animals is a
huge cost to your primary productivity; the compensating advantage is that it
renders you more adaptable in your crops. Eating animal products is somewhat
less of a huge cost.

As for freezing, it's fairly unusual for people to heat their homes by burning
animals, and in Europe, it was unusual for people to insulate their homes with
animals or animal products. Not freezing is really more a matter of
thermodynamic engineering than it is a matter of acquiring adequate energy. A
good thick thatch roof, a couple of meters of straw bales in the walls, and
some whitewash on the inside will allow you to heat even a largish habitation
with a small fire. No huge energy subsidies required. (Please don't start
complaining about the embodied energy of the whitewash.)

~~~
maukdaddy
The soy that vegans use to replace animal fats and proteins is horrendously
grown here in the US. Most of our soybean crop is of a monocropped, GMO
variety using heavy amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. See the recent
articles on dead zones in the oceans due to excess nitrogen.

To insinuate that a vegan diet is better for the planet than meat is
insincere. In the end it's probably a wash, for various reasons.

~~~
kragen
98% of the US soybean crop is used to feed livestock, according to Britannica
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/557184/soybean> . Eating the
soybeans directly, instead of converting most of them to animal manure, uses
dramatically less pesticide and fertilizer.

I request that you withdraw your accusation of insincerity and substantiate
your extraordinary claim that "it's probably a wash, for various reasons".

(Disclaimer: I am not a vegan.)

------
waivej
I personally think we should have consumption guages on our major energy
users. Getting a hybrid woke me up to this and I have since added one to the
house electrical system and built one for our heat. The cool thing is that it
gave an intuitive sense of different energy draws.

In general it is true. Our intuition is wrong in many cases. For example, I
found unhooking our doorbells was more significant than not using the clothes
drier. Today our house uses 20% of the energy it did before having the gauge.
We don't even try to conserve because the effort to reduce the baseline made
such a difference.

Why don't they require this sort of device in all new cars? One study
indicated that it would add $12.50 per car. Adding the ones to the house was
about $200.

~~~
kscaldef
> For example, I found unhooking our doorbells was more significant than not
> using the clothes drier.

Wait, what? What sort of doorbell do you have?

Also, did you figure that out just by trial-and-error of disconnecting things,
or did something lead you more directly to them?

~~~
waivej
We had three old transformers that drew 20 watts each. The drier draws around
6000 watts for 40 minutes. Though I usually use a mode that uses less heat.

Anyway, I have a gauge by the sink showing the current usage and monthly
total. It's cool because I could flip on a light and see the change. Right
away I found $50/month (out of $250) but then over the years I kept looking to
find the extra draws. I'd shut everything off and flip breakers to narrow it
down. Since then it's guided purchases so I avoid things that waste energy.

At the peak of my "research" I had no fridge and then something I built that
drew 300 watt hours per day. Back then my electric bill was only $7 (plus $15
delivery charge.). Though now I just live like an ordinary person. We use
about $25-$45 plus delivery charge (a big chunk is a dehumidifier for our damp
basement).

------
easyfrag
Heard an episode of CBC Radio's Ideas show on Hydrogen that had this
fascinating aside (I'm paraphrasing):

During the 1970's oil shock buildings in Toronto turned out their lights to
save energy, however many buildings had electricity from Hydro-electric
resources and were heated via oil-fired generators. The net result was that
turning off the lights made the buildings colder and it took more oil energy
to heat them up again than if the lights were left on.

------
DLWormwood
From the article…

> Glass requires so much energy to make - or recycle - that it is always more
> eco-friendly to use aluminium cans, even if one is talking about virgin cans
> compared to recycled bottles.

 _Since when?!?_ Growing up, in a part of the country that was once known for
glass making (but had stopped by the time I was a kid), we were taught in
school that glass was cheaper to make resource and energy wise than aluminum,
due to the lower technology overhead and ready access to the sand used to make
it. Since then, based on my own reading, I understood that aluminum was really
expensive to make due to the high electrical requirements for the process of
cracking ores to get the pure aluminum out (a substance that is hard to find
in nature in pure form, since it’s readily makes compounds and ores due to its
reactivity.) It was this basis that politicians and activists gave to push the
first recycling programs here in the States. (Which always, without exception
AFAIK, started with aluminum.)

My understanding is that glass was phased out in favor of aluminum not due to
container creation costs, but storage reasons, since cans take up less room
and shelf space than glass and were easier for stock boys and shoppers to
carry. (The only eco-reason I came across was increased fuel use to ship glass
bottles for the old returnable bottle programs. But this reasoning didn’t make
sense to me since I thought shipping a pre-existing container was much cheaper
than destroying and making new ones.)

Did some technology in recent years dramatically reduce the energy cost of
making aluminum? Or has the modern requirements of glass making added too much
overhead to what was once a cheap process?

~~~
kragen
No, aluminum production still costs the same as it has for more than a
century. The cost of the Hall-Héroult electrolytic process dwarfs the cost of
mining bauxite, so the easy access to the sand is irrelevant.

Perhaps the distinction between what you were taught and what the article says
amounts to a distinction of denominators. Glass is much cheaper per kilogram
([https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Embodied_ener...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Embodied_energy#Embodied_energy_in_common_materials)
says glass is 18–35MJ/kg, while aluminum is 227–342) but aluminum is cheaper
per container, because the weight of the container is smaller by more than a
factor of 10.

Also, recycling aluminum costs less than a tenth as much energy as smelting it
afresh. This reduces the "embodied energy" of a kilogram of aluminum destined
for recycling to the same ballpark as the "embodied energy" of a kilogram of
glass.

However, washing out bottles and reusing them is cheaper still.

~~~
eru
> However, washing out bottles and reusing them is cheaper still.

Do you have a source for this? I am quite amazed that the British drink their
bear out of virgin bottles. In Germany re-using bottles is common place.

~~~
kragen
A source for the cost of washing out bottles? No. I guess you might use about
100mℓ of water that you've heated from, say, 28°C up to 40°C, which is 1200
calories, or about 5 kilojoules. But the cost of the detergent and the new
bottlecap might be more.

The cost of recycling an aluminum can, however: an aluminum can is about 14
grams of aluminum, which is about 300 kilojoules according to the above;
supposedly (sorry, no source handy) recycling it takes about 10% of that
amount, or 30 kJ; that's about US$0.0004 of energy.

I recommend _never_ putting a bear in a virgin bottle.

~~~
eru
You can probably reuse some of the heat for the washing up. And perhaps even
some of the water.

I've heard that glass bottles are more convenient to wash, because you can use
hotter water. (That's from a reliable source --- a visit to a beverage bottler
on their open day.)

------
jws
About unplugging adapters: It is worth noting that the EU mandated more
efficient wall warts and as a result all new stuff uses negligible power when
idle. But a few years ago when DC conversion was done at 50/60Hz with great
masses of copper and iron, it wasn't unusual to have a wart burning 8 watts
day in and day out. 70kWhr/year.

As a good rule of thumb for warts: If it is warm to the touch, it is drawing 4
watts or more. If it isn't warm, don't unplug it.

I have a Ryobi drill charger, that if I left it plugged in when idle would use
as much power as my high efficiency refrigerator. (A normal refrigerator is
about 1800whr/day, so that is quite a bit more than my 200whr/day, but I'm
living remotely with an astronomical energy cost.)

------
parenthesis
Transport and heating/air-conditioning presumably are by far the biggest
energy hogs of the private individual.

So if you want to use less energy: don't drive and fly gratuitously, and live
in a property which already by its construction and location keeps the heat in
(if you live in a cold climate), or keeps the heat out (if you live in hot
climate).

~~~
ugh
Re heating/air-conditioning: get a passive house [+], but those work probably
best in relatively moderate climate and you will have to sacrifice some
comfort.

[+] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house>

------
Asa-Nisse
Sometimes I wonder if The Register just is internet trolls from 1995.

~~~
cstuder
Ars Technica posted an article on the same study with less trolling:
[http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/most-people-
in-t...](http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/most-people-in-the-dark-
about-best-way-to-save-energy.ars)

I would love to get some DigitalStrom[1] in my house in order to get some hard
data on my personal energy consumption. But you simply can't buy these systems
yet. And I doubt I can get the same amount of data and control (over the data
and my appliances) from the smart meters my power company is trying to sell
me.

[1] =
[http://www.digitalstrom.org/index.php?id=115&L=2](http://www.digitalstrom.org/index.php?id=115&L=2)

~~~
henrikschroder
"Worse, participants who reported taking the most steps toward energy
conservation had the least accurate perceptions of which ones saved the most
energy."

That's a killer quote right there. I think bad newspaper science is to blame,
there's too many articles printed on "do X to save energy NOW", without
putting them in perspective, and only reinforcing some sort of feel-good
effect in the readers.

The only thing that will work is cold hard measurements, and lots and lots of
education.

------
mikaelgramont
Can someone explain this to me?

"For example, participants estimated that line-drying clothes saves more
energy than changing the washer’s settings (the reverse is true)"

Makes no sense to me. "Changing" doesn't mean anything. I'm sure the article
is on to something, but that quote here is just too unclear.

~~~
jws
I assume they mean washing the clothes in cold water instead of hot. _changing
the washer’s settings_ does cunningly mask that the wash will also be less
effective.

Numbers: A top loading machine[3] uses about 150 liters (40 gallons) of water
to fill. If you fill that with hot water that is water that has had 30°C
(50°F)[1] added to it. That is about 20 megajoules (5kWhr). Heating a liter of
water from room temperature to vaporization[2] takes 2.5 megajoules (700 watt
hours). So… in very rough numbers you can vaporize 8 liters of room
temperature water for the same energy it takes to fill a top loading washer
once with hot water. I'd say my load of wash doesn't lose 16kg being dried, so
I presume less than 8 liters are being vaporized.

[1] I'm pulling numbers out of google here, you didn't expect more than one
significant digit, did you?

[2] Vaporization is more than 5 times the energy from 1°C to 99°C.

[3] Terribly inefficient way to wash clothes, but if an article is going to
make dramatic statements, you have to figure they will pick the most extreme
numbers.

~~~
kragen
You mean "lose 8kg being dried".

I should measure the water consumption of my washing machine.

~~~
jws
Right you are. I try to be modern and use standard units, but there is a
little "multiply by two" always working in my brain when I think about mass.

------
MicahNance
From the source at
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/08/06/1001509107.full...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/08/06/1001509107.full.pdf+html)

"We recruited 505 participants through Craigslist in seven US metropolitan
areas: New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Houston, Dallas, Denver, and Los
Angeles."

------
roboneal
Is it about saving "energy" or reducing carbon emissions?

If it's about reducing carbon emissions, simply follow France's lead and move
80% of the world's electricity generation to nuclear and get a 95-97% emission
reduction over coal fired plants.

------
jeebusroxors

        You would need to unplug it or switch it off for a year 
        to save as much energy as it takes to have one-and-a-half
        baths.
    

Maybe something is lost in translation but what on earth are they comparing?
The energy cost to heat the water in a bath?

~~~
wuputah
Presumably, yes. Although there are formulae to convert water use to an amount
of energy consumption (which takes into account processing, pumps, etc), they
are probably referring to the energy to heat water. 1 watt for 1 year is (1W *
24h * (365d/year)) * (1Wh/1000kWh) = 8.76 kWh, or ( * 3412 BTU/kWh) about 30k
BTU. The average bath is about 50 gallons, or ( * 8.35 lb/gallon) 417.5 lb.
30k BTU is enough energy to raise that much water by about 70°F (30k BTU /
417.5 lb). By that measurement, the Guardian takes baths 46.6°F hotter than
their tap water. If that is too cool for you, you can take a smaller bath.

It's worth noting that the conversions here assume you can transfer the kWh
with perfect efficiency to heating water, while in actuality, all heating
systems will be somewhat inefficient. It will actually take more energy to
heat the water, regardless of the energy source used by the water heater.

Edit: whoops, I originally misread and used 1.5 years and 1.5 baths.
Calculations changed.

~~~
kragen
A couple of points:

\- It's a lot easier to heat your bath with solar energy than it is to run
your phone charger. So if you have a solar hot water heater, a different
comparison would be in order.

\- The inefficiency of the water heater is probably relatively small (under
50%, maybe under 10%) and so can be neglected for the purpose of round-number
figures like "one and a half baths".

------
eande
"In fact lighting accounts for a relatively small proportion of the average
person's energy use"

That I do not share this view. The residential household typically uses 11% of
energy on light and commercial up to 20%. It might not be much as a single
individual if you consistently flip the switch when not needed, but overall as
a society it does safe MW of energy. An even better way is to safe energy is
the use of CFL (4 times energy savings compared to incandescent light) or the
new LED lighting solutions (4-6 times energy savings compared to incandescent
light). Australia and some places in Europe by law banned already some
incandescent bulbs, because the savings is enormous.

~~~
kragen
The EIA Annual Energy Review 2008 <http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/> estimates
that 1340 trillion Btu was used in the US in commercial buildings for lighting
during 2003 (p.65), out of a total of 99.30 quadrillion Btu total US
consumption in 2008 (p.3), of 18.54 quadrillion Btu total commercial use (of
which 1.34 quadrillion Btu is 7.2%, which is, as you say, less than 20%). US
residential usage amounted to 21.64 quadrillion Btu in 2008 (p.3).

Suppose you're right and 11% of typical residential usage is lighting (what's
your source for that, please? The AER doesn't seem to hazard a guess there),
and that the US isn't too atypical (admittedly, a very dubious assumption).
Then that would amount to 2.4 quadrillion BTU spent on residential lighting in
the US.

The total, then, would be 1.3 + 2.4 = 3.7 quadrillion Btu per year used on
residential and commercial lighting, or 3.7% of the total.

Industrial facility lighting adds another 0.2 quadrillion Btu (p.48), which
would bring it up to 3.9%.

It would immediately follow that 3.7% of the average person's energy use is
residential and commercial lighting, and 3.9% is residential, commercial, and
industrial lighting, which is indeed a relatively small proportion. If every
person in the US went entirely without artificial lighting but otherwise
somehow continued their lives as before (except in cars, which are not
included in the above statistics), total US marketed energy consumption would
drop by 3.9%.

I am in favor of compact fluorescent lights, ordinary fluorescent lights,
halogen lights, and new high-efficiency LEDs. But the savings are not
_enormous_ when considered overall as a society, particularly considering that
most industrial commercial lighting is already using more efficient machinery
than incandescent bulbs. They are, rather, _relatively small_.

3.9% of US marketed energy consumption is 130 gigawatts. 3.9% of world
marketed energy consumption (about 500 quadrillion Btu/year, according to
IEO2010 Highlights, p.1) would be about 700 gigawatts.

Laws are not admissible as evidence about energy usage. Laws provide evidence
about political reality, not objective reality.

Do you not "share the view" that 3.9% is a relatively small proportion of
100%? I think that would merely mark you as a Humpty-Dumpty. (There's glory
for you!) Or do you think that the US is deeply atypical, and that the average
numbers are much higher than the US numbers?

~~~
eande
Sorry, I can't follow your calculations on the BTU and the information I took
is from DoE (Department of Energy)

"Thus, lighting was approximately 8.3% of national primary energy consumption,
or about 22% of the total electricity generated in the U.S."

<http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/tech_reports.html>

~~~
kragen
Thanks for the link. I can't find the words you quote on that page. Are they
in one of the eleven PDF files linked from that page?

What's "primary" energy consumption?

Suppose it's 8.3% instead of 3.9%. Do you not share the view that 8.3% is a
relatively small proportion?

Is there a way I can make the calculations any clearer? I wasn't being
deliberately obscure. I didn't even do any unit conversions until close to the
end, and that was only to compare energy usage for lighting with your figure
of an unspecified number of "MW".

Do you have any information on average lighting usage? The reports on that
page all seem to be about lighting usage in the US, which is almost guaranteed
to be far from the average.

------
dkarl
"Zeal to promote the common good, whether it be by devising anything
ourselves, or revising that which hath been laboured by others, deserveth
certainly much respect and esteem, but yet findeth but cold entertainment in
the world. It is welcomed with suspicion instead of love, and with emulation
instead of thanks: and if there be any hole left for cavil to enter, (and
cavil, if it do not find a hole, will make one) it is sure to be misconstrued,
and in danger to be condemned."

------
sebi
If interested check <http://www.energytransitionmodel.com/> there you can
build future energy scenarios. For instance see that you're far better off
when you invest money in a better (house) insulation then in efficient light
bulbs. Or how much total CO2 emissions are reduced if everybody switched to
electric cars.

------
sliverstorm
> For example, participants estimated that line-drying clothes saves more
> energy than changing the washer’s settings (the reverse is true)

Huh? Line drying saves plenty of energy, what settings are you proposing we
change?

~~~
kragen
My laundry washing machine has a dial on the front for the water temperature,
which goes up to 90° (C, obviously). It heats the water electrically as it
comes in. All but the cheapest washers sold here in Argentina have such a
facility, because hot water is not normally provided to the laundry room. In
the US, washers usually have an option to choose hot or cold water. Using cold
water instead of hot will use less energy.

Also, "plenty of energy" is not a quantity of energy that can be usefully
compared with other quantities of energy. See jws's comment
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614745> for more calculations.

~~~
sliverstorm
Does cold water clean effectively enough?

Also, does using hot water negate the fact that line drying saves energy?

~~~
kragen
Cold water sometimes cleans effectively enough.

Certainly for any given water temperature you can line-dry to save even more
energy. However, it's important to know that lowering the water temperature by
a few degrees does more to reduce your energy usage than line-drying.

------
maigret
Yes, recycling glass needs more energy that aluminum. That's why _reusing_
glass is better. That's how many bottles (including beer) are handled in
Germany.

------
geebee
would this be a good place for me to complain that San Francisco, home to
Gavin Newsom's green initiative, just charged me over $150 for a permit to
replace my old windows with energy efficient windows?

sorry for the diversion, just needed to let that out.

------
fuzz579
[http://www.amazon.com/As-World-Burns-Simple-
Things/dp/158322...](http://www.amazon.com/As-World-Burns-Simple-
Things/dp/1583227776)

Reminds me of this comic book.

------
gcb
In college I used a paper by former green peace founder where he talk about
the fallacy of recycling paper.

That we'd be better off burning it for energy. And some other arguments about
the life span of a tree and the amount of oxygen it produces.

Can't seem to find it now as my quoted URL is no longer valid.

