
Should I Bake? - federicoponzi
https://shouldibake.com/
======
andybrace
There's a really good primer article to give some context here:
[https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-supply-and-
dema...](https://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-supply-and-demand-
during-lockdown-and-the-best-time-to-bake-bread-141345)

and we've also created the following for a better bake!

\- a twitter forecast
([https://twitter.com/baking4cast](https://twitter.com/baking4cast))

\- an Alexa Skill ([https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Forecast-Bake-renewable-
powe...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Forecast-Bake-renewable-
power/dp/B08944JQQ2))

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yunusabd
Neat idea, any reason why you focus specifically on baking as the main
activity?

Found this [1] while looking for numbers for Germany. It's showing different
values for the percentage of renewable energy use in GB, 38% vs 26% on your
site. Any idea why?

[1] [https://www.electricitymap.org](https://www.electricitymap.org)

~~~
andybrace
Hey!

Good question RE why baking, because this does apply to any energy intensive
activities (possibly an iteration for the future).

....so, 1) we've started with baking as we believe its the most accessible way
to contextualise what is a challenging topic to explain (especially for those
outside of the academic world)

2) the wider the audience we're able to engage, we hope, the greater the
impact. Baking is a ubiquitous activity that (almost all?) households do
regularly, and it can be scheduled around the forecast with fairly low impact
to the user's time

3) cause baking is also pretty popular right now ;)

But the same logic applies to other activities, it's better to use the
dishwasher, wash your clothes, charge your (car) batteries when there's more
renewable energy being generated.

RE the discrepancy between the figures, we're only including 'hydro', 'wind'
and 'solar' in our calculations, whereas the Electricity Map includes Biomass
(which can be a controversial inclusion due to the associated land use and
biodiversity impacts).

Also, a lot of this is based on forecasting models (which rely on many factors
incl historic weather data, forecasted weather, consumption etc etc), so...
you could say it's similar in some ways to predicting the weather. We use the
GB's National Grid Carbon Intensity statistics
([https://carbonintensity.org.uk/](https://carbonintensity.org.uk/)) for our
data so that we're most closely aligned geographically.

~~~
yunusabd
Thanks for the insights! I agree that baking is a good gateway.

I think it would be even more persuasive if you could come up with some
calculations, to show how much CO2 can be saved individually and collectively
by following the recommendations.

~~~
andybrace
yep definitely, quantifying the impact of changing the time you bake would be
a great next step (.....we've got quite a lot on our list).

