A couple weeks ago, the National Academy of Sciences released a study that summarized the findings of the general public’s perceptions of energy consumption and potential savings from various end-uses in their daily lives. You can check out the curves in the linked article above and take my word for it or risk brain damage reading the thing. To me there are several significant findings, none of which surprise me. These are in no particular order and are only a subset of the findings.
- Finding #1 – When asked open ended questions about ways to save energy, people overwhelmingly selected curtailment measures over efficiency. Shut stuff off. Unplug it. Drive less. Relax and take it easy (love that one but don’t watch a 56 inch plasma while lying on the couch). Conserve energy – so the answer to “What is the single most effective thing you can do to conserve energy?” is conserve energy. I think I would have yelled at them like the Geico drill sergeant.
- Finding #2 – People can reduce energy consumption by 30% “without waiting for new technologies, making major economic sacrifices, or losing a sense of well-being.” Well I don’t know about the “making economic sacrifices” part of this. Viewing average residential end uses of electricity, the easy stuff is lighting and… lighting. I don’t see anything else on there that doesn’t require sacrifice, more work, or spending a lot of money. Lighting accounts for 15% of consumption. Assuming this is all incandescent, replace it all with compact fluorescent for about 2/3 savings, or 10%. We’re one third the way there. Space cooling could be reduced a couple percentage points tops without sacrifice, well, make that 0% without sacrifice. You would have to set your temperature up all the time. Setting the thermostat up is going to save practically nothing because heat transfer due to temperature differences outside versus inside are relatively small. Clothes dryers? You would have to line dry. That is a sacrifice if you ask me. The rest you are either going to be able to do very little or a bunch of nickels and dimes will add up to a few percentage points.The only way to get to 30% is to select efficient equipment when replacement is needed anyway. Throwing away a working furnace and air conditioner with efficient models won’t pay for itself. Spending extra for an efficient model when you need a new one anyway will.
- Finding #3 – Turning off the lights when leaving the room is considered by the general public to produce attractive savings. The paper says there is actually very little savings from this. Hide the kids and maybe the spouse too! I’m not buying this one. The study is 25 years old coincidently.
- Finding #4 – People relate to curtailment, using things less more than using efficient stuff by a margin of 5:1. The top three items are turn off the lights, conserve energy (and call the sergeant), and drive less. If you’ve ever thought of it, efficient vehicles are more efficient, all else equal. The Mini Cooper get’s great mileage, comes with leather seats, manual transmission, and is one of the best resellers on the market.
- Finding #5 – People do not understand which things in their home are energy hogs. They are fairly accurate with light bulbs, stereos, and computers and they actually think laptops use as much as a desktop. My laptop uses about 25W. You can barely read the paper by a 25W compact fluorescent light. What cracks me up is they think the central air conditioner and electric clothes dryer uses only about two or three time more energy than the laptop! You see that huge hulking plug for the dryer? The reality is the dryer uses about 100x more energy.
- Finding #6 – Tuning up your car twice a year saves 100 times as much energy compared to driving 60 mph rather than 70 mph for 60 miles. First, this is misleading. My car wouldn’t even use two gallons in that distance for either speed. Second, who tunes up a car? That’s from the 1970s and earlier when engine control was mechanical. Everything is digitally controlled nowadays. It works or it doesn’t. I haven’t “tuned up” my car in the seven years I’ve owned it and it gets 34 mpg now like it did when it was new. Change air filters and keep the tires a few psi below the maximum shown on the sidewall.
- Finding #7 – People think a truck uses as much energy to move freight as a train does when in reality trucks use about 20 times as much per ton-mile. This magnitude surprises me. What’s the difference? Rolling resistance. Trains have almost none while trucks have a lot. The rest is mainly drag and I’m sure stop and go traffic is a killer for trucks as well. Airplanes use roughly 200 times more than rail. Is buying carbon credits getting expensive to buy off your guilt for taking an airplane? – Become a hobo. And isn’t the checked-bag charge for flying stupid? Shouldn’t people be charged or not based on their weight plus that of all their crap?
- Finding #8 – A virgin glass bottle doesn’t require a whole lot more energy than a recycled one but the public thinks it does. My guess is recycling plastics doesn’t save a lot of energy either. I would also guess recycling paper saves more, somewhere between aluminum and glass or plastic. Not generating garbage for the landfill is as important as the energy savings to me.
One conclusion out of all this is we need to do a better job of informing end users that saving energy doesn’t mean freezing in the dark or taking a shower once a month. I would say these concepts apply at least ten times more for commercial and industrial energy efficiency. There is all kinds of waste in these facilities that do zero to provide better anything.
