Real conservation

There has been a lot of talk about Carbon Dioxide, Kyoto, Global Warming but little talk about some actual real methods to conserve and what is most efficient overall. From the Christian Science Monitor:

Surprise: Not-so-glamorous conservation works best
Efficient appliances and fluorescent bulbs are easy upgrades that make a big difference, experts say.

When high school science teacher Ray Janke bought a home in Chicopee, Mass., he decided to see how much he could save on his electric bill.

He exchanged incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents, put switches and surge protectors on his electronic equipment to reduce the "phantom load" - the trickle consumption even when electronic equipment is off - and bought energy-efficient appliances.

Two things happened: He saw a two-thirds reduction in his electric bill, and he found himself under audit by Mass Electric. The company thought he'd tampered with his meter. "They couldn't believe I was using so little," he says.

Mr. Janke had hit on what experts say is perhaps the easiest and most cost-effective place to reduce one's energy consumption: home.

Moving closer to public transportation or riding a bike instead of driving is not an option for many, but changing incandescent bulbs for fluorescent and buying more efficient appliances is not only possible, it quickly pays for itself with savings.

In the end, not-very-glamorous changes like these as well as obsessively sealing and insulating your home will save more than, in the words of one expert, "greenie weenie" additions like green roofs and solar panels. Twenty-two percent of all energy in the United States is used for residential purposes. (Transportation accounts for 28 percent.) And although residences consume only about two-fifths of this as electricity, because electrical generation is inherently inefficient, it accounts for 71 percent of household emissions. A home's electrical use may be responsible for more CO2 emissions than the two cars in the driveway. Ultimately, changes made at home may be the quickest, cheapest, and easiest way to reduce one's carbon footprint.

Emphasis mine: "greenie weenie" additions -- Hits the nail right on the head. Something expensive (but not too expensive) that the homeowner can do to feel good but there is no clear-cut data on what is being saved, only that 'something' is being saved for the good of the planet. There are some people west of us who are taking cow poop and anaerobically fermenting it and using the methane to run a generator. There has been zero information about how many watts baseload this plant is providing only that it could run the lights for several hundred homes (lights only?�?). Our county offers $2 coupons every fall for buying CF lamps;except for where we need PAR lamps or where the circuit has a dimmer on it, CFs are the only lights we use. The article then goes on to talk about global CO2 production (as if this was the real problem -- it's water vapor) and talks about the top CO2 emitters and what can be done:

But the flip side of these numbers is that, of the top five CO2-producing countries - India and Japan are fourth and fifth, respectively - an individual American can have the greatest impact in reducing carbon emissions.

The best place to start is to reduce electricity consumption. Power plants lose two-thirds of their energy in waste heat. For every one unit of electricity your space heater consumes, for example, two units have been lost at the power plant. This inefficiency is reflected in electricity's cost to consumers. Even though more American homes use more natural gas than anything else, homeowners spend more than twice as much on electricity - $100 billion annually compared with $47 billion. Not only is electricity more expensive, but because of its inherent inefficiency, it contributes 21 percent more CO2 annually than does transportation.

Cutting back on electricity used for lighting (9 percent of residential usage nationwide) presents the quickest savings-to-effort ratio. The EPA estimates that changing only 25 percent of your home's bulbs can cut a lighting bill in half. Incandescent bulbs waste 90 percent of their energy as heat, and compact fluorescents, which can be up to five times more efficient, last years longer as well.

Second stop, kitchen appliances, which consume 27 percent of the average US household's electricity. More than half of that goes to your refrigerator. So "any fridge over 10 years old is worth changing," says Henry Gifford, a New York-based mechanical system designer. "And no, don't put it in the basement and plug it in and leave it there." Get rid of it.

And of course, if these appliences were running on Nucler Generated Electricity, the CO2 emissions would be effectivly zero. But the greenies don't want you to go there...