5 ms·
We'll probably always need electricity, so we need some solutions, but nothing compares with reducing consumption -- principally each person using less and havi
by spodek 9y ago
We'll probably always need electricity, so we need some solutions, but nothing compares with reducing consumption -- principally each person using less and having fewer people to use it. As in business, you don't only increase revenues to increase profitability. Often lowering costs is more effective.
Starting points include getting past the belief that happiness or society depends on electrical power as much as it does. We need some, but nowhere near what we're using.
Also accounting for costs that are currently externalized.
- emodendroket 9y agoAny plan that depends on individual consumers making choices in the aggregate to solve the problem is simply doomed.
- spodek 9y agoHacker News seems to have interesting collective beliefs such as that it's easier to go to Mars than to turn off the lights when no one is in the room.
- eropple 9y agoSmelting aluminum requires between 12,500 kWh and 15,000 kWh of electricity per ton of yield. My lights use 8.5 Wh apiece. The notion that consumer savings will make a dent in our problem has a few problems with decimal places. This is, by-and-large, a capital-driven problem. It's probably true that a reduction of individual consumption of stuff would be more beneficial than our energy use, too...but then that creates a new problem for that capital, too. So not only is avoiding the collective-action problem probably easier, but it's more effective, too.
- spodek 9y ago1. Working on the different problems you described is not mutually exclusive. 2. How many aluminum smelting plants are there? How many light bulbs? The decimal places seem to go the other way. This Wikipedia page -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aluminium_smelters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aluminium_smelters -- lists a bunch of aluminum smelters. While it says it's incomplete, its existence implies it has most of them. I doubt there is a page listing all the light bulbs. Once habitualized, turning them off takes negligible extra time or effort. 3. I don't mean to be flippant, but are you arguing against conservation?
- tyingq 9y agoI do think there is something of a point there in that combined industrial and commercial use account for a larger portion of overall consumption. But, residential use is still significant. This chart is old, but has a nice quick visualization of where you might want to focus. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/public/2015-08/electricity-consumption-by-sector-commercial-industrial-residential.png https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/large/publ... At least showing that for residential use, upgrading your AC, refrigerator, etc is probably higher impact than focusing on lighting.
- eropple 9y ago1. Agreed, but whataboutism--and you may not mean it that way but your post sure sounded like it--is basically never helpful. 2. OK. Aluminum smelters and oil refineries and frigging box factories and everything else. Start summing up. Those numbers don't show what you want them to show, I'd wager. 3. I'm arguing that it is a hell of a lot better to go after the people who actively benefit from disproportionate use because they are causing the deepest externalities.
- lostlogin 9y agoI don't know if this adds or detracts from what your saying but here in NZ 13% of power usage is aluminium smelting. 44% is industry, 32% commercial and 24% residential. Transmission loses 6% (not sure why the above totals add up to 100%, so it must exclude the losses). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Zealand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Ze...
- nmeofthestate 9y agoI did some back of the envelope calculations and if everyone on the planet runs 1.4 20W lightbulbs (100W equivalent CFL) half the time, that comes to the amount of energy expended on smelting Aluminium. Aluminium per year: 720000GWh 20W (100W equivalent CFL) Lightbulb on half the year: 87.6KWh Aluminium = 8.21917808 × 10e9 lightbulbs Probably wrong in many ways, but I'll post it here anyway.
- ollifi 9y ago> My lights use 8.5 Wh apiece. Then again your lights used 40-60w apiece just few years back.
- Govindae 9y agoWe have successfully sent robots to Mars, but... I don't really need that light on in the living room.
- emodendroket 9y agoWhat percentage of electricity consumption do you think is consumed by things like unattended lightbulbs? I'd be surprised if the numbers were at all significant in the grand scheme of things.
- PeterisP 9y agoNeither Mars travel nor reducing energy consumption is going to happen by the individual people magically choosing to do the right thing required for that goal. In general, our societies don't work like that, achieving such things requires coordination to create/enforce appropriate incentives for each individual. Going to Mars requires a large organization (or a bunch of them) creating significant incentives for people to work on that goal, i.e., paying $bignum to many employees and suppliers - or it's not going to happen. In the exact same manner, practically reducing energy consumption would require a large organization (or a bunch of them) creating significant incentives for people to reduce consumption, e.g. governments enforcing a significant carbon tax that raises the cost of electricity so much (or some other policy that brings visible, practical impact on each particular individual depending on their actions) that untold millions of people will be strongly motivated to change their habits - or it's not going happen.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoThat's not true if carbon fees are used to price in the damage done by carbon. At that point the free market fairy kicks in and lets simple decisions to buy the cheaper thing do a lot of the work without the consumer needing to think too much about it
- emodendroket 9y agoIt might reduce consumption some (though not without problems of its own) but electricity is already not free.
- EGreg 9y agoHow about encouraging each community worldwide to plant more trees, thereby offsetting their carbon usage? I know the carbon gets released when the trees die or are burned but the tree biomass overall is what matters.
- abraae 9y agoCut down the trees and use their timber for building. Then repeat (trees grow to maturity in 15-25 years in my neck of the woods). Concrete-based construction is popular because it is easy, fast and cheap, but the hidden costs are the massive associated emissions. Timber by contrast is harder to work with, but locks the carbon into the building, which hopefully will remain standing for many decades.
- EGreg 9y agoI like this idea! I mean, buildings can catch fire as well, but you can fireproof them. http://m.firefree.com/ http://m.firefree.com/ Also if your goal is just to reduce carbon in the atmosphere you literally DO chop down trees and make sure they don't rot (timber into lumber and plywood) and the you can bury them under a sarcophagus or something. In short, if your utility is building vs removing carbon from the atmosphere, you choose what to do. Why don't people do this on a planet wide scale?????? What is the downside? Seems it would be an amazing natural carbon sink. What are the downsides and obstacles? If private companies planted trees they could monetize all that timber also!!
- graphitezepp 9y agoI once did napkin math on how much forest should match carbon emissions. The number was large but it seemed very doable by a large land mass wealthy (who could that be?) state with sufficient commitment. Seriously feel like mass reforestation is under-discussed from my armchair studies.
- emilecantin 9y agoIt's not enough to plant trees, you have to trap the carbon they gather somehow. Otherwise when the tree dies, the decomposition process throws all that carbon back in the atmosphere. The early plants (billions of years ago) went through a few generations before other organisms evolved to feed on their carcasses, so they just ended up buried deep underground, trapping their carbon (and lowering the carbon concentration in the atmosphere) until we came along and decided to dig them up and burn them, throwing all that carbon in the air again.
- MichaelBurge 9y agoIf we've built a Dyson sphere around the sun and have no more spare energy sources available in the solar system, then we can start thinking about reducing energy usage. If you cut back energy use by 50% for 1 million years and it delays this point by even 1 second, you've probably already lost out. Until then, the energy your aunt Sally uses to run her AC pales in comparison to the amount of wasted energy being sent into space every second and so it's always worth doing research to capture that excess. There are plenty of rungs on the energy ladder before then, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy) In particular, capturing 100% of the solar energy hitting just the Earth would get you 10000x the US' electricity consumption in 2009. At those ratios, saving energy is just a bad idea compared to capturing more: If a key scientist has to spend even 1 day sorting his recycling or hunting for a more efficient AC, you may have already lost out.
- jryan49 9y agoIf we captured 100% of solar energy wouldn't everything on Earth be dark?
- MichaelBurge 9y agoYou'd allocate some of it to heat and light. But the fact that solar panels are useful implies that mankind would prefer to allocate a portion of that energy differently. "100% of Earth's inefficiently-allocated incoming solar energy" is too subjective to earn a Wikipedia entry, but I assume it's a substantial fraction of the entire "100% of Earth's incoming solar energy".
- quickthrower2 9y agoErr.... and what about the little global warming problem in the meantime?
- iUsedToCode 9y agoI think you forgot that while Americans can and should save (a megawatthour ISN'T, or at least shouldn't be the average per month per house, vide the article), the rest of the world is way, way behind. Are you telling Indians or Africans that they cannot even have electric cooking? Coal stoves kill thousands each year. Remember, you guys only have like 5% of the population. You can limit your consumption -- it is grotesque -- but much of the rest of the world don't even have one lightbulb.
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoInterestingly, shifting off-grid users from kerosene loghting to solar powered led lamps with built in batteries is helpful for climate change too. It's actually cheaper too, though there's an up front investment needed. Some charities are selling the devices in exchange for the weekly kerosene outlay, so that the project is self funding.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]