Energy Reduction not Energy Efficiency

Energy companies earn money by selling us energy. The more wasteful we are, the more profits they make. So why would the government give them such a big role in the energy efficiency and renewable programmes in the UK? The energy companies goals are not a reduction in energy consumption. They don't encourage energy reduction but just focus on selective 'energy efficiency' measures. That may sound like the same thing but it isn't.

If you replace your old boiler with a more efficient one, the new boiler may be 20% more efficient. This means it uses 20% less fuel to produce the same amount of heat. It may sound like this will lead to a 20% reduction in energy consumption and heating bills, but research has shown that some of that saving is used to make our homes warmer. In other words reducing our heating bills encourages us to use more heat so that we have a warmer more comfortable home. There may still be a reduction in the overall heating energy used, but it is unlikely to be the full 20% that one might hope for.

Replacing an old fridge for a more efficient fridge will reduce electricity consumption, so long as you don't opt for a larger fridge than the one you had before (or keep the old fridge running in the garage as a spare). Buying a more efficient telly, which is then double the size is another false saving. Research has proven that energy efficiency measures do not significantly reduce our energy consumption. It just makes it cheaper, allowing us to use more.

Even with renewable energy there isn't always the savings. People who have PV panels installed can sometimes feel that their electricity is free, so become less careful with their energy consumption. In the UK they generate a relatively small amount of electricity, and very little in winter when the days are short and overcast. Yet there are cases of people ripping out their gas heating boiler and replacing it for electric heating, thinking that free energy from the sun will be enough to heat their homes in winter. Lack of understanding of technology can be a major factor.
 
Of all the energy efficiency measures, insulating the walls and roof of your home have to come out as the most effective. They are simple as people can understand the logic of wrapping your home in a blanket to keep it warm, and it can be retrofitted to existing homes. The insulation can last for 40 years or more without need for maintenance, and it still works during a power cut. It doesn't require the owner to change their habits either, they still put the heating on when they feel cold and turn it off when they are warm enough.

There has been a lot of energy efficiency drives in the UK since the 1980's, so we really should have reduced our energy consumption significantly since then, right? The graph below shows "Total primary energy consumption, unadjusted and temperature corrected, UK (1970 to 2013)" and is taken from Energy Consumption in the UK (2014) report, from Department of Energy and Climate Change. It includes energy used for transport, heating, generating electricity and manufacturing goods.

Energy consumption really doesn't seem to have been going down since the 1980's. In fact it is only since the recent recession hit that there has been any significant signs of energy reduction. The government tend to use the year 2000 as the base year, so compared to that energy consumption in 2013 has reduced by 12%, but if we compare to 1980 it is still an increase.

I realise that this is against a background of a growing population, but at the same time we have shipped many of our industries abroad. The energy consumed to produce clothes, furniture, electronic gadgets and cuddly toys, is some other country's problem now, namely China's. Take a look at the graph above taken from ChinaFAQs (originally from the US EIA) which shows that industry, the grey area on the graph, is by far China's largest energy consumption and their domestic use, shown in green, is still very small. The column on the right shows the equivalent energy breakdown in the USA. China may now be the World's biggest energy consumer, but the largest part of that is manufacturing goods for the West. China has 19% of the Worlds population whereas the USA has 4%, making their energy consumption look rather modest. A chunk of that grey area on the graph is for making products that end up in the UK. If we could account for that, then our energy consumption would clearly still be rising.

And if we think about the goods, we can see another trend. Instead of having just one landline phone per household, people generally have several handsets on their landlines, and a mobile phone for every family member. No longer do kids have one cherished toy but multiple fads. The volume of 'stuff' we have has been increasing.

Also international flights generally aren't included in the government transport figures. There was always a disagreement over what to include, so conveniently nothing was included. For example, if a British tourist flies to Sri Lanka with Singapore airlines and stops at Athens en route, do you include just the leg of the journey originating in the UK which ends at Athens, or all the way to Sri Lanka but not the return journey which would be Sri Lanka's problem, or the whole journey both ways, or none of the journey because it is with a non-British company?

Energy efficiency hasn't made a dent on world energy trends either, as seen in the graph above from Gail Tverlberg's blog Our Finite World. What does make a difference is high energy prices or recession, which lowers our ability to afford to pay for energy. One way to reduce energy consumption without the hardship of a recession or the pain of high energy prices is by introducing energy rationing. You can bet that the energy companies won't be supporting that one ;-) Fossil fuels are becoming harder to find and more expensive to extract and if we don't start rationing supplies ourselves, then nature will do it for us and in a way that is not fair and rather ugly.

What I found when I looked at the energy consumption in schools for my work, was that the new schools that were well-insulated with highly efficient systems were not necessarily the lowest energy consumers. They were designed with bright lighting that looked as good as daylight (so people didn't think to switch it off) and had extra technology in every classroom. However the schools that had a penny-pinching caretaker, generally one that is a bit fierce and grumpy so that the teachers would rather wear a jumper than ask him to turn the heating up, generally had lower energy bills. The new school would have a fancy metering system that no one understood or needed regular input from a support desk, whereas the caretaker would traditionally walk round and read the meters himself.

What I am saying is that if you want to really reduce your energy consumption it helps to have a frugal mindset. Think about the energy you are using and the cost - financial and environmental, personal and global - and then make wise energy choices. It is vital to know how much energy you use each year and how much it is costing. The best thing that energy companies could do to reduce energy consumption for very little money, would be to make their bills simple and clear. Instead they hide the facts behind monthly direct debits or fancy tariffs. They should show people a graph of their energy consumption compared to the year before or better still compared to the average for their neighbourhood. Then we might start to see some real energy reductions.

Inequality and carbon emissions

I recently watched this short clip of an interview with Christine Lagarde of the IMF on the BBC News website, and it has been in my thoughts ever since.

Surprisingly, as the IMF are champions for austerity measures, which inevitably squeeze the poorest members of the population the most, Christine Lagarde is making a point about inequality.

"...Inequality is rising and, to the extent that inequality is not particularly supportive of sustainable growth, it's an issue...."

'Sustainable' and 'Growth' really should not be used in the same sentence, because as George Monbiot recently pointed out in his post The Impossibility of Growth, growth cannot just continue indefinitely. I believe she means 'Continuous Growth', which is a very far cry from anything remotely sustainable..... but I digress.

"....Over the last 30 years, inequality has risen significantly. For instance the top 1% has increased its share of wealth in 24 out of 26 advanced economies. And if you take some of the Oxfam numbers for instance, the numbers are quite striking actually. If you take the 85 wealthiest people in the World, they can all fit in a double-decker bus right, well they have more amongst themselves than half the population of the World, the poorest half of course, but that is 3.5 billion people...."

There is so much about this that is sooooooooo wrong. Where do I even start?

Just for a moment put aside the fact that Christine Lagarde is listening to and taking note of reports from Oxfam, which seems quite a positive development. And forget the ridiculous notion of anyone with that much wealth stepping foot on a common London bus. Let's just stick to the key message, that 85 people have as much wealth as 3.5 billion people.

3.5 billion people is a lot to comprehend. It is more than the total population of Europe, Africa and the Americas put together. That is a lot of people. Many of them have very little, over 1 billion are barely subsisting on $1 a day.

Hans Rosling used a wealth chart shown above in the documentary Don't Panic - The Facts About Population which I have discussed previously here. The 7 people depicted along the bottom of the chart represent the 7 billion people in the world and above it shows the distribution of the wealth. More than 1 billion on the left of the chart are below the extreme poverty line, barely able to feed themselves or afford shoes. The 1 billion on the right can afford cars and even to travel by aeroplane and earn an average $100 a day.

Chances are if you are reading this then you are in the right hand side of the graph. $100 dollars a day is around £60 at the current exchange rate. To put that in perspective, the minimum wage for over 21's in the UK is £6.31 an hour, so for an 8 hour day that would be £50. For those that are unemployed and depending on income support the minimum they would receive is £56.80 a week, which is just £11 a day or $18 a day (calculated with a 5 day working week for comparison).

£11 will buy very little in the UK and would not be enough to afford to run a car, probably not even a moped, but certainly a basic bike. In the UK we have a safety net intended to mean that everyone can feed themselves, but as this minimum has not been rising enough to match inflation over the years there have been reports of hungry children in schools and people having to choose between eating or keeping warm. The government has combatted this with winter fuel payments to help cover heating costs, free insulation and boilers for those on benefits, and is now introducing free school meals for all children under 8. And of course we have free healthcare for everyone.

Hans Roslings graph needs to be extended on the right hand side if we want to show where the richest 85 people would be. Past the $1,000 mark which signifies the top 1% in the US, and on past $10,000 and $100,000 a day mark. We still haven't reached the 1,645 billionaires in the World (according to Forbes magazine) let alone the top 85, who are around the $1,000,000 a day mark. Bill Gates, currently the Worlds richest man again, earns an estimated £8.8 million or $14.8 million a day, so is past the $10,000,000 mark! Now we can see what Christine Lagarde means about inequality.

Why can't we afford to provide a safety net to cover the basic human needs for the people in the rest of the world? It doesn't look like there isn't enough wealth, just that we don't like sharing it fairly. Maybe we need a Greed Tax? What do you think?

In Switzerland they took a vote recently on whether to limit the pay of the top executives to no more than 12 times that of the lowest paid worker in their company. This is a very clever idea, because it would stop wages at the top getting out of control without first increasing the wages at the bottom. Unfortunately, this did not get enough votes to be approved. If minimum wage in the UK is £50 a day, then the maximum earnings of the highest paid individual in the company could not exceed £600 a day on this system, without having to increase wages at the bottom. £600 a day is a bit more than the Prime Minister currently earns, but on the scale above it doesn't seem a lot does it?

Equality is really important for a healthy society and I would thoroughly recommend reading The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett as an eye-opening introduction to the effects of inequality.

For me there is another reason why understanding the disparity of wealth is important. When we look at reducing carbon emissions or fossil fuel consumption which side of Hans Rosling's graph should we be focusing on? The poorest billion who only use as much wood as they can collect themselves, or the richest billion who can afford large houses filled with 'stuff', and travel long distances for pleasure?

The more money we have available to spend on consumer goods, fast cars, flights abroad and large houses, the more fossil fuels we use and carbon emissions we create. I found this Wikipedia list showing the global difference between vehicle ownership and it indicates how different the oil consumption will be. The US has 797 motor vehicles per 1,000 people and the UK has 519. Whereas China only has 183 motor vehicles per thousand people, India 41 and Bangladesh just 3 (2010).

I am a supporter of carbon rationing for this reason. Rationing carbon would mean that everyone gets a share or a quota of 'carbon emissions' or energy each year, in the form of a plastic credit card. Every time you fill up your car with fuel, pay your energy bills or buy goods from a store, you swipe your carbon card too and are using up your carbon quota. If it was important for you to fly half way round the World to visit family, then you would either have to reduce your carbon emissions in other areas or buy quotas from someone who hasn't used theirs.

This won't stop the rich from travelling, as they could invest in a fleet of electric vehicles running on renewable energy or just buy more quotas. But buying more quotas acts as a tax on energy consumption, above a certain level. It focuses attention on reducing energy consumption, and helps people see their actual consumption levels in perspective. The quotas would have to start off at a fair amount and then reduce each year in order to reach reduction targets.

There would be grumbles at first, especially among the more affluent, but this is a very fair system and potentially could provide an extra income stream for those who are frugal with their energy consumption. The scheme promoted in the UK is called "Tradable Energy Quotas" and was endorsed by David and Ed Milliband when they were Secretary of State for the Environment. There is no hope of TEQs re-emerging under the current government, but maybe after the next election they will be back on the agenda.