Cutting energy consumption

I wrote this short article to stimulate debate at the Green Party Cambridge conference 'Alternatives to Economic Growth' February 2012. All sources are from my book unless otherwise stated.

We will struggle to cut out fossil fuel use and replace it with entirely with nuclear power and renewables if we continue to use energy at the rate we do now - or more. It would be a lot easier if we used less. If we were to use less - which bits would we cut? Where can we cut our consumption most easily? First we need to know where the energy goes now.

Personal Energy Use

Here is an overall breakdown of our energy use in kWh/person/day, total 81 kWh/person/day.

  • Home heating is domestic space and water heating
  • Personal Transport is cars, buses, coaches, railways and 90% of civil aviation (international travel not included)
  • Food includes agriculture, food transport, storage, processing and cooking
  • Goods and services includes non-food purchases, public and commercial services etc.

UK transport energy

  • 45% of transport energy is personal cars

Food

I don't have good data on energy consumption but greenhouse emissions is a reasonable proxy. In fact it will overestimate the farm gate energy because quite a lot of the carbon emissions are from soil and animal processes not related to energy.

  • Less than half of this is from the farm.

Does organic farming help? This chart is from a report from the Rodale Institute.

The Rodale Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to pioneering organic farming through research and outreach. They have been researching best practice in organic agriculture for 60 years. Their Farming Systems Tria is the longest-running side-by-side U.S. study comparing conventional chemical agriculture with organic methods. What did they find? Organic yields match conventional and outperform them in years of drought and environmental distress. New areas of study include rates of carbon sequestration in chemical versus organic plots and new techniques for weed suppression.

This chart compares energy consumption in organic versus conventional systems for corn and soy crops..

  • Organic production uses less energy* - but not massively so.

* This is per hectare but the average yields are similar

Here's a breakdown of some particular foods. These are from: Environmental Impacts of Food Production and Consumption A research report completed for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by Manchester Business School December 2006

  • Farm production is less than a third
  • Cooking and refrigeration are significant

Goods and Services

A third of our energy is for goods and services: banks, books, the NHS, schools, the BBC, TVs, mobile phones, clothes, building houses...

  • Which of these are important?
  • Can we make better use of them?
  • Can we get more value for the energy we put into them?

Here's a chart from my blog Energy Thoughts and Surprises showing best/worst case carbon emissions from some leisure activities. In this case emissions are quite a good proxy for energy consumption.

  • For pub drinking it depends on what sort of beer you drink and how fast you drink it
  • For playing football - how do you get to the game? how long do you shower afterwards? do you tumble dry your kit?
  • For the book - how mnay times does it get read?
  • For the show - where does the band/theatre company come from?