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Home energy use gets a ‘smackdown’ on reality TV
Caitlin Carpenter, Christian Science Monitor
Even an ‘überenvironmentalist’ family found it could save a lot more when a competition was at stake.
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Medford, Mass. – Most Americans know they should decrease their energy consumption, but many need a push to do it. Three families in this suburb north of Boston got that incentive by appearing on “Energy Smackdown,” a reality TV show in which contestants competed to shrink their carbon footprint. The program aired on a local cable TV station during August and September.
With lifestyles ranging from überenvironmentalist to highly consumptive, each family was able to bring its footprint down by at least 30 percent in some surprising and “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that before” ways. All three teams found that, through a little friendly competition, making changes in their homes and lifestyles wasn’t as hard as they thought.
“Before the competition, we were like most people, thinking we had gotten all the low-hanging fruit and done all we could,” says Mieke van der Wansem of Team van der Nou. “Doing the competition made us realize there are some small things we can do around the house that aren’t really that hard to get us over that plateau.”
(9 January 2008)
Any Other Bright Ideas?
Julie Scelfo, New York Times
… After more than eight months of intense deliberations between Congress and bulb manufacturers, environmental groups and other parties, a law that requires light bulbs to become more energy efficient became part of the energy bill that President Bush signed into law on Dec. 19.
Over a three-year period beginning in 2012, all new bulbs will have to use 25 percent to 30 percent less energy for the same light output as today’s typical incandescent bulbs. Given that the vast majority of bulbs now on the market that meet those standards are compact fluorescents, which use 70 percent less energy and last 6 to 10 times longer than incandescents, Americans may have little choice but to accept them as part of the future.
For every eager adopter, though, there are plenty of holdouts.
(10 January 2008)
Digital Tools Help Users Save Energy, Study Finds
Steve Lohr, New York Times
Giving people the means to closely monitor and adjust their electricity use lowers their monthly bills and could significantly reduce the need to build new power plants, according to a yearlong government study.
The results of the research project by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the Energy Department, released Wednesday, suggest that if households have digital tools to set temperature and price preferences, the peak loads on utility grids could be trimmed by up to 15 percent a year.
Over a 20-year period, this could save $70 billion on spending for power plants and infrastructure, and avoid the need to build the equivalent of 30 large coal-fired plants, say scientists at the federal laboratory.
The demonstration project was as much a test of consumer behavior as it was of new technology.
(10 January 2008)
Related from Portland Oregonian: Info, tools help control energy use, studies find.
Utilities Amp Up Push To Slash Energy Use
Rebecca Smith, Wall Street Journal
California’s biggest utility is making a huge financial bet on solving a light-bulb riddle: How much energy can it conserve by getting its customers to remove one sort of bulb and screw in another?
To cut energy costs and help reduce the emissions that cause global warming, utilities such as PG&E Corp. are facing an unusual imperative. They need to convince consumers to use less of their product. PG&E is staking its success on getting consumers to junk conventional incandescent light bulbs in favor of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps, commonly called CFLs — corkscrew- or egg-shaped bulbs that use about a quarter as much electricity as regular bulbs and last several times as long.
California policy makers have set the most ambitious conservation targets in the U.S. The state’s three major investor-owned electric utilities were told last summer to reduce their combined energy use by the equivalent of three power plants to earn big bonuses — or face the possibility of big penalties if they fail.
(9 January 2008)
