Why the Office Needs a Typewriter Revolution
Artificial cooling and digital equipment are the main drivers behind the quickly growing energy use of modern office work.
Artificial cooling and digital equipment are the main drivers behind the quickly growing energy use of modern office work.
Cooling people by increasing local airflow is at least ten times more energy efficient than refrigerating the air in a given space, and it also adds the benefit of a personally controlled thermal environment.
Sometimes considered a taboo subject, the issue of population runs as an undercurrent in virtually all discussions of modern challenges.
Energy is closely linked with sustainable development (or not). Without energy, there is no possibility for development, but if you pay too much for energy, we’re stuck anyway and development suffers, becoming a victim of constraints and instabilities. The country must have a very clear idea of sustainable development, tied to a plan for producing and consuming energy. The two go together. And even if you use “clean” energy for the purposes of unsustainable development, you will win nothing.
For this week’s opening piece on technology I wanted to find out more about communications technology. Phones, computers and the internet have become crucial not just in my own life but also to the spread of the Transition movement, and an essential part of projects like Social Reporting. A book published last year, ‘Greening the Media’, reports that in 2007 emissions from electricity consumed by information technology were 2.5-3% of the total, and comparable with aviation, but this is not something my Transition group have yet discussed, nor something there seems much getting away from. So I spoke to my friend Toby Miller (co-author with Richard Maxwell, of Greening the Media) to find out more.