The Energy Wasters Report

Apparently there’s been some debate about whether ethanol production consumes more energy than in creates (not to mention carbon emissions) in the interest of energy independence. This lengthy rebuttal from the Department of Energy downplays the criticism - presumably one lonely Cornell Professor using outdated data. But if that were true, why doth DOE protest so much? Couldn’t they just ignore the guy? Can’t resist the ‘kernel of truth’ pun here.

The Australian, one of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, reported recently that overuse of air conditioning is one of Australia’s biggest forms of energy waste. A survey called the Pilot BeGreen Office Audit, found that 74 per cent of office workplaces ‘always’ use air conditioning (apparently 7 by 24).  The article cited an expert claiming that AC often accounts for half an office building’s energy consumption. The expert added that the first reports on energy-saving buildings in Australia were written in 1908 but action was only now starting to occur.

The Boston Globe has coined an interesting new term for the energy that gets wasted by all those appliances that are plugged in but not turned on - ‘phantom load.’ The article estimates that 2-8% of a home’s usage is phantom load, at a cost of $450 Million across New England. It also points out that unless a utility is capital constrained and not faced with shelling out capital for new power plants (as in California, my home state), they’re generally not incented to help reduce phantom load because they make more money the more power consumers use.

Caught in the act of bureaucracy: Stavros Rougas gives Canada’s Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning a failing grade on energy conservation. This superb six-minute video in the Michael Moore tradition captures Sheridan’s head of facilities on camera, talking about all the energy saving programs they have in place, but then essentially admitting that tons of lights get left on all night across campus for lack of a $2,000 master switch, and because “there’s no policy” to shut them off, even though he’s in charge of making the policy. A must-watch.

FYI fast food nation: Every time you go to a drive through, you burn about 18 cents worth of gas idling your car. To use Burger King as an example, about 70% of their restaurant revenue comes from drive-thru business, according to the Associated Press. With $2B of annual revenue, and an average order size of $5, that means about 280 million cars a year idling while waiting to have it their way. And according to QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) Magazine, the average drive-thru wait once the order’s taken is about three minutes. Tack on another minute or two waiting to place the order, and thats about a billion car-minutes spent idling per year at the Home of the Whopper alone. At $3/gallon, assuming an idling car burns about .75 gallons an hour, thats 18 cents per drive-thru in burned gas - or 16M gallons annually for all Burger King drive-thru customers. If BK is that much, you’re probably looking at a couple hundred million gallons wasted idling total when you add up all the restaurant drive-thrus - $600M a year, not to mention the environmental cost.

Got a posting from Stephen V. in NY: “I live in New York and some retailers leave all their lights on all night long.  The one that really bugs me is american apparel.  I’ll try to get a photo of it at 3 or 4 in the morning so you can see how wasteful it is…” Has anyone else heard of retailers blazing their light all night long? Is there a viable security argument for this or is it just blatant waste?

The Wall Street Journal has a piece today about how truck stops are so full many truckers just pull off to the side of the highway instead. Then they just let their rigs run all night, burning gas, so they can have heat or AC in the cab. At some truck stops there are ways they can plug in to more efficient power, but I guess gas still isnt pricey enough to make it worthwhile or practical. Here’s an estimate of the potential emissions savings from getting these truckers to plug in and turn off.

Cambridge University’s Sustainable Manufacturing Group is out with a study, “Well Dressed,” which analyzes the environmental life cycle costs of clothes, including the energy consumed in producing, washing and drying them. It turns out we cycle through a lot more clothes, and consume a lot more energy to support them, than our parents or grandparents did. The New York Times also did a big story today about this study, headlined “Pollution in the Closet,” but you have to be registered to read it.

Writer Nick Carr has calculated that the average avatar (virtual person) in the online world 2nd Life consumes as much energy as the average (real life) Brazilian. In a recent blog post, he digests some stats from Linden Lab about 2nd Life’s overall consumption to do this surprising calculation.

Europeans are buying bigger and bigger cars, offsetting their other reduction efforts.

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting report on Jan 20th about how despite being focused on carbon emissions reductions, Europeans are buying bigger and bigger cars, offsetting their other reduction efforts. In fact, the European Commission’s president, who’s been giving stump speeches about climate change, drives a Volkswagon Touareg SUV, which emits 1.6 times the average level of CO2 for new European cars.