Seriously lower energy bills: A philosophy of Air-Conditioning

Despite the risk of sounding like a braggart, I feel impelled to boast for a minute about my last electric bill. For the month of June we used only 575 kWh, down from 630 kWh in May and 759 in April. For the month we hit what must be our lowest daily average ever, 18 kWh per day. That is less than half our average of 38 kWh/day from last June. I should add that I was working from home that month and we were not away on vacation.

In case you have no idea what your own usage is, the average American household uses 800 kWh per month. According to the EIA, the middle-Atlantic region, which includes my home city of NY, averages about 650 kWh/month; presumably that number is higher in the summer because of A/C.
How did we cut our electricity use by half? Since I started boning up on all things electrical, I have made the following changes:

1. I have continued to switch our remaining incandescent bulbs to CFLs
2. I do not leave any lights on in rooms I am not in or when I leave home
3. I avoid turning on our halogen sconces (450 watts) as much as possible
4. I have become much more careful about turning off things like fans in rooms that are not being used
5. I set my computer to go to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity
6. I set up surge-protectors so I can easily turn off my computer, modem, and printer at night
7. I replaced our oldest (12+ years) air-conditioner with an Energy Star model
8. We were lucky with the weather--I don't think there were any days in June where the temperature went over 90.
9. MOST IMPORTANT: I DID NOT USE THE AIR-CONDITIONER UNLESS IT WAS REALLY HOT--during that billing period, I think I only turned it on twice and only for a short time.

There is no question that the final three made the biggest difference.

If you are serious about cutting your electricity use, the quickest and most dramatic way is to rethink your air-conditioning. In my case, this is not about suffering for a good cause. There is a reason people love air-conditioning. I can't stand feeling hot and sweaty, and when I overheat, my productivity and sense of well-being take a dive.

Here is the Green Factoids environmental philosophy in a nutshell:

we are going to have make changes, but I prefer not to think of them as sacrifices; I genuinely see them as improvements.

So with air-conditioning here is my new philosophy:
1. fans work amazingly well, especially ceiling fans in your bedroom and T.V. viewing room; I rarely feel uncomfortably warm with a fan blowing directly on me

2. if the temperature is below 85, you probably don't need A/C--again this is not martyrdom; you will adjust to this a lot quicker than you think

3. 75% of the air-conditioned homes or stores I spend time in are much too cold--(I think we should complain--it is one way to get businesses to be more responsible; congratulations to Starbucks for leading the way by seriously rethinking the appropriate use of air-conditioning)

4. when you do use A/C, blast it for a few minutes and then turn it to the lowest possible setting and hit the energy-saver button--usually when you turn the A/C on, you are overheated; once you cool down, you don't need it on high, or sometimes even at all

5. test how high a temperature setting is comfortable for you

6. this one should be obvious, but never leave the A/C on when you are not home; there is absolutely no efficiency advantage to running it all the time--quite the opposite it is a massive waste that luckily is simple to eliminate

7. if you feel you must leave it on for a pet, keep it to one room, with the door shut, on the lowest possible energy mode--your dog does not need it set to 68; the low 80s should be fine; make sure your rooms are shaded and that your dog has access to plenty of cold water

8. don't beat yourself up for using it when it is really hot

As far as the final point goes, instead of feeling like we have to quit A/C like some sort of evil addictive drug, I think we should be looking to change our assumptions about when and how we use it. The closest parallel I can think of is seat-belts. When I was growing up, I don't think my parents ever once told us to wear a seat-belt. They would do things like ride with a baby in their lap in the front or let me and a bunch of friends smush into the front passenger seat--no one ever wore a seat belt. Now, seat-belt compliance in the U.S. is above 90%--far higher than Europe by the way. My kids have never ridden in the front seat. I don't even back up my car without a seat-belt on. Attitudes change. 20 years from now, I may be marveling with my grandchildren about how you needed to wear an overcoat in the supermarket in July because they kept the temperature so darn low--now we know better.

Green Investing

This is in no way meant to offer investment advice, but my husband and I discovered a "green" fund called New Alternatives Fund a few years ago that has actually done quite well (7% return over 10 years; 33% last year -- according to their web site). "Green investing" seems to be the talk of brunch in LA -- like IdeaLab, which has started investing in green technology.

New Alternatives is actually an old fashioned mutual fund, run by two guys in upstate NY (father and son) who saw the need, were "personally interested in liberal, social and environmental matters," and gave up their law practices to commit themselves to it. My favorite part is the Shareholder reports, printed on recycled paper -- and written in language I actually understand.

Here's some information:
New Alternatives Fund

Carbon Taxes -- the great solution

I have followed the carbon tax murmurings for several years -- and the past month has been almost an explosion in the number of people taking the idea seriously. Al Gore's movie (“An Inconvenient Truth”) jump-started the conversation: what do we do about the environment? Most people landed quickly on "control consumption" as the only realistic solution. But how? And the next wave seems to be "tax consumption" -- because the truth is, the best way to lower the demand for a product is to raise the cost.

Carbon taxes are also known as "green taxes," "tax shifting," "ecotaxes" or "Pigovian Taxes" (a phrase coined by Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw, named after the economist who came up with the idea of externalities), and the idea is simple: tax what you don't want (pollution, smoking, green-house emitting behavior) and you will get LESS of it. How much to tax? An easy answer is to calculate the cost of the behavior to society, ie, the “externality.” Smoking causes billions in health care costs; the taxes on cigarettes should reflect that so that users are "paying their way."

The elegant part of tax shifting comes when you take that tax revenue and cut taxes on things you want more (ownership, work) or cut taxes that are regressive (payroll taxes).

According to the book "Tax Shift" by Alan Durning, if we taxed the entire cost of pollution to society, we could eliminate (are you ready?): ALL Federal income taxes; or ALL payroll taxes; or ALL corporate taxes. Granted, gas would probably double in cost. But since you'd be paying no income tax, you can afford to buy that new hybrid.

For More information:
Durning’s book Tax Shift – a great, quick read:

Two articles from the New York Times discuss the idea:
EDITORIAL; Global Warming and Your Wallet

Counting on Failure, Energy Chairman Floats Carbon Tax:

discussing a bill before Congress (put up as a joke, but hey, you have to start somewhere):

You might also look at:

Wikipedia on Greg Mankiw

What is a green tax shift?
http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/green-tax-shift.html

The Danish blog EnergyHack notes that Denmark is adopting a plan to tax cars based on their gas mileage, lowering the cost of cars like the Prius and raising the cost of cars like Hummers and Porsche Cayennes.

Understand Your Electricity: which appliances use the most electricity?

Here are some numbers from the Energy Information Administration. They are from 2001, the most recent available.

The two biggest components of household electricity use are heating, ventilation and cooling, which go by the catchy acronym "HVAC," and kitchen appliances. HVAC accounts for 31% of the total household use and kitchen appliances account for another 26%.

Air-conditioning is the single biggest electricity user in American households, totaling more than 182 billion kWh. More than 85% of that is for central A/C.

Space heating alone accounts for more than 10% of U.S. household electricity use, more than 115.5 billion kWh; space heaters account for more energy use than either lighting or home electronics, even though space heaters are found in only 43% of all households.

After A/C, refrigerators are the biggest electricity users, requiring 156 billion kWh per year. The average fridge uses 1239 kWh per year. Current Energy Star models use between 400 and 500 kWh per year.

Stand-alone freezers use a remarkable 3.5 % of the household total, even though they are found in only 34% of all homes. Dishwashers, which are found in 56% of all homes, account for only 2% of the household total.

Lighting accounts for 8.8% of the U.S. household total, about 100 billion kWh.

All home electronics account for only 7.2%, or 82.3 billion kWh.

Not surprisingly, TVs are the most common household electronic item, averaging more than 2 per household; they account for about 33.1 billion kWh. or 2% of the total.

Way down on the list, cordless phones and answering machines each account for less than .2% of the household total, or about 4.4 billion kWh between the two of them.

Understand Your Electricity: Sleeping your work Computer

From the Alliance To Save Energy

New Report Highlights the Power of Powering Down

A new report on personal computer usage and power consumption released this month suggests US business could be saving billions of dollars simply by shutting down machines at night. The survey, commissioned jointly by the Alliance to Save Energy and power management software company, 1E, found that nearly half of all corporate computers (roughly 31 million PCs) are not regularly switched off at night. According to the study, this lack of inactivity is costing US businesses $1.72 billion annually and adding over 14 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per year.

Comment: pulling out my handy calculator, and borrowing a few PC numbers from Mr. Electricity, we can estimate that an average workplace computer uses about 100 watts just sitting there. The Alliance estimates that as many as 31 million PCs are left on at night. Forgetting about weekends, let's assume each of these is on instead of off or asleep for 10 hours every day, four nights a week; each one would thus waste 1 kWh per day, or 208 kWh per year. For 31 million computers that adds up to more than 644 million kWh per year, or a year's electricity for 586,181 homes. (Using my 11,000 kWh/year average). Each computer that is left on for 60 hours over the weekend wastes another 312 kWh per year. If 15 million of these were left on over the weekend year round, they would waste more than 4.68 billion kWh, or enough electricity to power more than 4.25 million homes.

Let's hope that these companies are sensitive to the other green, cost: according to the EIA, the average commercial cost for electricity this year is 9.28 cents/kWh. Using my numbers, each computer left on overnight during the work week wastes about $19 a year and each one left on over the weekend wastes another $30 a year.

Understand your Electricity: Vampires Part 2

I just read yet another site that recommends that we unplug our electronic appliances: this writer claimed that 75% percent of household energy use goes to power items in standby mode—the site credits the Department of Energy of all places. Considering that according to the most recent Energy Information Administration figures available (2001), all household electronics—TVs, stereos, computers, peripherals, everything—accounted for just 7% of U.S. household electricity use, that number is not just incorrect but utterly insane.

The writer may have wanted to claim that 75% of the total power use of our electronics is used to power items on standby—that could be true: is your printer on all day? how much time do you spend printing? Is your VCR on right now? Is anyone watching it? So we could probably cut a significant proportion of that 7% by shutting these items down.

But let’s get a little proportion. Here are a few numbers from my trusty Kill-a-watt to cut through the green haze we are living in.

The computer system I am currently writing at includes the following components all plugged into a single power strip:
Apple desktop
cable modem
HP printer
external hard drive

That entire system uses between 90-115 watts of electricity, including when I am printing. Starting up, the whole system draws about 105 Watts. The printer draws 21 watts on standby and 27 watts when it is starting up. The cable modem, which many people leave on all the time, draws 7 watts.

That is to say, my whole computer system uses about the power of a single 100 watt bulb or 1.5 60 watt bulbs.

My Energy Star Air-conditioner uses between 700 and 1000 watts whenever it is cooling. It saves energy by alternating its cooling mode with a 0-watt low-energy mode.

As I noted in my previous "Vampire" post, unplugging standby appliances might save you about 72 kWh a year. Turning off your window air-conditioner could save you twice that each week. A central system running at full blast uses 3.5 kWh every hour.

The problem with the internet is that this misinformation tends to take on a life of its own: how many internet start-ups were funded because of the widely repeated but utterly baseless factoid that the number of people on the internet was doubling every three months?

Standby power is a problem on a national not a household scale. Its real solution is efficiency standards. It makes much more sense for the government to revise the codes to minimize standby power draw than for individual consumers to have to research the power use of a dozen electronics that use only a few watts each, or for them to have to walk around turning them off--something that only a small number of people are ever going to do.

Understand Your Electricity: Why Light Bulbs Matter

Leaving a 7-watt cable modem on 24/7 for a year uses about 63 kWh---.6% of the typical household's yearly total of 11,000 kWh.

Leaving a 60 Watt bulb on for a year uses 547 kWh--about 5% of the typical yearly total.

Our house has two modems and 50 light bulbs.