Households going green won’t necessarily cut emissions

THE carbon tax kicks in today, and while its effect on electricity bills will be run over hot coals, another of its impacts has been overlooked.

As it stands, the policy – especially once it turns into a cap-and-trade system in 2015 – has a curious and counter-intuitive outcome: householders who want to go green won’t necessarily make any difference to Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions.

“In its current form, the emissions trading scheme not only sets a cap above which emissions can’t rise, but simultaneously sets a floor below which they can’t fall,” says Richard Denniss, executive director of The Australia Institute.

“So if an individual reduces their emissions – or the residents of a high-rise building, a street, or even a local council area get together to reduce their emissions – it will simply free up spare permits for a polluter somewhere else.”

Illustration by Robin Cowcher

The government has taken a small step towards addressing the issue. A spokesperson for the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency said that purchases of GreenPower “will be taken into account” when the caps are set five years in advance.

Also, the Climate Change Authority – the independent body that begins operation tomorrow – will also consider “whether a robust methodology can be developed to recognise additional voluntary action by households”.

Alan Pears, energy efficiency expert and Adjunct Professor at RMIT, says the same problem exists in the European carbon trading system. In the United Kingdom, an organisation called Sandbag helps individuals buy and cancel pollution permits.

Here, the federal government suggests that householders who want to meaningfully reduce their carbon footprint could choose to do the same. But Mr Pears argues that those people would end up paying double – to cover both the carbon tax and the extra permits – and have no idea which companies they’re supporting.

“If you buy carbon permits and take them out of the market you don’t know who surrendered them or what they’re linked to,” he says.

As Dr Denniss argues, it’s not only householders that are affected. Measures taken by businesses, local councils and regional governments are in the same boat.

Earlier this year, the Victorian government scrapped its target to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 (from 2000 levels), citing its ineffectiveness given the national cap.

The ACT government has legislated an even more ambitious target – a 40 per cent reduction by 2020 (from 1990 levels) – and so far, it’s sticking to its goal. But Dr Denniss warns that the carbon trading scheme must be tweaked “to ensure that the efforts of the ACT and other communities are not in vain”.

Mr Pears says that unless there’s a change, organisations that want to become carbon neutral will end up purchasing offsets from overseas.

But he says there’s still cause for governments and householders to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy, especially with the price of solar power fast matching standard retail electricity rates.

“There are lots of reasons why it still makes sense, whether that’s reducing peak demand costs, holding down energy prices, creating employment, or just improving comfort at home and saving money on your energy bills,” he says.

“The frustrating thing is that in terms of the physics, it does reduce emissions. But because of an accounting flaw, it isn’t counted towards cutting Australia’s or the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.”

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Heat sensitive pictures let people see where their homes let in the cold.

LAST year, the Bayside Climate Change Action Group bought a thermal imaging camera, courtesy of a grant from their council. Volunteers have begun using it to provide free thermal efficiency assessments for local residents.

“The images are quite eye-catching and funky,” says Cheryl May, from the group. “It’s one thing to tell somebody there’s probably a draught under their door, and another thing to show them an image where you can actually see it. The colour demonstrates that there is colder air coming in.”

Some of the immediate results were surprising. When one member took a snapshot of his ceiling, it revealed a strange bright spot. “He couldn’t work out what it was,” Ms May says. “It turned out to be a possum.”

Elsewhere, the results have been more instructive – one resident, who had just completed a renovation, requested her builder return to fix the gappy insulation that they discovered with the camera.

“You can really see where the problems are,” Ms May says. “You can point it at the ceiling and see where the insulation is, and where it’s missing. You can see leaks coming from fridge seals. We’re trying to educate people about the way heat loss occurs.”

A thermal imaging camera works best when there’s a big temperature difference between inside and outside. For each snapshot, it produces both a thermal image and a normal one. During winter, draughts, gaps and glazing show up in purplish-blue, contrasted with an orange-yellow glow in places where the building is better insulated.

The Bayside Climate Change Action Group aims to visit 50 local households with the camera before the end of the year. If you live outside the area, you could rent one or hire a professional to conduct your own report.

One of the group’s volunteers, Danielle King, is an experienced sustainability assessor. She says many of the camera’s findings are straightforward – it just helps to communicate common problems, such as the “Swiss cheese–effect” of halogen downlights (which must be clear of insulation, so as to reduce the risk of fire).

“If you get in bed and there are holes in your blanket, it doesn’t keep you warm. It’s exactly the same with ceiling insulation,” she says.

But the camera reveals secrets too; especially about how your insulation has been installed in hard to see places.

“The beauty of the camera is that it can see through the walls, literally,” she says. “You also find a lot of construction gaps, where air leaks through skirting boards. You wouldn’t pick those up otherwise and those heat losses can sometimes be quite high.”

One house Ms King visited recently in Brighton had an average daily use of 40 kWh – well over double the state average.

“They had recently moved homes and their bills had gone up a huge amount in this new house,” she says. Her report detailed many possible remedies, but the first thing she recommended was that they thoroughly seal draughts.

With winter upon us, the same advice applies to every household. And you don’t need a thermal camera to find the gaps. Try holding an incense stick close to window frames, door frames and skirting boards, and watch how the smoke moves. You can use unspooled tape from old cassettes in the same way. 

Read this article at The Age online

Illustration by Robin Cowcher

Put your energy into measuring electricity consumption

EVERY time you press down on your toaster, it costs you money. But how much? And how does that compare to your second fridge? Or the air conditioner?

Something’s been missing in between our power points and our utility bills. Most of us don’t know how much electricity we’re consuming, let alone which of our gadgets take most of the load.

Five years ago, Sam Sabey started tinkering with a way to show electricity consumption in real time, working on the principle that we can’t change what we don’t measure. The project began at the Melbourne HackerSpace, a weekly gathering for tech hardware enthusiasts.

Mr Sabey’s hobby has now become a business, called Smart Energy Groups. His product – the SEGmeter – is a set of current sensors that detect the electricity flowing through the different circuits in your home. It sends the information to a web platform, which displays it in all manner of graphs and charts.

“It’s the ultimate energy saving gadget,” he says. “The data tells a story – it’s a wonderful tool to help make the invisible visible.”

Earlier this year, Mr Sabey and his family moved house. With the SEGmeter, he discovered that their new home was consuming 400 watts in the middle of the night. One of the main culprits was the air conditioner, which drew 60 watts, even when it was switched off.

“It’s about understanding when and where we’re using electricity,” he says. “Every house is different and they don’t come with an energy efficiency manual.”

A SEGmeter for householders with 6 different channels, costs about $1000, including installation. Mr Sabey says it’s best suited for big electricity users who want to reduce their bills, and also for houses with solar panels, because it reveals the split between production and consumption.

They’re also good for the curious-minded. Peter Reefman, from Energised Homes, has set up a similar system, using the Current Cost EnviR monitor. He’s developing his own set of online data displays.

Some of his findings are quirky: “I now know that when my wife cooks herself bacon and eggs for breakfast on our induction stovetop it costs 6 cents,” he says.

Others are more significant: his solar hot water booster was running too long during the night, because the temperature setting was unnecessarily high.

“It’s a really good way to show you where your energy blackspots are – things such as my hot water unit. Some of them will be really low-hanging fruit, but they can be difficult to find without ongoing monitoring,” he says. “It’s also a gentle reminder to check how you’re going, because behaviours can improve and they can also slip back.”

Mr Reefman says that while the expensive meters will help households save money in the long run, there are cheaper alternatives. Simple in-home displays are available from electronics stores and eco-retailers for around $100.

Until now, smart meters haven’t delivered useful information to householders, but that seems set to change. Electricity distributor Jemena is trialling a web portal that will display its customers’ electricity data online. But, like the simple in-home displays, it will show total consumption, not a breakdown of what uses what.

If you want to measure individual appliances, you can try a Power-Mate, an Australian-made gizmo that plugs in between the socket and an appliance and tells you exactly how much juice it’s guzzling.

Read this article at The Age online

Illustration by Robin Cowcher