Do big green changes really grow from little ones?

BRITISH physicist David MacKay has a confronting message about what’s necessary for our society to really go green: “If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little,” he says.

In his book, Sustainable energy – without the hot air (available free online) he analyses the relative energy footprint of different parts of the UK economy, such as transport, heating and cooling, and food and farming.

Professor MacKay argues that we must break our “fossil fuel addiction” for three reasons: we’ll run out some day; we need to avoid dangerous climate change; and we need to find secure sources of energy.

A key part of doing that, he says, is to reduce energy demand. But we mustn’t be mistaken about the kinds of things that really make a difference. For instance, unplugging your mobile phone charger will subtract only a “tiny tiny fraction of your total energy consumption”.

“The amount of energy saved by switching off the phone charger, 0.01 kWh [per day], is exactly the same as the energy used by driving an average car for one second,” he writes. “Obsessively switching off the phone-charger is like bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon. Do switch it off, but please be aware how tiny a gesture it is.”

Illustrations by Robin Cowcher

In contrast, air travel is one of the true big-ticket items for individuals. He found that the energy used in taking a return-flight from the UK to South Africa is “nearly as big as the energy used by driving an average car 50 km per day, every day, all year”.

Likewise, although the impact of imported manufactures – including vehicles, whitegoods, machinery, electronic equipment and steel – aren’t normally added to Britain’s footprint, their embodied energy use accounts for more than heating and cooling combined.

For householders, he found that two of the best ways to reduce energy use are installing solar hot water and turning the temperature down on your heating (and up on your air conditioning).

“Turning the thermostat down is the single most effective energy-saving technology available to a typical person – every degree you turn it down will reduce your heating costs by 10%; and heating is likely to be the biggest form of energy consumption in most British buildings,” he writes.

But can small personal changes ever add up to something more significant?

BehaviourWorks Australia, a research collaboration based at the Monash Sustainability Institute, is exploring exactly this question. Earlier this year, it hosted Professor John Thørgesen, a Danish academic who specialises in social and environmental marketing.

In 2009, he co-authored a report called Simple and Painless? published by the World Wildlife Fund. It argues that global environmental problems can’t be met through “marginal lifestyle changes”. The foot-in-the-door approach – easy steps such as switching light globes or showerheads – can only be justified when it’s linked to more ambitious behaviour, such as active citizenship and activism.

It also contends that encouraging householders to go green for personal gain – that is, reduced bills – doesn’t stimulate the kind of broad attitude shift required.

Dr Jim Curtis, from BehaviourWorks, says we need to understand the way people perceive themselves once they complete those simple steps. “We have to avoid thinking that we’ve done our bit. We have to link small actions to bigger ones by fostering a sense of citizenship that motivates people to make more ambitious changes,” he says.

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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