Level 5 Reading 5A

Reading 5A

OUR ENERGY DIET With a little effort, and not much money, most of us could reduce our energy diets by 25 percent or more. So, what's holding us back ? Writer Peter Miller goes on a strict low-carbon diet to find out. Not long ago, my wife and I tried a new diet— not to lose weight but to answer a question about climate change. Scientists have reported that the world is heating up even faster than they predicted just a few years ago. The consequences, they say, could be severe if we don't keep reducing emissions of carbon dioxide(CO2) and other greenhouse gases that are trapping heat in our atmosphere. But what can we do about it as individuals? And will our efforts really make any difference? The Experiment We decided to try an experiment: For one month we would track our personal emissions of CO2 as if we were counting calories. We wanted to see how much we could cut back. The average U.S. household produces about 80 kilos of CO2 a day by doing commonplace things like turning on air conditioning or driving cars. This is more than twice the European average and almost five times the global average. But how much should we try to reduce? I checked with Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. In his book, he challenged readers to make deep cuts in personal emissions to keep the world from reaching critical tipping points, such as the melting of the ice sheets in Greenland or West

Antarctica. "To stay below that threshold, we need to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent," he said. "That sounds like a lot," my wife said. "Can we really do that?" lt seemed unlikely to me, too. Still, the point was to answer a simple question: How close could we come to a lifestyle the planet could handle? Finally, we agreed to aim for 80 percentless than the U.S. average: a daily diet of about 13 kilograms of CO2, Our first challenge was to find ways to convert our daily activities into kilos of CO2, We wanted to track our progress as we went so that we could change our habits if necessary. To get a rough idea of our current carbon footprint, I put numbers from recent utility bills into several calculators on websites. The results that came out were not very flattering. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website figured our annual CO2, emissions at 24,618 kilos, 30 percent higher than the average U.S. family with two people. The main culprit was the energy we were using to heat and cool our house. Clearly we had further to go than I thought. The Diagnosis We got some help in Week Two from a professional " house doctor," Ed Minch of Energy Services Group in Wilmington, Delaware, who we asked to do an energy audit of our house. The first thing he did was to walk around the outside of the house to see if the architect and builder had created any opportunities for air to seep in or out, such as overhanging floors. Next, he went inside and used an infrared scanner to look at our interior walls. Finally, his assistants set up a powerful fan in our front door to lower air pressure inside the house and force air through whatever leaks there might be in the shell of the house. Our house, his instruments showed, was 50 percent leakier than it should be. Addressing this became a priority, as heating represents up to half of a house's energy costs, and cooling can account for a tenth. Minch also gave us tips about lighting and appliances. "A typical kitchen these days has ten 75-watt spots on all day," he said, "and that's a huge waste of money." Replacing them with compact fluorescents could save a homeowner $200 a year. Refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, and other appliances, in fact, may represent half of a household's electric bill. Everywhere I looked, I saw things sucking up energy. One night I sat up in bed and counted ten little lights in the darkness: cell phonecharger, desktop calculator, laptop computer, printer, clock radio, cable TV box, camera battery recharger, carbon monoxide detector, cordless phone base, smoke detector. What were they all doing? One study found that "vampire" power sucked up by electronics in stand by mode can add up to 25 percent of a house's electric bill. "You can go nuts thinking about everything in your house that uses power," said Jennifer Thorne Amann, author of Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings. "You have to use common sense and prioritize. Don't agonize too much, and think about what you'll be able to sustain after the experiment is over. If you have trouble reaching your goal in one area, remember there's always something else you can do."

The Results By the last week in July, we were finally getting into the flow of the reduced carbon lifestyle. We walked to the neighborhood pool instead of driving, biked to the local farmers market on Saturday morning, and sat out on the deck until dark, chatting over the sound of the crickets. Whenever possible I worked from home, and when I commuted, I took the bus and subway. Our numbers were looking pretty good, in fact, when we crossed the finish line on August 1. Compared with the previous July, we had cut electricity use by 70 percent, natural gas by 40 percent, and reduced our driving to half the national average. In terms of CO2, we trimmed our emissions to an average of 32 kilograms a day, which, though twice as much as we'd targeted as our goal, was still about half the national average. We can do more, of course. We can sign up with our utility company for power from regional wind farms. We can purchase locally grown foods instead of winter raspberries from Chile and bottled water from Fiji. We can join a carbon-reduction club, or set up one of our own. The Future What we really wanted to know was whether it would make any difference. Our low-carbon diet had shown us that, with little or no hardship and no major cash outlays, we could cut day-to-day emissions of CO2, in half— mainly by using less energy at home and on the highway. Similar efforts in office buildings, shopping malls, and factories throughout the nation, combined with incentives and efficiency standards, could halt further increases in U.S. emissions. Yet efficiency, in the end, can only take us so far. To get the deeper reductions we need , as Tim Flannery advised, we must replace fossil fuels faster with energy from wind farms, solar plants, geothermal facilities, and biofuels. We must slow deforestation, which contributes to the build up of greenhouse gases, and we must develop technologies to capture and bury carbon dioxide from existing power plants. Efficiency can buy us time—perhaps as much as two decades— to figure out how to remove carbon from the world's diet. Not that there won't still be obstacles. Every sector of our economy faces challenges, says energy-efficiency guru Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. "But they all have huge potential. I don't know anyone who has failed to make money at energy efficiency. There's so much low-hanging fruit, it's falling off the trees and mushing up around our ankles. "The rest of the world isn't waiting for the United States to show the way. Sweden has pioneered carbon-neutral houses, Germany affordable solar power, Japan fuel-efficient cars, China wind-power installations, the Netherlands prosperous cities filled with bicycles. Does the United States have the will to match such efforts? Change starts at home with the replacement of a light bulb, the opening of a window, a walk to the bus, or a bike ride to the post office. My wife and I did it for only a month, but I can see the low-carbon diet becoming a habit. As my wife said, "What do we have to lose?"

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