Does energy efficiency just make us use more stuff?
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- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- Improvements in energy efficiency could give us as much as 50% of the carbon reductions we need by 2050, according to the International Energy agency. But the 'Jevons Paradox' says the more efficient and cheaper we make things, the more we use them. So are we in a no-win situation or is there actually a way out?
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It's a mindset. I was born in 1969, and raised with the mindset of reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose. I took to this readily and still apply it in my everyday use despite the pressure to just toss and trash. However, my three siblings resented and rejected the mindset, and are more than willing to send anything to the overflowing landfill, if it gets so much as a scratch. I grew up poor in a poor nation, and my attitude was more common there. I moved to North America in the 1980s and I was astonished by the wastefulness and the complete disregard for conservation that I saw in the majority of people.
I look for quality, and try to get it, although usually it's too expensive for me to afford (second hand shops can be goldmines). I do what I can, with what I can, to try to make things last longer even though they're designed to fall apart. I try to use as little as possible, as responsibly as possible. My siblings go for flashy and cheap, and as much of it as they can get, and don't care about how it was created and delivered.
So it's a mindset. In my grandmother's time of the Great Depression, and my mother's time of WWII, there were still those individuals who pushed back against not being wasteful.
Agree 100%. Also born in '69 in Bolivia. Well into my teens we reused everytjing -- ebven used olastic bags, over & over, till they could only be used like string, to tie things ...
Amen! The waste all around us is the triumph of the FatCat-Marketing Conspiracy and may be -- literally -- the death of us all (and/or our posterity)!
@@leonstenutz6003 I also still wash and reuse the plastic freezer bags, and I have a collection of useful string...It reduces waste, reduces the need to use new resources to make new products, and saves you a ton of money. I don't know why everyone doesn't do this.
Spot on! Americans, for example, have been culturally programmed to not care where or how anything is manufactured so long as it looks cool and is priced right. And, with so many lacking basic repair skills, and devices that are not designed for diy repair, a planned obsolescence trip to the landfill is regarded as a simple fact of life.
That some of our waste stream is sold to foreign countries for "disposal" is also of no great national concern. Most could care less and The System is happy to lie to them about where their "recycling" waste actually ends up.
Profligate waste is built into The System and might well be an essential feature since 70% of the economy is consumer spending. "Buy, buy, discard, buy again..."
I suspect that this same mentality will go wherever The System goes because each new generation will be socially conditioned to adopt these behaviors. Individual change feels good but has no significant impact on the overall, aggregated result. Rinse and repeat...
@@alanmcrae8594 "Socially conditioned"
Yes. Human memory is short. What people now think of as normal would have been considered a source of huge worry in their grandparent's time. They think of it as "normal" when nothing is further from the truth. Social conditioning relies on the short human memory for its success.
DownToEarth (an Indian channel) often covers passively comfortable building construction. Humanity has a huge legacy of such techniques that require no energy at all. These are by far the most sound approaches. The best carbon sequestration is the stuff we never have to use.
Dave and Just Have a Think are as good as it gets. Hope for the best in 2024 and keep watching 👀 this channel! 🎉😊
Thank you for your kind words! I fully agree, Dave and Just Have a Think are great channels to learn and discuss important topics like energy efficiency. By using energy-efficient products like the Segway Portable PowerStation Cube Series, we can reduce our environmental impact while still enjoying our outdoor adventures. It's definitely worth considering for fellow outdoor enthusiasts and RV lovers looking for reliable power sources. Keep up the good work and happy camping!
@@user-hh6ex9md4wprimo AI, so that's something we can look forward to as well
Here is an energy-saving idea I use.
I built a rocket-stove mass heater with a large horizontal firebox called "batch box", which feeds into the vertical heat riser or secondary combustion chamber. It's made of brick, firebrick, clay and rock, with the metal heat riser "barrel" made from a repurposed well pressure tank. I have a half steel pipe that runs below the door to the back of the firebox that allows a "re-burn" of the smoke when the temperature is high enough. It then burns very cleanly. There is a bench that the stovepipe runs through to heat it. The whole thing retains noticeable heat in it for about 24 hours after two burns in it.
I've found that the rocket-stove mass heater is very efficient - on nights down to 30F, only two big batches of wood burned in the evening is needed to heat the whole house until the next evening. Our house (a mobile home) is not even insulated that well.
Yes, I had to add support under the floor to support the clay and rock bench.
It's amazing how much energy wood contains. It really is better for the environment than using electricity from coal or gas powered power plants to heat houses.
Cherry picking some statistics though - do higher temperatures reduce energy demand in less equatorial areas? I think the overall harm is greater but these arguments need to be debated.
Ah… Jevon's paradox. I remember when personal computers were to help us dispatch our tasks much easier, allowing us more leisure time, with less stress. Instead, our corporate bosses then expected us to fill up the time saved with more and more and more tasks. We now work longer hours, with fewer days off, and more stress than ever before. Will the same happen with energy production and storage? Gawd, I hope not.
Sure....until machine learning comes in to help you with all that....then they'll probably lay everybody off!
It already has. Every time we come up with more resources, we just use more. We eat more than ever, we travel more than ever, our food travels more than ever, we sit around letting machines do things (even simple things and stupidly unnecessary things) for us more than ever. Tricycles that little kids peddle around on are replaced by little battery powered cars that they ride around on. Solid front yard holiday ornaments are replaced by inflatable ones that require constant reinflating. The examples are everywhere, and they get stupider and stupider. We just find more ways to use up any new surplus. We're children.
I think that this is closer to Parkinson's Law that work expands to fill the time available to do it. The possibility of doing office work from home is a very mixed blessing.
I think it applies to the washing machine as well. We saved time but hey now we have more clothes, we want them perfect shape, super clean and different type so more washes, more sorting, more rebuying because hey over washing destroys the clothes we are supposed to throw away & buy new anyway.
Computers were never intended to create more leisure time, you are confusing them with something else. The intention was always to make people's time more productive so that more value could be created. The longer hours is a product of the culture you live in not technology and is unrelated.
One of the big energy savers is not traveling. The less time spent in cars and planes the better. Switching to public transit, cycling, and walking is a big change that needs to be made possible in car-centric countries.
So are you saying our freedom of movement should be restricted to going only as far as our 2 feet take us? No more vacations abroad (that would tank the economy fast). Many people have travel for their business, sure somethings can be done via Skype, but that may only reduce travel trips by a very small percentage. What about all those cheap products that won't flow quickly around the world if air and large ship travel were eliminated? I guess we can go back to wooden ships they have to be really big and we would have to cut down even more forests for it. Or we can just attach giant sails to our current fleet of ships. You may have to wait several months for your products and food. Ohh that wouldn't be feasible because those deisel engines were powering the coolers on the ships. I guess we can go back to packing the foods in tons of salt to keep them fresh or preserved.
@@brandonsheffield9873 that is clearly not what I’m saying. My second sentence explicitly says “less”. Read before commenting.
I for one would love to be able to take a train to many more places in the US. A light rail between my city (320k people) and the city 60 miles away (1.8m people) from downtown to downtown, would cut our congestion greatly as well, and I'd visit much more often if I could cut down the 2+ hours stuck in a car there and back.
@@luisostasuc8135 I agree with you, it would be awesome. I'm not sure about the US costs, but I know here that new rail costs is comparable or cheaper than an equivalent road (and takes less maintenance, etc). So the reason we don't have more mass transit is that our governments (at the behest of private companies) have prioritised cars/roads.
Happy New Year to Just Have a Think and to everyone who follows this channel.
HAPPY LAST YEAR 🥳
When flat screen TV's were taking over for the old tube TV's I was all excited about the improved energy efficiency. Then computers and gaming systems came along and used all that up. The result is that most households now use the same or more power than they did before.
And we have much bigger screens, and probably more individual screens, now that they take up less space in our homes, and people leave them on longer, so we're not even using significantly less electricity on TVs alone. Moreover, big flat screens are now everywhere in commercial and public spaces for advertising and information purposes.
However the use of energy in households for electronic appliances including all those screens is actually pretty trivial compared with that for heating and cooling (including hot water and the fridge). Going beyond the building, any household with one or more cars, or whose members catch flights anywhere, will use more energy on transportation than they do at home (unless they're really profligate with the heating I guess). All those flat screens are more of a "display" of conspicuous consumption than they are genuine energy hogs.
My PC and 50" TV use 100w each, whooptie do
Computers and gaming systems existed before flat TVs. The energy efficiency of flat TVs became moot, when flat TVs became bigger and bigger. Now a 60 inch has become standard size and many people are already buying 80+ inch 4k TVs.
With computers and gaming, we observed that gpus and cpus became more efficient with every new generation. However, people would just buy a new card that was more efficient, but still use as much power. However, you should also consider, that most people nowadays no longer use PCs and instead use smartphones or tablets, which are far more energy efficient and use very little power.
But then we now also have idiots like crypto miners to deal with.
@@janeblogs324 And that's the attitude that needs to change - the "it's only a 100w, what does it matter?" attitude. We should, to misquote Monty Python, have the attitude that "every watt is sacred, every watt is great, if one watt is wasted, God gets quite irate"
The growth and need of data centres grows at an exponential rate. It will nullify any transition to sustainable energy for housing, transport, industry ...
In the Netherland they built a huge wind energy park. Good for the energy use of 370k households ...., but it was used for a data centre.
So in the end, watching this YT video contributes to energy use.🤔
supporting the Jewson Paradox ..
If you want to see a complete opposite to Jevon’s Paradox is the water use within the City of Seattle. For three decades now, with substantial population growth, total water consumption has declined. All through gains of efficiency.
Also, here in Victoria, Australia, we have Target 150 www.water.vic.gov.au/for-households/target-150-saving-water-in-our-cities - one good thing regarding reducing hot water use is that it saves water AND energy to heat that water!
Yes, but when consumption has only increased in California it kind of balances out (or gets worse).
Some idiot decided to build an estate for rich people with a golf course in the desert in Nevada - and all the grass watering insanity that implies.
The impact of this decision has depleted all the accessible local acquifers and now they are trying to draw even more from the river that supplies countless other things.
Just...... uuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhh.
Did the water get cheaper to consume though?
Our son made us a hay box. He made a nest in a wooden box using sheep's wool, lined it with a sheet and made a hollow the shape of our most used pan. Then placed ontop of the pan pillows. We get the spuds/rice etc to the boil then place in the hay box and the results are great: Hot, cooked spuds/rice/veg and lower energy bills. 😊
The fundamental problem is GDP is the absolute wrong measure.
With GDP the emphasis is on "more value (i.e. higher GDP) is better", where value is expressed in some monetary unit. Consider three versions of the "lawn care" function:
- The owner of the lawn also owns a lawn mover. They use it to perform the mowing themselves. The time associated with that is an opportunity cost, and the activity may or may not be considered tedious. With respect to GDP the activities are related to the manufacture and sale of the lawn mower, not to the mowing itself.
- Hiring an existing mowing service to perform the mowing. These are almost exclusively "capitalist" services. Fewer mowers are required here. The primary economic activity here is the labour involved in the mowing.
- Having a service using a robot lawnmower to do the mowing. These could occur overnight and could be done silently. Depending on the climate and average lawn size, such a robot could perform 1000-3000 mowings per year and cost about $3000. The lifetime costs per mowing should be in the 10s of cents. The service may be capitalist or non-profit (e.g. a group of 50 neighbors get together to purchase the mower and the scheduling mechanisms) or one of them purchases it and charges their neighbors per use. The economic activity here is primarily related to the manufacture and sale of the robot mower.
Relative to options 1 or 2 the GDP contribution of this option should be less, probably far less, than 10% that of the other two options. A "more GDP is better" philosophy would consider that a very bad thing. However, to me it is clearly better: your lawn is mowed as frequently as you like, one need never be bothered by the sounds of neighbors mowing when you are trying to sleep, the opportunity cost from version 1 is not present.
When you are hard up & miss a payment on your credit card, a much higher penalty interest is changed - this is included in GDP as a service provided. When you're sick GDP goes up. GDP is not a good measure because it includes unearned income that should really go on the negative side. All the financial sectors shenanigans should be on the debt side to make GDP a more relevant measure. Anyway Happy New Year.
Just wondering if anyone has audited the data from the IEA?
I’m afraid you’ve been reading or viewing too many sci-fi or futuristic utopian novels. You’ve also strayed into the WEF ideology of a capitalist system where the plebs don’t owned anything they just pay a subscription for the privilege of using. But if you think people will just peaceful do as they’re told just let ownership be removed from them, then I’m afraid you don’t know people🤔
@Outmytree1 I do not really respond to trolls trying to bring up strawman arguments in unrelated threads to create FUD, but sure I will respond to this one.
The IEA are the auditors. They review thousands of collections and data sets and peer reviewed studies. It is not their data they are presenting it is an accumulation of data from thousands of researchers weighed against each other in scientific review.
All of this data has been thoroughly audited.
Love the analogy.
Hello Dave;
on LED lightning:
It's essential the colour temperature be 2700K to 3K for LED conversion from sodium vapor. The 5K colour temp is very blue, and results in numerous health problems in humans, plus migration, survivability of nocturnal creatures like owls and frogs and sea turtles, and Monarch butterflies and many more.
Turns out the bright white colour LED are an absolute disaster for human health and physiology including circadian functions. The shorter blue wavelength reaches far into the atmosphere creating an artificial sky glow in addition to the direct health effects seeing this daylight frequency at night causes.
A simple change to the "warm" 3K colour temp instead of the 5K glare prevents this blue light from scattering through the atmosphere creating massive light pollution. Also, directed lighting so the light energy doesn't escape away to light the sky increases efficacy drastically, resulting in significant reduction in emissions whilst simultaneously providing better lighting.
As a bonus it also allows us humans to see the Universe and our own Milky Way galaxy in the night sky; a fundamental connection we humans have enjoyed for millennia until the very recent few decades.
As well, everyone surveyed preferred the 2700K warm LED over the glaring white 5K, and could see better due to reduction of pupil constriction, which allowed for even lower wattage LED lamps to be used, further reducing energy consumption. A total "win-win" as they say.
Perhaps a mini-segment (or dare I suggest a whole show) on light pollution consequences from going efficient the wrong way would be a good episode?
(Also, note I translated English into British using "colour" and "lamps" instead of the obviously correct American "color" and "lights", that's just how important this issue is to global ecosystems.Also, Happy New Year!)
Hello! Is f.lux software and blue filter glasses enough to counter act the bad effects of blue light from LEDs? Saying that as someone who uses computers for work & home even if I try to limit it at home knowing it's unlikely to be good long term even with other good health parameters such as ergonomics, break, diet, exercise and sleep.
@@Max2050x I cannot answer you're question definitively, but from the available research it doesn't look like blue filter glasses have shown strong effects either way, nothing definitive..
The best results were from limiting that light after a certain time (like 10 p.m. (2200) or midnight. Light in the blue frequency seemed to be problematic for natural biological clock cycles after that.
Now, that doesn't mean blue filters don't work, only that experiments have not been able to show a significant effect. Having a cut-off time for artificial blue lighting seems best, or eliminating that light fron your environment best you can (through warmer 2700K LED vs. the blue-white 5000K, for example). If you have blue filters on your electronics and already have blue filter glasses, I don't see a problem using them just in case they are eventually shown to work, however.
@@onebylandtwoifbysearunifby5475 Flux is amazing. I keep the setting at sunset to halogen, I think it's 2700 K. It also changes gradually so good for the eyes. Downside is not all employers would be willing to pay for the enterprise version.
I usually try to avoid screens & LEDs even with blue filter glasses after 8-9 pm so that's good to know!
I live in a council maisonette that's been clad on the outside..walls are over half a metre thick now.
Even when it's minus-10 outside, I can heat the whole place with a small blow heater - something I had to do when the boiler was busted for a couple weeks.
...it was a thermostatic one that maintained a given temp...hardly came on once the place was warm
What material was used for the cladding?@@TheAdeybob
looks like styrofoam, but denser@@annabel5200
Before watching, I'm going to say yes. Just like our spending swells to use up our income, if we have more energy, we do more stuff to use it up. Habit, human nature, whatever the reason, yes we should always strive to use less and be more efficient.
I like this guy, always in point
Low cost and high efficiency come from mass market take up! If this is achieved without destroying material and producing CO2 (renewables) then at least more consumption does not create more damage! Also, much of the new consumption like producing mediterranean crops under heated glass actually reduces its current import with all the negative transport costs and damages
from its travel. UK does need to produce more of its food along with energy and you never know we could have robotised manufacture?? But the "throw away culture" has to go and we need only to consume what we need and hence not live in eternal financial debt!!
We should compare effective policies in our countries rather than household energy efficiency changes.
In Tasmania, we had a carbon tax for a few years, whose revenue was invested in energy efficiency projects at mass household level.
There have also been no-interest loans provided for household energy efficiency projects.
There are situations when two positive effects go in tandem. Our cities and settlements are suffering of light pollution due to excessive streetlights which messes up the biology of the insects and other creatures (the day and night cycle etc) . By showing showing a larger degree of consideration towards the natural world's demand for darkness we well also save more energy. Win-win.
You speak as if turning off the street lights will have no negative effects. It'll increase crime for one.
@@ElijahDeckerSurely there are ways to redesign streetlights to reduce light pollution without completely removing them?
To understand Jevon's Paradox, you need to consider whole system effects of your behaviour. What happens to the energy that is saved? If that energy is used for an activity with greater utility than street lighting, you have improved efficiency and energy surplus. That surplus can now only either be used for growth or wasted. If growth, future energy demand increases because of efficient behaviour.
@@ElijahDecker Crime is overwhelmingly caused by other things, above all, lead exposure & inequality, especially racially-caused. Streets, transit, cities, life can be redesigned to be better for all & on the way drastically reduce crime.
@@TheMildperil there's no one holding a gun to anyone's head forcing saved energy to be used. And with the right incentives, energy and money saved through energy efficiency goes into further environmentally beneficial changes, like electrifying rail and making sustainable aviation fuel.
The Jevons Paradox applied to 19th century _manufacturing companies_ investing savings in increased production. It applies poorly to the service economy, and very badly to household behavior. If you buy an EV because you're concerned about the environment, you obviously don't drive two and a half times further in it because you're saving 60% on energy costs.
There are reasons to adopt a degrowth approach that does not measure the well-being of society through GDP increase. But it's far more nuanced than simply "cheaper energy means we necessarily use more of it."
Cheers, Dave, food for thought, yet again. Thanks for your great work this year and wishing you all the best in 2024. You are making difference!
Thanks for the work you do keeping us better informed and have a Happy New Year Dave.
Have a happy New Year thanks for all the work.
The effect is real. I currently drive 5000-6000 km / year (far less than typical) with a small ICE SUV but when I get an Aptera I plan to travel more since the energy efficiency / solar makes travel cheap and guilt free.
Still you are reducing your impact, as as you will be going electric, rather solar than relying on fossil fuels
Depending on where CC lives and the length of his commute, he may get up to 40 miles of charge from the solar panels on the Aptera. It may be the case that he won't need to charge his car up from the grid more than a handful of times per year. This will be a game changer. I would still rather move to a country where I could safely ride a bike for 6 minutes and then hop on a streetcar for another 5 minutes and get to a station where I could take a local, regional or international train to get where ever I want to go. Ronny Chieng is right, "Everything Is Stupid," well at least in the USA.
Happy New Year from Panama Dave. Thanks for all your work and ending 2023 on a largely positive note. Seeing some of those peaks in the rear view mirror is encouraging.
The best thing you can do for the environment is to live a frugal lifestyle
I bet my idea of frugal is not the same as yours.
I am sure you live that lifestyle for saying that
The more frugal you go the better. Learn from budhism and restriction from religions. Leave consumerism behind. Go out and touch grass instead of traveling the world. You can turn off the lights if you're not using them you know.
@@americron912 i assume you do these things yourself right?
I do @@Chris-sm2uj
Dave, have a very prosperous new year. Keep up the good work. I feel the frustration, but know you are not alone.
The first fuel is car-free cities. We can all have a direct hand in changing our city zoning laws to make this possible (in the US), when often they prevent it. Best of all there is every reason to do it for our own pocket books, thriving local commerce, financial solvency and climate change adaptation and mitigation. (made a video about it. because it's a no brainer I hope people take up!)
Looking around at all the closed shops and stores, I'd say we could use some thriving local businesses...but what??
Your jokes get more and more cynical, but your presentation never cracks! 😊 Keep up the great work.
I think he's waking up like most people are
When pessimism overtakes optimism the cynical side becomes the norm so it isn't even comedic to you anymore 😅
I get that - I used to laugh at myself as much as jokes.
These days it's getting harder and harder just to stay sane with the way the world is going 😭
Happy new year, thanks for you being you. 😊
Also talk about decoupling from material usage, fresh water usage, land use and waste production.
Happy New Year,Dave! Why you haven't been awarded a new year's honour is beyond me. Thank you for your untiring work.
Having been shocked at the poor design of homes here in Thailand I designed my own climate appropriate house. It is off-grid, with all electricity for our 2 electric cars and an electric motorbike being provided by my home solar, with one of the EVs providing extra backup power for the house. Yes we need 2 cars as we live in the country and grow a lot of our fruit and vegetables using solar powered drip irrigation. We have rainwater harvesting, solar thermal and fish pond with a solar powered aerator. Videos on my channel for the doubters.
Happy 2024 Dave, thanks for all your advocacy, lets get this done!
Well done Dave. Happy New Year. 💚
I’ve worked in energy efficiency for ten years now. I’m not worried about the Jevon’s Paradox because we’re either reducing consumption and doing nothing for economic growth or doing nothing to consumption and allowing for more sustainable economic growth. Either is a win and we’re probably accomplishing something of a mix of the two.
However, I am skeptical about the efficiency gains from certain emerging technologies, particularly smart home gadgets. Smart thermostats have been disappointing in our market, exhibiting little to no effect on usage, although their potential benefits for demand response are hopeful. Weatherization in my mind, is a much more effective, low tech way to increase efficiency, but it costs money and requires test in/test out to be really effective. It is also important to do weatherizing before switching from fossil fuel furnaces or boilers to heat pumps, due to the different air flow and heat load characteristics of heat pump optimization. Sometimes I think people get too excited about high tech equipment rather than just doing the more boring but important work like air sealing and insulation.
Doing nothing for economic growth? That seems more like a disruption or global limit like fertility levels, temporarily high inflation or peak productivity output than lack of effort to engage in growth.
As for weatherization you got me intrigued! Is it possible to mass market it so people can actually do it? That seems like a good win to pursue. Even if Jevon's Paradox is a problem long term, we should still aim for energy efficiency gains in the short and medium term for no other reason to buy time for people to find potential solutions and adapt to a new environment. I agree that the boring but necessary stuff is more important to focus on. I remember reading about a new company that specialize on high isolation low CO2 emission windows, yet are affordable called LuxWall. Many other projects in the work but disruption and lobbyism slow down implementation.
I had the unfortunate experience of having to replace the heating system before being able to do the retrofits I had planned to make the home more efficient. It still feels good not to be burning oil to heat my home all winter. Emitting no GHGs and particulates and with no more risk of the external oil tank leaking, I am saving money and looking forward to saving more once the home is better insulated and less drafty. I will be able to do better when it's time eventually to replace the heat pump. Don't let perfectionism be the enemy of good.
Happy New Year David!
The paradox is definitely real. People tend to consume more when plentiful conditions exist. In modern times, those conditions are called "wealth" (and energy is simply a cost, directly or indirectly). There is a direct correlation between an individual's wealth and an individual's energy consumption. The luxuries of life burn energy, regardless of where that energy comes from.
Green energy ultimately removes a major cost component from the energy train and it happens to be the very same cost component that tends to limit people's consumption. It creates a new baseline for the society, but does not remove the demand for excesses beyond that baseline. We can see this in spades in China where rapid affluence (that are yet still well below European norms) is leading to energy demands that far outstrip even the incredible ramp of renewable energy China is adding.
But it isn't quite as bad as it seems. Green energy also implies a limitation. A person with solar panels on their home, for example, has reason to try to optimize their consumption to fit. And societies do tend to stabilize, eventually. The affluence doesn't ramp up endlessly and both the U.S. and Europe are good examples of that. It becomes energy-constrained (at a higher level, yes, but still constrained)... and there are feedback mechanisms in the form of demand-pricing or peak period pricing for excess power that definitively regulate beyond these limits.
Still, it is pretty bad. Developing economies, especially in Africa, and economies with rapid affluence growth such as China and, increasingly, India, are creating such a steep ramp in demand that renewables (clearly) cannot keep up. Not yet anyway. The equation will change in a few decades but the momentum that the older, heavily polluting fossil technologies have is still present today and will be with us for a very long time.
Happy new year, Dave. This optimistic video is a balm for a troubled mind, thank you. Have a great 2024 and I hope you can continue this optimistic note 😊
Thanks Dave. Absolutely brilliantly written and delivered topic. Keep up the good work!
A full on ban of Asphalt (roads, parkinglots, driveways and roofing) will lower local ambient temps which will lower cooling needs.
Air gapping parking spaces, using a canopy which is also a solar panel is another way of lowering local ambient temps reducing cooling needs.
Cooling towers, the ancient AC which is a tower that goes above a building with vents for wind to pass through at the top where the hot air of the building collects and that wind blows the hot air out pulling cool air through windows and doors below.
Thanks for all your good work, Dave. Hve a Happy New and Green Year! Incidently, from the age of 0-12 I lived with my parents in a rented rural cottage that was completely without any mains services! Yes, we were cold in the winter - the old valve battery and accumulator powered radio took about three minutes to warm up before any sound emanated from it, the gramophone had to wound up, water had to be pumped from a spring by hand into a pail and then carried to the kitchen! Hardly anyone had a car and movement was by either infrequent bus service or bicycle. We had few possessions but what we did have was very little pollution, peace and tranquility and the joys of nature all around us. Sadly, the peace, tranquility and many of the natural plants, insects and birds are no longer with us! My, what progress!
Happy new 2024, Dave!
It's nice to get some reasonably good news with which to finish off 2023! Happy New Year, Dave.
sounds like we might make it, despite cop-out conferences. Been aware of the paradox, but never knew its name....so thanks> And thanks for a great year of videos, and looking forward to 2024 learning with you.
Love your videos!
Excellent video, many thanks
Thanks for all your videos of 2023 Dave and looking forward to seeing the 2024 batch! Happy New year!
Great insight as always. Thanks
Here's the thing with Jevon's Paradox - it only has an impact if there is latent demand unlocked by the efficiency gain. Someone who drives less because it's bad, might drive more with an efficient car because they feel they don't have to go without. Or someone freezing their arse off in a poorly insulated home might consume more heat once it's more efficient and more affordable to do so.
But the average person doesn't drive more, use more light, or whatever, just because it's more efficient.
True. Transitioning to a plant-based food system is a must.
Your videos are fantastic!
1st video of the year im so happy
I just got a heat-pump washer/dryer. I'm trying! Happy New Year sir and thank you for what you do!
A very important subject with the main points very well made. BRAVO
Happy New Year, Dave! And thank you for making so many of these educational and thoughtful videos. I look forward to them every Sunday.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, "Jevon's Paradox" isn't really a factor when it comes to end user energy efficiency. There are great benefits in emissions reduction still to be gained if the nations of the world continue to pursue the various energy efficiency policies and laws that are already on the books. And there are still entire sectors of the economy (primarily industrial ones) where efficiency in energy use has barely been explored. So there's lots of low hanging fruit left when it comes to effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions through increases in energy efficiency.
But there's a problem on the horizon which is sort of similar to Jenson's Paradox. As the world continues to warm, people everywhere are using more energy to keep cool - and since the majority of countries still primarily use fossil fuels to produce electricity, this means that climate change is directly leading to greater use of the fossil fuels that created it in the first place. A positive feedback cycle that makes it harder to convert electrical grids to renewable sources, because the grid operators need all the electricity they can get. They're not going to shut down coal or natural gas plants when they know it will cause blackouts.
When I was cycling from Wales to the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 I visited Artefact in northern Germany. They had a building there from Zimbabwe which was designed to keep cool without air conditioning
Thank you. Good stuff!!
Thank you for this great episode, it is very intense and useful
Happy New Year 🎉
OK. So you did cite Jevon's Paradox. But did anyone hear it? The upshot of Jevon's is that we need to forget about efficiency and make things better by doing less of the stuff that makes things worse! Jevon's colleague Will Rogers said: When you find yourself in a hole... STOP DIGGING!
Thank you for the commentarym
As an advocate for anaerobic digestion, biochar and regenerative farming in all of its forms, I'm looking forward to a nuanced look at cows soon.
Thank you. Wishing all the very best if years
A protip for more efficient heating of flats - smart thermostats with which you replace standard radiator valves. I bought 3 for $40 each programmed them to my schedule, and it saved $180 on the heating bill just the first year of use (and the heating cost went up in the meantime)
I'm a great fan of energy efficiency. And I can classify myself as an expert on the subject as I've built two ten star energy efficient houses, reducing our need for electricity by 90%
We saved so much money from doing this as well as water and food energy savings that I quit working aged 42. We live on literally no money, we're self sufficient in nearly everything.... We drive a 4L/100km car about 15,000km/yr. Costs us nearly nothing, easily affordable on the old age pension.
What we did that nobody else does when they save money like this is not spend it upgrading to a new car or holidays to the Caribbeans!
If everyone lived like us, the economy as we know it would simply totally collapse from lack of consumption...
Perfect video length
Will be looking forward to your cow video !!!
Canadian, working across this big country, I drove 76 428 kms in 2023, tailpipe a-spewing. I'll need a new (newer) vehicle within 18-months. Until most parking spaces have chargers for electric vehicles (unlikely in 1 1/2 years), I will be shackled to another internal combustion engine for...oh...the next 1/2 million kms...and I'm just one person. Transitioning has bumps on the road. I wish I could add to my NYE resolutions the changes I want to make. Happy New Year, Dave. Cheerio.
Happy New Year Dave. Hope 2024 we do better
Great information! Excellent "production values" Well done!
As things in general get more ‘green’ and energy efficient, there is a tendency to use more of it. This was touched on in this video. To control total energy consumption in the developed world, serious consideration should be given to some form of personal carbon allowance, which would be set at a level to reduce a nation’s overall carbon emissions. This would help limit extravagant energy usage by those who, presently, consume more energy than the average person; either by excessive holidays/trips abroad, big cars, houses, etc. which other mere mortals cannot afford. There could be a carbon trading system.
Leaving everything as it now, will never get everyone signed up to the principle of overall energy consumption. You only need to walk down certain streets in London, where there is an abundance of expensive limos to see what I mean.
All the best for 2024.... and thanks for everything you do.
For the last 3 years we lived off-grid on 1.5kWh/day every day with few exceptions - the vast majority of that being our fridge. Recently I added some second-hand, unused LiFePO4s to our system doubling our total storage capacity but also packing much more ability to discharge much faster and it's incredible how many more devices we suddenly have. We're still only using a little over 2.5 kWh/day on average but only because it's available. All these appliances make life easier, mind you, but the dishwasher, electric oven, and induction cooktop were things we didn't even dream of three months ago and are now mandatory.
Same with our hybrid. It's literally paid for itself in petrol savings. I don't think we drive enough to offset the reduction in our carbon footprint in comparison to our last car, but we sure do drive a whole hell of a lot more because it's cheap and easy. $80-100 at the petrol pump is much less painful than $200.
Both of these things we do simply because they're now available and we don't have to think about the cost of them. I generally like to pretend that we're more aware than that, but obviously we're not.
Excellent. Yes. The Jevon's paradox lives. LED lights are a perfect example. They were supposed to be low hanging fruit that would save huge amounts of energy. But since when we install them, we pay for them with capitol dollars. And when we use them, we decide on how much by the monthly expense. Rather than reducing energy, they only served to expand lighting. And with less throw than older lights, twice as many street lights were needed, and those were extended further.
With less expensive light, we increased the lighting levels using toxic blue light that destroys our eyes and health, and even decided to light up whole sides of buildings in massive LED displays for advertising. And with Jevon's we only stop that when the energy consumption cost rises to match what it had been - and in the process results in even more energy consumption.
But it gets very much worse. Our bodies mitochondria are driven by red and infra-red light absorbed directly through the skin - 8 centimeters deep - even through our skulls. LED lights produce none of that. And so health suffers.
Worse yet, our eyes see in four colors of light - not three. The intrinsic photosensitive ganglion receptor cells (ipGRC) 'see' in cyan colored light. They sense when the sun is up. The intense 425 nm blue light from LEDs strongly causes the ipGRC to conclude the sun is up and to tell our bodies to NOT produce meltonin. And so the entire sleep cycle is hosed. And with that the hormone cycles are as well. That in turn leads to not less than a 50% increase in breast cancer, and 105% increease in prostate cancer, plus increased GI cancers - from streetlights alone. Indoor LED light use increases that dramatically.
We ignored that in the rapid shift to LEDs. And now six years on the data on health is now beginning to show the rise in breast cancer rates (3-4 years ago in reality) - baffling the "experts". The only baffling part is how thoroughly the experts and US DOE managed to wilfully ignore this impact. The blue light through the same mechanism also renders tamoxifen and other cancer treatments ineffective. So we have and wioll have higher AND more lethal cancer rates.
What we also failed to notice was that all the blue light from fluorescent lights caused the huge surge in these same cancers since the 1970s. Had we thought things through rather than killing more people, we could have had new efficient lighting that dramatically reduced cancers. But not so. We chose to be ignorant and to bull ahead with a single minded and entirely wrong-headed idea that the lights would save energy, and hence the world. The blue light has similar horrible impacts on birds, mammals, insects and even plants.
Add to that, the safety standard for the lights is designed to consume our eyes ability to repair damage from blue light in less than three hours of exposure. And we have deemed that to be safe for unlimited use. Never mind that the "safety" standard explicitly saying that only 10,000 seconds per day are allowed, and deemed to be safe. After that - no blue lihgt at all is safe. Actual expsoure is more like 16 hours per day, not 2 hours and 45 minutes. And beyond that the safety standard itself was never right in the first place. In total to be safe the blue light standard needs to be reduced by a factor of 50 or more. With the current lights, that would make them all intensely orange. Not something people would ever buy.
Plus, the lgiths cause damage leading to huge added rates of macular degeneration and blindness and other eye damage from retinal oxidative energy, .... with a trillion dollar a year adverse impact on prodctivity, and health.
In short it is a catastophe hidden in plain sight.
Add too the 100 or 120 hertz flicker that our eyes and brains see through an organ called the lateral geniculate nucleus in combination with teh superior coliculus.
Our visual centers cannot form imagines fast enough to see the flicker. Well, most peoples eyes and brains can't.
However, the eyes, the LGN and other orgns can. They 'see' in a different way. The LGNs identify edges in the visual field AND motion. Motion means danger or food. Our eyes and brains are designed to 'see' and and through the superior coliculus to focus on movement before our conscious minds even know anything has happened. They 'see' far faster than the visual cortex. And as a result, when the lights flicker due to their cheap electronics power conversion from AC to DC, our brains go nuts. The result is headaches, migraines, tired eyes and oh so much more. Tinnitus, GI issues and more are also triggered for some.
These aren't the only hazards. Glare, two color light making perfect focus impossible and leading to eye strain, blindness from macular degeneration, and many other issues come with them too. The net result in the US is half a million added deaths per year once the cancer latency period runs out, with committed cancers for 10 years after we figure out our mistake and recall and destroy all of these lovely energy efficient bulbs - adding a further and larger net energy consumption. Plus the added loss of half a million deaths a year that we could have avoided had we figured out how hazardous blue light is. And perhaps more had we figured out how health beneficial red and infrared light are.
Instead the folks at US DOE and the National Labs wrongly concluded that all of that loveley infrared light coming off the incadescent lights as heat - was simply wasted energy. Tehy got the situation completely backwards.
Then there are all the other things we failed to learn. We could have and should have massively built out solar, wind, geothermal, geopower, and related technologies. Instead we went for MORE POWER - more fossil fuels. And in the process we have driven CO2(e) to over 550 ppm - doubling the preindustrial baseline, and cementing in a near term 3-4 C temperature rise. Along with the urgent need to end ALL fossil fuel use if we are to avoid that we are already committed long term rise of 6-8 C. And any of those temperatures all but guarantee that we tribal nature to relese immense stocks of wamring gases that take us to a thermal runaway and hothouse earth conditions at +11 C over a several millenia timescale.
Energy efficiency was a great idea, if it were actually energy efficiency, and we had prevented the ancillary actions that lead to the Jevon's paradox ruling everything. And had we been wise enough to actually think through the whole problem rather than applying simple minded ideas to the problem.
I use F.lux software and blue filter glasses. Does it help? I try to get light early in the morning as it increases my mood and helps later with feeling awake during the day and actually tired in the evening. It's amazing only 30 minutes will do, I got one of those timer lamps for that purpose during darker times during winter. Its value is likely limited but hey better than nothing.
Regarding 120Hz, how is its effect on people who play video games multiple hours a day? Let's assume healthy living like breaks, diet, ergonomics, physical exercises, stable sleep etc..
@@Max2050x In my opinion - it helps a lot. I use it. Though I have it tuned to be more orangish than most would like, and I have it set to run all the time that way. On iOS and Apple computers an older version of f.lux is used called nightshift. I have that running 23 hours and 59 minutes a day - only because Apple in their arrogance will not allow it to run 24 hours a day.
Computers and devices are a huge problem, though many displays are getting better. LED lighting now absolutely dominates the blue light impact. Doctors and parents recognized the problems of blue light from phones, tablets and computers - particularly impacting children and young adults beginning over a decade ago.
The companies are still extremely slow to recognize and resolve the problem. Back around the year 2000 or so, both Micro%$# and Apple decided to simultaneously convert everything to stark bright white. Backgrounds, borders, you name it. A whole lot of people howled at them at the time. And they turned a deaf ear.
Today Apple allows "dark mode", a very imperfectly implemented ability to use black or dark backgrounds. But the underlying default is still bright stark eye damaging health destroying white. Worse, during start up and other times, they insist on FLASHING BRIGHT WHITE. Just to make sure they cause as much injury as possible. There are apps like Nighteye that help a lot. However, those interact with websites in ways that often break functionality.
Microsoft has apparently implemented similar capabilities.
To their immense credit, many display manufacturers have responded to suggestions by myself and others and implemented very low blue emission and no flicker displays. Some may even have gone to using 415 nm emitters. These emit a higher energy violet light as the power source. But that is at frequencies that our eyes mostly filter out and that even though it has higher power, causes less damage. It is not a perfect solution. It is a really helpful one.
Though as well, the jury is out on how that might affect people with certain other disorders or diseases, such as Lupus. People with Lupus are very sensitive to high energy light.
For lighting a few manufacturers do or have sold low blue no flicker lights. SORAA used to (perhaps still does) produce their Be Healthy line of lights that did not flicker and used 415 nm emitters with a far broader array of phosphor colors that then produced a lovely light. Those are more expensive. And they as a result did not sell well.
Cheap and highly injurious destructive technologies are the least expensive and most damaging. And those of course dominate the market. Even finding alternatives is hard.
For those most impacted by the lights, personal choice and decisions make only a small difference. Using older incandescent lights is great - though all governments of the world have banned them from production for space lighting, other than a small volume of decorative non frosted low temperature distinctly orange bulbs.
It is almost like they want to assure the maximum amount of injury, maiming, blindness and death. And for those of us highly sensitive to the blue and the flicker (beyond its health damage), that there cheap health destroying lights are everywhere means that we can go nowhere safely. We are now a discarded minority.
This is most apparent with driving at night. The intensely bright LED headlights making driving at night both extremely unsafe, highly painful, and health destroying. They render driving at night all but impossible now for a whole lot of folks.
Because I have the same glasses and wear shirts like yours, I am now getting: "You're that bloke from CZcams!"
Sigh. Fame at last, even if it's only reflected.
Good video!
Very interested to hear an update on food emissions Dave. Have a good week
Thanks for a great video again, looking forward to the 🐮 video
Ten years ago, I replaced a Crown Victoria with a Prius. I drove the same number of miles.
Gracias
Dave, I live in the SE USA. I feed the yard birds, installed a super efficient heat pump and super efficient heat pump water heater. I bought an EV in 2023. I believe tipping points have already tipped and governments are not reducing CO2 equivalent emissions but I still want to do what I can and what I can afford. I watch all your shows.
Hi Diane, just wanted to say hi from other end of the world from one female Wallace to another. We are a rare species on this channel!
I havent watch the video yet, but i would assume that the total monetary spending on something is directly related to value.
If a light bulb cost 1 dollar a night to leave on, i would always turn them off. If it cost 20 cents a night to leave on, i may leave 10 lights on at night because the functional utility of leaving that many lights on is worth $2 a day.
I have increased the total cost and total energy usage, but have exponentially increased the utility.
I would assume something similar would happen for airline travel. If the cost reduced by 20%, the total number of trips would triple (not just a 20% increase).
I think it boils down to value - "what is the cost per unit of benefit". People are willing to pay non-linearly based on value.
I used to leave the bathroom light on at night from the day I replaced it with an LED globe until I realised I was causing a small massacre of moths (both inside the bathroom and outside the window) each night. Now I turn it off.
YES, YES, YES I don't think we can correct it. No not until we stop wanting more and more newer and newer.
I remember a Chemical Engineering lecturer, back in the early 80s, say that saving energy or money in one area, does not change our impact on the planet. He gave as an example the little bit of money we save by fitting energy efficient light bulbs. We still spend it on something. What if we suddenly were given a car that did 100mpg? The money we all saved per year would allow us to travel further on short trips, take a longer holiday, buy more stuff, buy bigger things.
Ways to really reduce our impact. Grow some of our own food. Eat less red meat. Donate some of our income to charities, like the world land trust who buy land and prevent natural habitat being lost. Spend more on activities that involve human interaction such as amateur sport, dancing, having a massage. Buy recycled items, spend more on education, joining social clubs or leisure clubs, enjoying local live music, rather than spending money on more consumption, more things or more travel.
I’ve been subscribed to Just Have a Think for quite a while. This is my first time to comment in response to Dave’s query about ways to conserve energy. I perused a few of the previous comments and replies (also a first for me) and quickly realized I am not even close to being the sharpest knife in this drawer. But I have one ridiculously simple idea that would fundamentally change the climate change equation if everyone implemented it. I also offer relatively simple ideas for achieving my suggestion.
My suggestion: CONSUME LESS!! Don’t buy things you don’t need. Don’t take more from the buffet line than you are going to eat without putting on unwanted pounds. I mean this literally and metaphorically. I direct this to the minority of us who live in affluent developed countries (as I do) or are wealthy residents of developing countries. We are, by far, the largest consumers! We drive the demand for most goods and services globally. We can change the trajectory of energy use and climate change if each and every one of us fundamentally changes our behavior and consumes less. Measurably less.
My simple suggestions: Prioritize giving over acquisition. Focus your values on meaningful life fulfilling relationships, activities and experiences. Most of these things involve modest rather than large amounts of consumption. Take care of what you already have and put off buying new until you really need it. Don’t get hooked on culturally driven myths about comparing yourself with others. If you don’t lead a happy and fulfilling life, consuming more stuff won’t help you. In fact, more consumption will probably leave you feeling more hollowed out than ever. Be smart about consuming media. In the immortal words of John Prince, “Blow up your TV!” A huge portion of what the media presents to us is a combination of overt and subliminal consumerist messaging. Be mindful of what you pay attention to. And finally, elevate the practice of thriftiness to the upper echelon of your value system. It’s OK to revel in being a cheapskate!
There you go. Big problem. Simple solution. Problem solved. Alright, I’m exaggerating. But you and I can make a meaningful impact on energy consumption and climate change by actively consuming less.
Oops. I quoted John Prine. Not John Prince.
If I might share from the UK:
We have solar & battery (since April 2023) and we're on a wholesale price related tariff. I resisted the advice to switch to a day/night tariff and so far it's paid off. Plenty of negative pricing where we're paid to use electricity to balance the grid. It's only pennies but with an electric combi boiler heating the house for a few hours overnight and the EV getting topped up we have become more comfortable at no extra cost.
As more wind farms come on line I think prices will come down or hold steady (those shareholders gotta have their profits).
Whilst I'd love to be fully off grid that isn't really possible in a normal (albeit well insulated) house in the north west of England.
So I check the prices for the next 24 hours (issued at 4pm each day) and program the inverter and EV charger accordingly. A pain (unless you're geeky like me) but it takes the pressure off the grid at peak times and saves us a fair few quid.
I can surely tell you all high insulation works! We presently have installed 3" of foam insulation in all our perimeter walls of our old two story house. In the basement we have 2" of foam on the walls and over half of the old concrete floor. We have 2" foam in all the ceilings between the floors. We heat the house (mostly living room) with two electric heaters. Last week, we asked the natural gas company to come and disconnect their line. Piece by piece by piece...will lower our heating energy, carbon emissions while increasing comfort.
Jeavons Paradox - very much on the same spectrum as "Parkinson's Law" - he said "work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion". In the early days of dial-up modems websites spent a lot of effort to minimise their content. Now there are huge server farms just to deal with the volume, a lot of it duplication. (multi-plication?). And it is reckoned that since the 60's UK food costs have moved from 18% of average income down to 11%. And now people talk of food waste. Jeavons would notice that one too.
You forgot to wish us a Happy New Year!
Well Jevons Paradox only works if there is an increasing demand. If i switch from gas to a heat pump to heat the home and could already afford with gas the temperature i prefer then there is no rebound or Jevons Paradox, because i do not change my house into a sauna. If i couldn't afford heating my home because it was to expensive and no thanks to efficiency i could heat more often then sure some rebound comes into play, but still i could only spend the money once. Same goes for the car just driving more efficient thanks to an electric car does not mean i want to drive longer distances or more often.
I think the concept is supposed to be purporting , in this particular example that we might decide to build increasingly larger houses and /or use less insulation effort as it’ll be cheap to run a larger house. All due to the effect of the heat pump efficiency.
@@salibaba I would do it vice versa. With better insulation i can go for a smaller heat pump.
@@Techmagus76 as would I. I couldn’t say that for the rest of “showy” keeping up the Joneses folks who seem to love getting a bigger and bigger house just to flaunt how much space they can afford.
Counterpoint: the increased efficiency from switching to a heat pump saves you money, and then you spend that extra money on something else (which will likely use energy in some form). However, I'm definitely not sold on the idea that Jevons is true.
That's only primary rebound. Secondary rebound is where your saved money goes toward pretty much any other activity, investments, consumer goods, vacations, transportation, etc.
I find shivering helps to keep my heating costs down.
Thanks for balancing realism with some positive news. Have a happy. & healthy 2024.
Great presentation, thank you.
Since our transition away from gas and also the more fuel efficient home, our bill has reduced by $2500/year.
On a $18k spend
Since getting an EV 15 months ago, our annual savings are now about $4500/year.
Near Sydney, Australia
I recently bought a new laundry dryer with a heat pump. It uses less than a kWh of electricity per load and I have been using it for every laundry load since I bought it. Prior to this I had an old electric dryer that would slowly and inefficiently dry for about 3 hours so I rarely used it, mainly I used drying racks. With my electricity prices now, one load comes out at less than 4 cents and it's just so much easier so I'd say this theory is kinda true for some things. And since switching to LED bulbs I feel less guilty when I accidentally leave them on.
no way, are we getting a video on enteric fermentation? LETS GO
Use the towels that you dry off with, after a shower, many times before washing them. It saves both fresh water and energy. I use mine at least 4-5 times before washing them. If you're clean, coming out of the shower, the towels should be clean too.
The only way I know to save energy where I live (The Great White North of Upstate New York) is to lower the heating thermostat. Before the pandemic I used to keep the temperature set at 22 C and that is very cozy but also uses a lot of natural gas which is what I am heating with. After some $300 a month gas bills I set the thermostat to 21 C and yeah verily the cost did come down, but not impressively. When Russia screwed up the price of hydrocarbons I set the thermostat to 20 C and wore more clothes. I was telling my daughter who lives in California where they don't have a winter, about my thermostat number reductions and she said, someone who had impressed her said, you should always keep your thermostat on an odd number (as opposed to an even number) but she didn't know why. I then set my thermostat to 17 C and wear the same clothes indoors as outdoors now, and my gas bills have come down about 50%. Science in action Dave.
Its basically worked opposite when it comes to a lunch break , more efficient access to fast food simply shortened the experience increased work time possible.
Much of our costly public sector that could've innovated 20 years ago and streamlined itself hasn't or just refuses to do so despite how close it is to it, no matter how naturally organic it could these sectors seem to go in the opposite direction by expanding .
Before you do part 2 and have a pop at the farming community, please venture over to Harry's Farm channel and look out his vid on beef cattle farming in the UK - he has an interesting and valid rant about not all farming being equal. I think one of the most important points that drops out of your presentation is localism, not in a protectionist way but for sustainability and resilience. The whole world needs to start doing this more from growing your own food in your back yard wherever you are in the world, to manufacturing locally. This alone will massively impact emissions, innate good way, while also bringing accountability home.
Not in the same way for heating, but if there's one thing that solar is good at, then it's generating power at more or less exactly the times when you also want to run the air conditioner to cool off. When the sun is shining brightly. I can't help but feel that it should be possible to make an air conditioner, standardized number of solar panels included part and parcel, skip the rectifier and just use the DC directly, that uses however much power the solar panels generate. Auto-governed cooling. The hotter the sun shines, the more it cools. And face it... Solar panels are actually cheap compared to the power an air conditioner can use. What's more the warm air normally generated by an air conditioner (heat pump or not) outside the house should be perfectly fine to preheat water going to the geyser again. Meaning the warm air is not just dumped into the environment by default.
It's way cheaper to just paint the roof white. It yields the same energetic result but at way lower cost.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Well I've looked into this. All white paints are not equal for this purpose. You can't just use any white paint and expect great results. And my roof is not suitable for painting. I'd have to replace my roof surface just to paint it, or forego a guarantee. Which is way more expensive.
Then there's also the matter of summer vs winter. We don't get snow in winter where I live, and there's still sunshine on and off, but it is cold. So then I would prefer if my roof absorbs as much energy as possible again.
In the end the best option is to insulate as well as possible. If you still need cooling in summer, as is very desirable in the climate where I live, then air-conditioning is the only way.
You asked for suggestions, I guess I sort of have one.
Our major energy usage increase is due to improved living standards and widespread availability of those resources TO consume.
While I live in the US, and I make a decent 70k per year and own a house, I am driven into what you might think of as an artificial poverty condition: I am divorced, and each of my three children take up $746 of my monthly income, before family health insurance (another $760).
As a result, life in my house is far more like what modern Americans think of as an "underdeveloped country." I have two window ACs that I rarely run. A fridge, a heater--and that's really about it.
My energy bills are absurdly small becuase they HAVE to be.) I've had to think of other ways to survive not just without central HVAC but also a great many other things. (And you know what...life is actually pretty good!)
So all we have to do to reduce the entire world's lavish use of resources is, artificially knock the wind out of their pocketbook.
Unbeknownst to the well-heeled, life was actually pretty nice without all that crap in the first place.
Happy new year! On the last day of 2023 news around here promoted a new Pwr2X plant at small commercial scale that combined Pwr2H with biology to convert captured CO2 to commercial methane (NG) for sale into the gas network. Project and concept seems right up your alley of reviewing new energy technologies .
Regenerative agriculture seems to have huge potential. Would you kindly touch on this. I like to remain optimistic that we will get things under control. I always enjoy your programs.