The amount of energy that could be conserved is staggering. Easily 20% in 2 months (developed countries) more with extra efforts.
Ppl are polarised on the car culture, unnecessary leisure activities (snomobile), non green-behavior (plastic bags, SUVs), light bulbs, and so on.
In Switzerland, 60% of tot. energy is used to build, maintain, service, heat and cool and light, buildings (all). That includes hot water (for heat and washing, as it is hard to split up) but *not* human activity in the building, such as cooking, manufacture, computers, etc., and not access roads or parking near by etc. 1*
Britain throws out one third of its food: Research by the government’s waste reduction agency, Wrap, found that one third of all food bought in Britain is thrown away – of which half is edible. That is from the guardian, more solid sources can be found, but see also the spin type slant of the bbc
So, some have had bright ideas: Food waste to power Australian homes link
Total lunacy. It is all linked, though, which is my point.
However, personal awareness and personal actions will not work. Only collective decisions, Gvmt. action, and stiff laws combined with incentives for change will do the job. As perhaps the program mentioned by jj.
*1.number from a print article in german that i can’t find. official sites and newspapers have taken it up but quote ‘about 50 or 55’ etc.

Posted by: Tangerine | Nov 5 2007 14:02 utc | 3

*Awesome*
tried to stop this typo before it posted but wasn’t quick enough…

Posted by: Bea | Nov 5 2007 14:45 utc | 5

Assuming this single pane installation is in the US…it’s quite odd. Almost all windows, new and replacement, contain insulated glass. Such windows are required under the International Energy Conservation Code.
Gotta digress, for non-US viewers. Up until around 2000, there were three model building codes in the US, which were adopted by some states and most municipalities—the National or Basic Building Code (Northeastern US), the Standard Building Code (Southern US) and the Uniform Building Code (Western US), plus the One- and Two-Family Dwelling Code. Architects and others pushed for a single US building code. Problem was, they ran out of adjectives, so they adopted “International”. As part of the effort to sell the name or brand, they translated the National Building Code into Spanish. Once, a representative of this effort, when challenged that Mexico might not adopt so stringent a code, responded that it was really aimed at “more developed countries—like Brazil” (!) The International codes form a suite of codes, one of which is the International Energy Conservation Code. It is based on ASHRAE energy conservation Standards 90.1 for commercial buildings and 90.2 for residential buildings. As a model code it has no force of law except where adopted. Although states and cities whine that they do not have the resources to enforce the whole suite of codes, and the National Association of Homebuilders plays a role that is obstructive of regulation in my opinion, energy codes are increasingly widely adopted and widely enforced.
That said, the broader point is that obscene amounts of energy are wasted in buildings, particularly in residences. Correct. At a recent Passive House (PassivHaus, ultra-low energy using buildings) conference the discussion turned from technology to the sociology of sustainability. How, in a mafi-ocracy like the US, can collective efforts at carbon emission reduction arise and be sustained? The Berkeley Department of Public Health says there are three possible responses to climate change—mitigate, adapt and suffer. Are the rich, the elites, interested in mitigation or only adaptation, and if that’s true, how can mitigation be funded? The unit of cost measure proposed at a recent energy summit was the IWE—Iraq War Equivalent or $1T. The estimate for bringing US housing up to sustainable energy performance was 2.5 IWEs.
At the start of the Industrial Revolution the concentration of atmospheric CO2 was 286 ppm. When Clinton took office—357 ppm. When Bush took office—371 ppm. It’s currently 383. At this rate of acceleration, it will be at 406 at the end of the term of the next administration. Capping it at 450 is probably out of the question at this point. My question for a candidate would be what will the atmospheric CO2 concentration be at the end of your term in 4 or 8 years? They’d dismiss the question, but somehow this is precisely the question that cannot be dismissed. I’d challenge the artists to paint the new shorelines. With sea level rise of a meter or more, a new shelf will be created with warehouses, docks, refineries etc. squatting in water, with all the attendant rust, rot, muck, fishkills, oil slicks, chain-link fences with off-limit signs posted, smells.

Posted by: Browning | Nov 5 2007 15:04 utc | 7

I have this peeve. The amount of energy wasted by roasting or outside grilling is enormous. The same goes for the baking of bread or cakes. A slab of meat cut into tiny portions cooks in a matter of minutes whereas the same amount of meat has to be roasted at high temperature for a long time. So conservation is not only a matter of windows but also of ranges and showers and laundry machines and driers, So learn Chinese or Japanese cooking forget the demi glaces that take sixteen hours of boiling and the whole pork that is for twenty four hours over the fire. To say an apparent contradiction ” simplification is complex”.

Posted by: jlcg | Nov 5 2007 18:10 utc | 9

Question: not to be backwards about this, but along the lines of ‘simplification is complex’, if I were to tear-down my house (old, with terrible windows, an moderately old furnace, etc.) and re-build with straw bale construction (r 30?) and geothermal and passive and active solar–and, and, and–I know I’d end up with a new house that uses MUCH less energy, but does that make the best use of the up-front energy invested in building my current home, and would the future savings justify the costs of tearing down my current and constructing a new home?
By the way–this is all theoretical, as far as I’m concerned. I can’t afford to do a tear down, etc.

Posted by: pepsified | Nov 5 2007 19:42 utc | 11

rapt@8
Homes with effective energy-saving measures usually cannot justify the capital expense of geothermal. The passive house design standard for heating is 1500W (15 light bulbs).
Anna missed@10
You’re right. Too many windows. If a building, neighborhood, campus, or city rationed electricity and natural gas, the building owners would learn really fast which measures are effective and which are not. Actually that second R on the window helps quite a bit, and it allows low-emissivity coatings. “Build tight, ventilate right” is the prevailing advice regarding tightness and ventilation. There are arguments going on with the energy standards for buildings (US) as to whether airtightness requirements and ventilation standards should be included. I’d like to see energy drills. A day without electricity and a day without natural gas. I recall in France, when the transit workers went on strike, the electricity would go off between 8 and 8:15 am—the electrical workers were in solidarity. “Solidarity with the Gaza Strip.” “Consumption is theft.” “It’s not your energy, so don’t burn it.” OK, those’ll never work.
pepsified@11
Add the embodied energy of the existing building and the new building. (Subtract any salvage value for the teardown.) Take the monthly utility cost difference between the two buildings, and estimate the payback. For our building dataset, replacing a 1920 school with a new energy-efficient one has a 60 year simple payback. US Department of Energy figures show (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/consumption/index.html) a trend toward greater energy use per unit area since 1900 for commercial buildings. Residential structures paint a different picture, with reducing energy use per area (but increasing area per unit), and a shorter replacement payback, like 20 years. Best bet is to squeeze all possible savings out of existing buildings.
b@12
Exactly correct. That was my point about “international”. Your characterization of the difference between German and US energy code application is spot on. Sad to say.

Posted by: Browning | Nov 5 2007 20:25 utc | 13

Hey, fellow Neo-Anderthals, have you tried to grow all your foodstuffs on an acre lately? Does anyone even OWN an acre anymore? Have you tried feeding your family by hunting-and-gathering and row-cropping (exclusively) lately? As long as we’re all addressing real issues, instead of geopolitical arm-chairing, see if you can find and read this: http://www.onsitewater.com/ow_0711_guest.html
“We have run some bacteriology tests on tertiary treated disinfected recycled Title
22 water and found multidrug-resistant bacteria (MSRA).”
Many US cities are in the process of applying recycled sewage water for irrigation and industrial use, effectively aerosoling MSRA across the endemic urban population. Many foods contain GMO components, including BHT gene segments which cause digestive and allergic immune deficiency, including auto-immune disorders. Australians may soon be forced to drink recycled sewage due to drought, and many 3W regions of the earth are almost completely lacking clean water, except during monsoons, where what passes for their ‘drinking water’ would kill a white man.
Americas creeks and rivers run tainted with herbicides, pesticides and antibiotics, so that teratogenic mutations are pandemic among multiple species, hermaphrodism, arm and leg vestiges, missing eyes, spine arched like a bow, even twin heads….
Why is there no collective resistance for change? Health care costs in some areas of the US are going up 20% per year. That’s doubling of costs every four years. Does anyone in the US truly believe they are going to be able to take care of their parents and their ailing spouse on private healthcare, without warehousing them to a kennel, dosing them with Franken-drugs then finally pre-maturely euthanizing them?
In rural Georgia, communities have created public food processing and preserving units where people can bring their farm produce in and preserve it for the winter. When we were farmers, we used to have autumn festivals where neighbors would trade supplies, a sack of beans for a sack of wheat, then have a hoe-down get-it-on. So why isn’t it possible for urban dwellers to create the same types of energy-, food- and water-conservation organizations, funded by the Fed government, as we see for the initiative for the threatened Ogallala reservoir? http://ogallala.tamu.edu/
Or food recycling: http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/FoodWaste/Compost/SpEvents.htm and even
recycling for the hell of it: http://www.usefulwork.com/shark/archives/001386.html
On the other hand, there is capitalist investment initiative to capture the energy available as methane from public landfills, then sell it back to US for a profit.
What’s wrong with US/UK/EU?! Are urban dwellers just f–ked? On the other hand, you can see oily waste lagoons left from Alberta Tar Sands strip mining from space now, and ethanol, biodiesel and synoil (tar sands) all have negative conversions, when all energy processes are considered (e.g. without tax incentives), so what’s up with that huge Neo-Petroleum Con, except a buyout to the BigAgra and BioPharm lobbies?
Maybe it’s not urban versus rural, but **communitas** versus **hyper-capitalism**, where profit extracted from commodity-trapped consumer prisoners is Neo-Zi’s most desirable strategy. Maybe the reason political candidates all seem like such morons is because they’re preaching to urban dwellers who retreated to their cyber-caves, furtively venturing out like field mice only to “gas up”, and to visit “the store”.
Our Mr Toad Wild Ride fast becoming Island of Dr. Moreau, are we not men?!

Posted by: Peter Callander | Nov 6 2007 5:04 utc | 15

Following roasting or grilling outside by jlcd, my *pet peeve* is chopsticks…
The Chinese use 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, which adds up to 1.7 million cubic metres of timber or 25 million full-grown trees, which means badly depleted forests. China is the world’s largest maker of disposable chopsticks, with more than 300 plants employing about 60,000 workers. Since the start of the decade, the country has exported nearly 165,000 tonnes of chopsticks, with 15 billion pairs finding their way to dinner tables in Japan and South Korea. (Goes on to discuss a tax on chopsticks.)
greenpeace
Add the pop. of say China, Japan, Korea – just them- forget other countries and export, multiply by 4/8 grams (one pair), 2 x day…. my mind is boggled.
Humans tend to consider that anything small, in their hands – is tiny and insignificant, it is part of life, natural, normal, not to be questioned, part of the ‘culture’…just as Soccer Moms feel it is fine to fill up the Suv.

Posted by: Tangerine | Nov 6 2007 15:10 utc | 17