Tag: energy efficiency

Sustainable Energy NZ #12 – do Kiwis have to be flightless?

Welcome to the twelfth post in the Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air – A New Zealand Perspective series. We’ll be changing gears here from our previous posts on hydro power, geothermal and wind (and a summary on the big three), solar, biofuels, marine and waste energy. From here on out we’ll be attempting to answer the question:

How can we achieve a BIG reduction in our personal and national energy consumption?

It’s a very important topic – and one prone to greenwashing and hype. Like McKay, we want to have informed discussion about the options available to us here in NZ, so we’ll be going through topic by topic and looking at energy use in each sector of our lives: transport, residential energy, the things we buy, and so on. We hope that you find it interesting and informative.

A few notes before we begin: as before, the units are in kWh/day/person – ie. if you ran a 40W lightbulb for 24 hours, it’d take ~1 kWh over the space of a day. We then divide it by person to give you a sense of the scale of the resource proportionate to the size of the population. Be sure to check out the methodology. For reference – we’re looking to replace around 55 kWh/d/p of energy currently generated by fossil fuels.

Planes

The 2.6kWh/d/p spend on aviation fuel, from the Energy Data File, is a very poor indicator of what New Zealanders actually spend on planes, because of airline fuelling regimes. For example, the return flight from London is included in the UK statistics. Data from the UN [o96d7t] and the International Civil Aviation Authority [8cc3859] gives an estimate of NZ passenger kilometres in 2004.  Dividing by 2004 population converts to 18kWh/d/p using MacKay’s estimate for fuel use. This includes energy spent overseas, and is a better indicator of New Zealanders’ actual energy use on air travel.

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Sustainable Energy NZ #11: How can we make road transport more efficient?

Welcome to the eleventh post in the Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air – A New Zealand Perspective series. After our previous posts on hydro power, geothermal and wind (and a summary on the big three), solar, biofuels, marine and waste energy, we’re now looking at answering the question:

How can we achieve a BIG reduction in our personal and national energy consumption?

We covered the breakdown of where we use this energy in the last post. Today we’re dealing with our biggest chunk of energy use: road transport.

A few notes before we begin: as before, the units are in kWh/day/person – ie. if you ran a 40W lightbulb for 24 hours, it’d take ~1 kWh over the space of a day. We then divide it by person to give you a sense of the scale of the resource proportionate to the size of the population. Be sure to check out the methodology. For reference – we’ve been looking to replace around 55 kWh/d/p of energy currently generated by fossil fuels.

Cars

About a third (31kWh/d/p) of our total energy use is spent on vehicle travel, which is high by international standards. (This figure also includes some diesel purchases by small farmers and transport operators that are not adequately captured by other statistics.) Incidentally, one litre of petrol contains ~10kWh of energy, so at a national scale, we’re all using around 3 litres of petrol/person/day. By comparison, the average UK citizen spends 14 – 16kWh/d/p on personal vehicle travel.  Consider that the average NZ car drives 18,000km in a year. If all were medium SUVs (0.9kWh/km) with 2 people in them, then this would translate into only 22kWh/d/p. It is clear then that we must make a lot of single-passenger trips in inefficient vehicles. Worse, this works out at a staggering 46kWh/d per vehicle (excluding mopeds, but including trucks)!

Continue reading “Sustainable Energy NZ #11: How can we make road transport more efficient?”

Sustainable Energy NZ #10 – How can we achieve a big reduction in our personal and national energy consumption?

Welcome to the tenth post in the Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air – A New Zealand Perspective series. We’ll be changing gears here from our previous posts on hydro power, geothermal and wind (and a summary on the big three), solar, biofuels, marine and waste energy. From here on out we’ll be attempting to answer the question:

How can we achieve a BIG reduction in our personal and national energy consumption?

It’s a very important topic – and one prone to greenwashing and hype. Like McKay, we want to have informed discussion about the options available to us here in NZ, so we’ll be going through topic by topic and looking at energy use in each sector of our lives: transport, residential energy, the things we buy, and so on. We hope that you find it interesting and informative.

Continue reading “Sustainable Energy NZ #10 – How can we achieve a big reduction in our personal and national energy consumption?”

Low hanging fruit and lost opportunity

I hope the New Zealand Government feels shamed by the news that incandescent light bulbs can no longer be sold in Europe. It could have been so here but following the 2008 election, proclaiming the sanctity of consumer choice, one of the early actions of the then Minister of Energy Gerry Brownlee was to reverse the Labour Government’s decision to phase out incandescent light bulbs. Almost equally dismaying was the statement by the Leader of the Opposition Phil Goff in 2009 that the Labour Government decision was a mistake in the first place. “We’d stopped listening to what people’s priorities were,” he said.

It’s hard to make any sense of the reversal of former Government policy on incandescents other than in the most cynical of political terms. It is in direct contradiction to any concern they express to tackle climate change. Lighting has been estimated to use nearly 20% of the world’s electricity and six years ago the International Energy Agency produced a report which concluded that a global switch to efficient lighting systems would trim the world’s electricity bill by nearly one-tenth. It is a low-hanging fruit in the reduction of carbon emissions. Even the US is to phase out incandescents.

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To boldly go… to a low carbon future

I liked the sub-heading to a Guardian article on Friday. “The theory that cutting carbon emissions costs us growth is bunk, in fact, it’s an economic opportunity.” The article itself is a little less exuberant in its expression, understandably given that one of its authors, Vinod Thomas (pictured), is director general for independent evaluation at the Asian Development Bank and the other, Manish Bapna, is interim president at the World Resources Institute, a well-established and respected global environmental think tank. Nevertheless its affirmation is clear:

“Not only can preparing for climate change offer opportunities for economic growth, it would be unwise to pursue one without the other.”

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