Remember how pleased I was when our old electric hot water system died last year? Well I have more wonderful news to share: the fridge, which at 2kWh/day accounts for almost a quarter of all energy used in our home, has also reached the end of the line. Hooray!
Its ability to actually cool things, let alone freeze them, has been deteriorating over time. I recently replaced the seal on the freezer to stop a quite noticeable cold air leak but it really made no difference. The appliance wizard (that's what he called himself) only took a couple of minutes to diagnose a failing compressor.
Decision time. Replacing the compressor would make it cold again, but cost about half of what we paid for the fridge a decade ago. It wouldn't improve the energy-efficiency of the design. It wouldn't fix the broken shelf mount or the cracked door hinge. And it wouldn't give us the extra freezer space Michelle desperately wanted. Maybe it's time for a replacement.
Had heard great things about the efficiency of chest freezers. Actually, the really interesting idea involves converting chest freezers to chest fridges. Good insulation and a lid that opens on the top instead of the side makes for minimal loss of "coolth". However, there's no way a chest fridge was going to be acceptable in our kitchen - space issues, access issues, etc - but maybe we could use a chest freezer in the laundry.
Had also seen a standalone fridge (no freezer compartment) at a school, with an energy star rating that quite impressed me. Maybe one of those for the kitchen. Time to do some research.
The most efficient chest freezers on the Aussie market, according to the official figures, are Denmark-made Vestfrost units - the same brand modified to be a fridge in the earlier link. They have one model which is about the size Michelle would like, 250L, that's rated at a quite frugal 237kWh/year. Would have been a candidate if they weren't so physically large and surprisingly expensive. And imported from the other side of the planet.
Mid-sized efficient freezer options beyond that are surprisingly limited. We quickly narrowed it down to two: a 160L Fisher & Paykel chest rated at 307kWh/year, or a 180L Westinghouse upright freezer rated at 297kWh/year. Westinghouse looks better for us other than being imported from China. So what about the fridge?
Given our simple criteria, there was no contest. Absolutely hands-down, the winner is a brand-new model from Electrolux. A 400L upright single-door fridge that uses just 250kWh/year and it's made here in Australia. This product has the highest energy efficiency score of all 3000 refrigeration units in the database, bar none (it'd score 8 stars, but the ratings only go to six). Price is middle-of-the-range: more than the Asian products and less than the European.
So that was the plan. The Electrolux fridge and the Westinghouse freezer. Combined rated total of 547kWh/year, which is just a smidge under 1.5kWh/day.
Er, hang on. I'm going to spend a couple thousand dollars on the most energy-efficient appliances I can find and still only cut my power consumption by 25%? Admittedly I'd have room for a bit more ice cream... but... only 25%? There's gotta be a better option.
Turns out there is, if I can live with just a single six-pack in the fridge at any one time. Another member of the new Electrolux range is a fairly conventional-looking bottom-mount fridge/freezer. 359L fridge space, 156 in the freezer (more than our old one), and a rated energy use of 428kWh/year. That's good enough for a five-star badge, and it's made right here down under.
So I saved myself a few hundred bucks and improved my energy reduction from 25% to over 40% (based on rated consumption of the new fridge vs actual consumption of the one I had). The fridge was delivered today. Now all I have to do is convince Michelle that going from 120L to 156L really is a significant improvement in freezer capacity and we didn't really need a separate freezer anyway.
Yeah. Wish me luck.
Showing posts with label localisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label localisation. Show all posts
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Thursday, 13 March 2008
Discuss: growing food in cities, and using the internet to learn how
During the course of my work this week I had reason to visit a school in north-eastern New South Wales. That region has a reputation for attracting and fostering people with "alternative" views and values, particularly in regard to environmental protection and sustainable living. So it was that one of the teachers, knowing beforehand that I publish this blog, introduced me to a student who has a keen interest in permaculture and who is also active in a group centred around the Transition Towns concept (see link in my "highly recommended" sidebar).
Now, not that this blog has a huge world-wide audience or anything, I would like to give that student the opportunity to remain anonymous but at the same time see if I can't get a bit of discussion going here around a couple of the ideas that have come to mind as a result of our meeting.
I put that TT link over there ages ago and haven't looked at their site in months. I think they're clearly world leaders, forging a path to the future. What I'm not so sure about is how to make that path into a highway wide enough to take the cities along with the towns. I should revisit their site and see if there's been any progress on that subject.
One of the obvious things (to me) is that people in cities will need to grow food for themselves and their immediate community. More than that, they'll need to do so sustainably, recycling nutrients in efficient closed loops and doing it all with an absolute minimum of external energy inputs. In other words we need permaculture cities. Unfortunately the vast majority of city dwellers know nothing about growing anything.
Take me as an example: I have a borrowed copy of the 2nd edition of "Introduction to Permaculture" and recently bought the Digger's Club's "Australian Fruit & Vegetable Garden". I've been experimenting in the back yard for the past year or so, but so far have very little to show (or eat) as a result.
So, you thus-far anonymous student, if you're looking for school project ideas that combine IT with permaculture, you might consider starting an online library of training/instructional podcasts or other resources to help city folk like me with no horticultural knowledge transform our backyards and balconies into productive, sustainable food gardens. Seriously - was there ever a period in history prior to the present day where an entire generation of a civilisation had no idea how to grow their own food? We need that knowledge back again, and the internet provides a platform unlike anything else in human history for the distribution of knowledge.
The internet might well be our best defence against falling into another dark age as oil production falls. We stand to lose a great deal of our personal mobility. It just won't be feasible for people like me to travel hundreds of kilometers in a single day just to provide some brief specialist service. But if we can maintain and build on our communications infrastructure and the library of publicly-accessible knowledge then the physical isolation won't necessarily be a barrier to skills and ideas.
What I would like to do now is to invite you all to hit the comments and have a bit of a discussion about those two ideas and their intersection. Will city people need to grow their own food in the future? Can the internet be used effectively to deliver training in the essential garden skills and design principles? If you're a city person, what kind of online resources do you think would help you? If you're a gardening guru, how could you best capture and share what you have learned?
Now, not that this blog has a huge world-wide audience or anything, I would like to give that student the opportunity to remain anonymous but at the same time see if I can't get a bit of discussion going here around a couple of the ideas that have come to mind as a result of our meeting.
I put that TT link over there ages ago and haven't looked at their site in months. I think they're clearly world leaders, forging a path to the future. What I'm not so sure about is how to make that path into a highway wide enough to take the cities along with the towns. I should revisit their site and see if there's been any progress on that subject.
One of the obvious things (to me) is that people in cities will need to grow food for themselves and their immediate community. More than that, they'll need to do so sustainably, recycling nutrients in efficient closed loops and doing it all with an absolute minimum of external energy inputs. In other words we need permaculture cities. Unfortunately the vast majority of city dwellers know nothing about growing anything.
Take me as an example: I have a borrowed copy of the 2nd edition of "Introduction to Permaculture" and recently bought the Digger's Club's "Australian Fruit & Vegetable Garden". I've been experimenting in the back yard for the past year or so, but so far have very little to show (or eat) as a result.
So, you thus-far anonymous student, if you're looking for school project ideas that combine IT with permaculture, you might consider starting an online library of training/instructional podcasts or other resources to help city folk like me with no horticultural knowledge transform our backyards and balconies into productive, sustainable food gardens. Seriously - was there ever a period in history prior to the present day where an entire generation of a civilisation had no idea how to grow their own food? We need that knowledge back again, and the internet provides a platform unlike anything else in human history for the distribution of knowledge.
The internet might well be our best defence against falling into another dark age as oil production falls. We stand to lose a great deal of our personal mobility. It just won't be feasible for people like me to travel hundreds of kilometers in a single day just to provide some brief specialist service. But if we can maintain and build on our communications infrastructure and the library of publicly-accessible knowledge then the physical isolation won't necessarily be a barrier to skills and ideas.
What I would like to do now is to invite you all to hit the comments and have a bit of a discussion about those two ideas and their intersection. Will city people need to grow their own food in the future? Can the internet be used effectively to deliver training in the essential garden skills and design principles? If you're a city person, what kind of online resources do you think would help you? If you're a gardening guru, how could you best capture and share what you have learned?
Wednesday, 15 August 2007
Action stations!
Mr S sent me a link to the Big Switch campaign website the other day. It's an initiative of Greenpeace with support from quite a number of conservation groups and a couple of business organisations. It aims to promote grass-roots community action on climate change and use that as leverage to pressure individual federal politicians into ratifying Kyoto, committing to significant emissions reductions by 2020, committing to significant renewable energy production by 2020 and establishing a national emissions trading scheme.
I gave it some thought and decided to participate. My details are registered and I've sent an email to my local member of parliament. But I was most interested in the community group aspect of the campaign.
My electorate (called "Petrie" even though it does not include the actual suburb of the same name) is bizarrely-shaped with the northern and southern halves having almost nothing to do with each other. Through the Big Switch site I discovered that there's a Redcliffe Climate Action Group but I have no intention of driving all the way up there to be part of it.
Thankfully there's another group based in the adjacent electorate of Lilley, going by the (possibly temporary) name of the Brisbane North Climate Action Group. This looked like a much better fit.
So Mr S and I went along - car pooling - to a meeting of the BNCAG this evening. What a fascinating bunch of people they (we) are. A dozen in total, a handful of whom started getting together about two months ago. Highly informal, friendly, and motivated to actually do something about reducing our community's impact on the Earth, and in particular on the climate.
It's very early days. Almost embryonic, you might say. But I'm hoping that this might be the opportunity I've been looking for to get involved and make a meaningful contribution to the future of civilisation.
Next meeting in a fortnight. I'll keep you posted.
I gave it some thought and decided to participate. My details are registered and I've sent an email to my local member of parliament. But I was most interested in the community group aspect of the campaign.
My electorate (called "Petrie" even though it does not include the actual suburb of the same name) is bizarrely-shaped with the northern and southern halves having almost nothing to do with each other. Through the Big Switch site I discovered that there's a Redcliffe Climate Action Group but I have no intention of driving all the way up there to be part of it.
Thankfully there's another group based in the adjacent electorate of Lilley, going by the (possibly temporary) name of the Brisbane North Climate Action Group. This looked like a much better fit.
So Mr S and I went along - car pooling - to a meeting of the BNCAG this evening. What a fascinating bunch of people they (we) are. A dozen in total, a handful of whom started getting together about two months ago. Highly informal, friendly, and motivated to actually do something about reducing our community's impact on the Earth, and in particular on the climate.
It's very early days. Almost embryonic, you might say. But I'm hoping that this might be the opportunity I've been looking for to get involved and make a meaningful contribution to the future of civilisation.
Next meeting in a fortnight. I'll keep you posted.
Sunday, 22 July 2007
I have worms
Funny thing: you buy a "Can-O-Worms" but the worms are sold separately. But anyway, as of yesterday I have one of the first and around a thousand of the second, and a hundred and ten fewer dollars in my bank account. That's eleven cents per worm.
The worm farm itself deserves a bit of a plug, I think. For starters it appears to be a really good design. It has legs, a fluid collection base with tap, three "working trays" and a lid. The theory is that when the top tray gets full the bottom tray will contain heaps of fertiliser and very few worms so you just empty the bottom one and then place it at the top. As you add food to the top the worms come up through the holes and begin creating more fertiliser there. Round and round it goes.
It is made of plastic, but it's made of 100% post-consumer recycled plastic. As with my decision to use concrete blocks as part of the base for my water tanks, I think it's an appropriate use of materials. It's hard to imagine something like this being made from anything other than plastic or metal - of which plastic seems like the less wasteful choice. We do have an enormous amount of existing plastic which would otherwise be headed for a landfill. And unlike many other plastic products this one's designed to perform a valuable function over a long period of time.
Moreover, it's made in Australia and there's very little packaging to be "disposed of" after the purchase. You can check out the model I bought here.
Worms are sold separately, as I mentioned. I grabbed a box of a thousand from the shelf right next to the Can-O-Worms. Good thing, too - it turns out that a thousand worms is the minimum recommended number for starting a worm farm. The worms aren't loose in the box, they're buried in a lump of moist, compost-y black stuff which you just place as-is into the worm farm. Once they've eaten through all the tasty parts of that they will, I understand, squirm up through the holes into the next tray in search of the food scraps I've laid out for them.
For the time being they seem content to stay in the bottom tray in their black stuff. Just to prove I'm not making all this up, here's a pic I snapped late this afternoon.
The worm farm itself deserves a bit of a plug, I think. For starters it appears to be a really good design. It has legs, a fluid collection base with tap, three "working trays" and a lid. The theory is that when the top tray gets full the bottom tray will contain heaps of fertiliser and very few worms so you just empty the bottom one and then place it at the top. As you add food to the top the worms come up through the holes and begin creating more fertiliser there. Round and round it goes.
It is made of plastic, but it's made of 100% post-consumer recycled plastic. As with my decision to use concrete blocks as part of the base for my water tanks, I think it's an appropriate use of materials. It's hard to imagine something like this being made from anything other than plastic or metal - of which plastic seems like the less wasteful choice. We do have an enormous amount of existing plastic which would otherwise be headed for a landfill. And unlike many other plastic products this one's designed to perform a valuable function over a long period of time.
Moreover, it's made in Australia and there's very little packaging to be "disposed of" after the purchase. You can check out the model I bought here.
Worms are sold separately, as I mentioned. I grabbed a box of a thousand from the shelf right next to the Can-O-Worms. Good thing, too - it turns out that a thousand worms is the minimum recommended number for starting a worm farm. The worms aren't loose in the box, they're buried in a lump of moist, compost-y black stuff which you just place as-is into the worm farm. Once they've eaten through all the tasty parts of that they will, I understand, squirm up through the holes into the next tray in search of the food scraps I've laid out for them.
For the time being they seem content to stay in the bottom tray in their black stuff. Just to prove I'm not making all this up, here's a pic I snapped late this afternoon.
Wednesday, 18 July 2007
Vaguely like eBay, but free!
I love it when I have an idea and then discover it's already a reality. Not only does it mean the idea was probably a decent one, but it means I can enjoy it without having to put in the effort of making it happen.
Case in point: Freecycle.
This kind of voluntary community-based recycling via the internet is something I've been idly thinking about over the past couple of weeks. There's a group with 300+ members based in Strathpine (the suburb immediately to the west of where I live) so I've just sent an email off to join up. Hopefully I'll be able to reduce some of the clutter around my place by simply finding better homes for things, and avoid creating "waste" in the process.
Case in point: Freecycle.
"The Freecycle Network™ is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns... When you want to find a new home for something -- whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door -- you simply send an e-mail offering it to members of the local Freecycle group. Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself. Simply respond to a member's offer, and you just might get it."
This kind of voluntary community-based recycling via the internet is something I've been idly thinking about over the past couple of weeks. There's a group with 300+ members based in Strathpine (the suburb immediately to the west of where I live) so I've just sent an email off to join up. Hopefully I'll be able to reduce some of the clutter around my place by simply finding better homes for things, and avoid creating "waste" in the process.
Thursday, 21 June 2007
Urban multistorey greenhouses: the future of farming?
Here's a neat bit of visionary thinking for you. The BBC reports on a concept for large-scale food production right in the middle of densely urban areas. Like Manhattan. Or Sydney. Or even Brisbane.
For those not inclined to follow the link, the essential idea is to build a high-rise greenhouse and make it as efficient as possible: capturing solar energy on the roof, reclaiming more energy by burning "waste" material, recycling water throughout the complex and so on.
I'm puzzled about how they're going to provide sufficient light to all those plants to help them thrive. Maybe I'll find out on the project website... will let you know if I come across the answer there.
For those not inclined to follow the link, the essential idea is to build a high-rise greenhouse and make it as efficient as possible: capturing solar energy on the roof, reclaiming more energy by burning "waste" material, recycling water throughout the complex and so on.
I'm puzzled about how they're going to provide sufficient light to all those plants to help them thrive. Maybe I'll find out on the project website... will let you know if I come across the answer there.
Saturday, 2 June 2007
Notes from Caboolture Sustainable Living Fair
Well that was interesting. CREEC wasn't hard to find, and I was pleased to see it's quite close to the Burpengary train station. I might find myself heading that way for a bike/train outing every now and then to participate in some of their events. It was about 22km from my place by car.
I went along to this fair with a few priorities in mind:
1. Find out more about growing food in the back yard and/or community gardens
2. Ask about distribution schemes for locally-grown produce
3. Try to make contact with people who live nearby and are focused on sustainable living
4. Maybe clarify the Greens' position on alternative nuclear energy technologies (there are some which don't produce waste that lasts for thousands of years and are almost useless for making weapons... but you don't hear about them much)
Amazingly enough, I scored four out of four.
I met some very nice and enthusiastic people from Permaculture Caboolture (not sure whether they're technically a club, society or what) who have heaps of information to share about growing food and who know heaps of other people to link up with to promote food gardening at home or in community gardens or in school programs. I'll be following up on a number of the suggestions I received and will be sure to note them here online.
There's apparently a meeting somewhere in Brisbane this coming week regarding a program which teaches organic gardening and food preparation to primary school children as part of their routine curriculum. Will make an effort to get along and check that out.
Regarding local food distribution, there's an organic farm at Beerwah which sells "subscriptions": each week you give them $60 and they give you a big box of assorted veges. The Permaculture Caboolture people are hoping to start a monthly organic farmers market at CREEC starting on the 14th July. And another bloke is talking about establishing a community garden program at Petrie, which would also link up with the regular markets which are held out that way.
And I did enjoy a chat with a guy on the Australian Greens stand about the theoretical possibility of safe, clean nuclear energy production using technologies which are quite unlike the uranium fuel cycle that everybody associates with the term "nuclear". I was very pleased with the open-minded and sensible reaction - he'd even heard of thorium before I mentioned it.
A few other quick observations to wrap up:
I went along to this fair with a few priorities in mind:
1. Find out more about growing food in the back yard and/or community gardens
2. Ask about distribution schemes for locally-grown produce
3. Try to make contact with people who live nearby and are focused on sustainable living
4. Maybe clarify the Greens' position on alternative nuclear energy technologies (there are some which don't produce waste that lasts for thousands of years and are almost useless for making weapons... but you don't hear about them much)
Amazingly enough, I scored four out of four.
I met some very nice and enthusiastic people from Permaculture Caboolture (not sure whether they're technically a club, society or what) who have heaps of information to share about growing food and who know heaps of other people to link up with to promote food gardening at home or in community gardens or in school programs. I'll be following up on a number of the suggestions I received and will be sure to note them here online.
There's apparently a meeting somewhere in Brisbane this coming week regarding a program which teaches organic gardening and food preparation to primary school children as part of their routine curriculum. Will make an effort to get along and check that out.
Regarding local food distribution, there's an organic farm at Beerwah which sells "subscriptions": each week you give them $60 and they give you a big box of assorted veges. The Permaculture Caboolture people are hoping to start a monthly organic farmers market at CREEC starting on the 14th July. And another bloke is talking about establishing a community garden program at Petrie, which would also link up with the regular markets which are held out that way.
And I did enjoy a chat with a guy on the Australian Greens stand about the theoretical possibility of safe, clean nuclear energy production using technologies which are quite unlike the uranium fuel cycle that everybody associates with the term "nuclear". I was very pleased with the open-minded and sensible reaction - he'd even heard of thorium before I mentioned it.
A few other quick observations to wrap up:
- A lot of paper brochures being given away - how ironic.
- Good representation from Caboolture Shire Council, but with an unsurprising emphasis on economic considerations and "waste management" as opposed to true sustainability.
- I was surprised to see fast food and pre-packaged drinks on sale. (Thumbs up to the organic sausage sizzle though for good taste and the single paper napkin.)
- Local businessman pushing a carbon sink program: $40 for 17 trees, 100 year expected lifespan. It's probably a good thing.
- Greens guy reckons that ethanol being produced for fuel in Qld is derived from the waste material left over from sugar production as opposed to the sugarcane juice itself. I need to do some more research: that might tip the overall energy balance in favour of that particular scheme... but you can bet your Porsche that it's not scalable to the point where it replaces even a small fraction of the state's fuel requirements.
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
0.31kW and steady as she goes
I knew when I started this eco-trip that it would be important to find other people in my local community who shared similar concerns and were responding in similar ways. Ideally some of them would be old hands at it with plenty of wisdom to share.
So I was very pleased to discover that one of the other dads from my daughter's school is also keen on sustainable living, and he's a fair way further down the track than I am. He's also a nice guy. Since I haven't spoken with him about my blogging habit I'm going to just refer to him as "Mr S" for now.
Mr S had mentioned a gadget which measures your instantaneous electrical consumption and transmits the data wirelessly to a battery-powered LCD display screen. I looked it up on Google and emailed one of the suggested retailers to request a price. No reply came.
Then Mrs S mentioned that Mr S was a qualified electrician, so yesterday I gave Mr S a call to see if he knew the price of these things. He did - but better than that he offered to loan me his for a while so I could track down the energy-guzzlers that have taken up residence at my place.
This afternoon he came over and spent a few minutes hooking up the transmitter. The initial figures (including the fridge, my cable modem and network gear, my server, a few power transformers around the house and a digital clock) came in at just over 300W.
Those are the things which run 24 hours a day, and at that rate they'd account for 7.2kWh of energy - a sizeable chunk of the 8.3kWh we've averaged each day for the past two weeks. The extra 1.1kWh would have to cover all our lighting, cooking, dishwasher and washing machine... which sounds a bit low to me. Might be some room for calibration.
Even so, it immediately suggests some areas where I could reduce my consumption. For starters: I really have no need keep a server running here at home. I've embarked on a small project to host my email somewhere else so that I can shut the server down permanently and switch off the networking gear at night when I'm not using it.
The fridge is a big challenge... not sure what to think about that one.
For now, huge thanks to Mr S. I hear good things about his vege garden too. That might be the inspiration for another post sometime.
So I was very pleased to discover that one of the other dads from my daughter's school is also keen on sustainable living, and he's a fair way further down the track than I am. He's also a nice guy. Since I haven't spoken with him about my blogging habit I'm going to just refer to him as "Mr S" for now.
Mr S had mentioned a gadget which measures your instantaneous electrical consumption and transmits the data wirelessly to a battery-powered LCD display screen. I looked it up on Google and emailed one of the suggested retailers to request a price. No reply came.
Then Mrs S mentioned that Mr S was a qualified electrician, so yesterday I gave Mr S a call to see if he knew the price of these things. He did - but better than that he offered to loan me his for a while so I could track down the energy-guzzlers that have taken up residence at my place.
This afternoon he came over and spent a few minutes hooking up the transmitter. The initial figures (including the fridge, my cable modem and network gear, my server, a few power transformers around the house and a digital clock) came in at just over 300W.
Those are the things which run 24 hours a day, and at that rate they'd account for 7.2kWh of energy - a sizeable chunk of the 8.3kWh we've averaged each day for the past two weeks. The extra 1.1kWh would have to cover all our lighting, cooking, dishwasher and washing machine... which sounds a bit low to me. Might be some room for calibration.
Even so, it immediately suggests some areas where I could reduce my consumption. For starters: I really have no need keep a server running here at home. I've embarked on a small project to host my email somewhere else so that I can shut the server down permanently and switch off the networking gear at night when I'm not using it.
The fridge is a big challenge... not sure what to think about that one.
For now, huge thanks to Mr S. I hear good things about his vege garden too. That might be the inspiration for another post sometime.
Sunday, 13 May 2007
I want a divorce - from my car
Early in the piece I laid out some concerns related to peak oil. Last weekend I expanded a bit on that and introduced the concept of localisation as an inevitable consequence of there being less fuel available for transport. More recently I've said some unkind things about biofuels in general and ethanol in particular. I finished with, "by far the most important thing to do right now is to simply use less fuel."
Alright, so I can talk the talk. But can I walk the walk? Well, I have a confession to make. And a real problem to sort out.
A bit over a year ago - well before sustainability concerns became part of my regular waking consciousness - I got a new car. My professional life requires a fair bit of travel and my employment package includes a vehicle allowance. I loathe log keeping and administration so I entered into a three year novated lease under which all of my vehicle expenses are automatically recorded and accounted for in a tax-effective manner.
That's all well and good, but now the sustainability issue has slammed me with a one-two punch. First, I chose a large six-cylinder car; and second, I'm obliged to travel at least 25,000 kilometers each year in it to avoid significant tax penalties. At an average fuel consumption of around 12 litres per 100km that's at least three thousand litres of fuel each year.
Remember that this is not just about greenhouse gas emissions, for which I could (and probably should) try to compensate through tree planting and other schemes. No, this is about the extravagant waste of a precious, irreplaceable and diminishing resource: oil itself. There were plenty of reasons at the time why this particular car seemed like a good choice but now, despite it being very well made and a pleasure to drive, I'm wishing I'd picked something a lot more fuel-efficient.
I'm going to look into my options for terminating the lease and work out whether I can afford to do so. I can't stop driving altogether (yet!) but I would feel much happier if I could replace this big car with a small motorbike or maybe a scooter. However, Michelle is terrified of me being smeared all over the road by a larger vehicle and so that may not be an option for the near future. That would leave me looking at a very small car or maybe a petrol-electric hybrid.
The big challenge - for every one of us - is to figure out how to live and work in a technologically advanced but transport-constrained society. And if peak oil is actually upon us then we need to start doing that right now just to prevent an enormous gap opening up between supply and demand which would result in spiralling prices and crippling fuel shortages.
--
"Yeah, I know we've had some great times together and you know I think you're great, and stylish and everything. It's just... I feel that you need more than I can afford to give. It's like we're not really compatible, not meant to be together, you know? So I uh, I really think that I need to spend some time with other vehicles. I'm really sorry. I... I want a divorce."
Alright, so I can talk the talk. But can I walk the walk? Well, I have a confession to make. And a real problem to sort out.
A bit over a year ago - well before sustainability concerns became part of my regular waking consciousness - I got a new car. My professional life requires a fair bit of travel and my employment package includes a vehicle allowance. I loathe log keeping and administration so I entered into a three year novated lease under which all of my vehicle expenses are automatically recorded and accounted for in a tax-effective manner.
That's all well and good, but now the sustainability issue has slammed me with a one-two punch. First, I chose a large six-cylinder car; and second, I'm obliged to travel at least 25,000 kilometers each year in it to avoid significant tax penalties. At an average fuel consumption of around 12 litres per 100km that's at least three thousand litres of fuel each year.
Remember that this is not just about greenhouse gas emissions, for which I could (and probably should) try to compensate through tree planting and other schemes. No, this is about the extravagant waste of a precious, irreplaceable and diminishing resource: oil itself. There were plenty of reasons at the time why this particular car seemed like a good choice but now, despite it being very well made and a pleasure to drive, I'm wishing I'd picked something a lot more fuel-efficient.
I'm going to look into my options for terminating the lease and work out whether I can afford to do so. I can't stop driving altogether (yet!) but I would feel much happier if I could replace this big car with a small motorbike or maybe a scooter. However, Michelle is terrified of me being smeared all over the road by a larger vehicle and so that may not be an option for the near future. That would leave me looking at a very small car or maybe a petrol-electric hybrid.
The big challenge - for every one of us - is to figure out how to live and work in a technologically advanced but transport-constrained society. And if peak oil is actually upon us then we need to start doing that right now just to prevent an enormous gap opening up between supply and demand which would result in spiralling prices and crippling fuel shortages.
--
"Yeah, I know we've had some great times together and you know I think you're great, and stylish and everything. It's just... I feel that you need more than I can afford to give. It's like we're not really compatible, not meant to be together, you know? So I uh, I really think that I need to spend some time with other vehicles. I'm really sorry. I... I want a divorce."
Saturday, 12 May 2007
What do you want for dinner?
A simple question. It's been directed at me probably a couple of thousand times. That we can actually have trouble making a selection from the many choices on offer is a sign of how incredibly rich our lives are in comparison to the vast majority of human experience, in the past and the present day. I pray I'm never faced with my children asking, "Is there any food to eat tonight?"
Of course there's an abundance of food available to me this evening. But my choice is becoming even more difficult when I start to consider sustainability.
What do I want?
Something tasty and nutritious of course, and relatively easy to prepare in the next three hours or so. It should ideally be made from locally-grown ingredients which were produced using a minimum of irrigation and of fossil fuel input for fertilisers, pesticides, farm machinery fuel and electrical generation for processing. Packaging - such as plastic wraps - should be avoided. Vegetables are preferable to meat. Poultry is better than beef, lamb or pork. And the meal preparation itself needs to use a minimum of energy for cooking.
I'm taking early steps towards growing some veges in the back yard and a chook pen isn't out of the question. But tonight... I'd better go check out what's in the freezer.
Of course there's an abundance of food available to me this evening. But my choice is becoming even more difficult when I start to consider sustainability.
What do I want?
Something tasty and nutritious of course, and relatively easy to prepare in the next three hours or so. It should ideally be made from locally-grown ingredients which were produced using a minimum of irrigation and of fossil fuel input for fertilisers, pesticides, farm machinery fuel and electrical generation for processing. Packaging - such as plastic wraps - should be avoided. Vegetables are preferable to meat. Poultry is better than beef, lamb or pork. And the meal preparation itself needs to use a minimum of energy for cooking.
I'm taking early steps towards growing some veges in the back yard and a chook pen isn't out of the question. But tonight... I'd better go check out what's in the freezer.
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
Caboolture Sustainable Living Fair: 2nd June
I just found out about an annual sustainable living fair which is held at Burpengary, just north of Brisbane. This year it's scheduled for Saturday the 2nd of June.
Haven't discussed it with Michelle yet but I'm going. (Thanks, hon, I appreciate the support!)
There are several solar energy firms listed as exhibitors so I'll be checking out all their info. The permaculture club sounds like a good group to ask about making some productive use of my "lawn". And along that theme of localisation, I'll hopefully be able to make contact with some other people from this area to share ideas and encouragement with.
Anybody want to join me? We could car pool or something, depending on whether my kids come along and how much time everybody wants to spend there.
Haven't discussed it with Michelle yet but I'm going. (Thanks, hon, I appreciate the support!)
There are several solar energy firms listed as exhibitors so I'll be checking out all their info. The permaculture club sounds like a good group to ask about making some productive use of my "lawn". And along that theme of localisation, I'll hopefully be able to make contact with some other people from this area to share ideas and encouragement with.
Anybody want to join me? We could car pool or something, depending on whether my kids come along and how much time everybody wants to spend there.
Monday, 7 May 2007
Visionary thoughts from the UK
I know I only just introduced Transition Culture last night, but the latest entry on that site is such a good, easy-reading summary of the ideas there that I can't resist plugging it again.
It's the transcript of an interview conducted with Rob Hopkins earlier this year and if you're at all interested in what I'm on about in this blog I urge you to check it out.
It's the transcript of an interview conducted with Rob Hopkins earlier this year and if you're at all interested in what I'm on about in this blog I urge you to check it out.
Sunday, 6 May 2007
When I was a kid, we had something called a "car"
For the average Aussie nothing on this blog so far would have been too surprising. I've talked about global warming due to CO2 emissions, the terrible drought we're suffering and some fairly obvious approaches to reducing electricity and water consumption. So far I'm pretty much in the mainstream.
But to live up to the title of this blog we're going to have to go quite a bit further. Time to get back onto the topic of oil, I think, and how utterly dependent we are on the energy it provides us for transportation.
To recap, there are two essential problems with our oil supply: our burning of it is a major contibuting factor to global warming, and we're burning it so fast it's probably not going to last more than another couple of decades anyway. What's more, there aren't yet any technologies which we can confidently say will be ready to step in to keep our vast fleet of vehicles moving as the oil wells dry up and/or global warming gets so serious we don't dare drive any more.
Stop for a moment, and try to imagine a world with only half as much fuel available for transport as we have today, and at twice the price. Imagine that every second airline flight was cancelled. Imagine that you could only drive your car to work every second day (or for two car families that one car had to be taken off the road). Imagine half of all road-based goods delivery being cut. Half of the bulk cargo ships permanently anchored.
It should be immediately obvious to you that any significant decrease in oil supply is going to have a huge impact on the civilisation we call "the developed world". And in stark contrast to the basic assumptions of economic growth, the availability of oil would continue to decrease quite rapidly.
Civilisation in 2050 will either be based on some revolutionary transportation technology... or it will have dramatically restructured in a kind of reverse-globalisation. Actually there's already an accepted term for this: "localisation".
This idea is going to feature pretty prominently on this blog in the future. I know there's already plenty to worry about with the warming and the drought, but I think this one's probably just as important and equally urgent.
Tonight I'm going to add permanent links over on the side to two other blogs. The first is Chris Rhodes' Energy Balance and it's become essential reading for me. It can be a bit technical/analytical at times but frankly that's the value of it: Chris manages to put actual numbers against things like the comparison of present oil consumption vs the amount of land required to grow the equivalent amount of corn etc for producing ethanol. He helps separate fantasy from reality. And he has a great grasp on the implications.
Please take a moment to at least skim some of Chris's posts - this link gives you about half a dozen of them which include reference to localisation.
The other blog I would like you to check out is also from the UK. There's a fascinating movement springing up over there in which small communities (mostly rural but there's also some city action) are quite deliberately adapting their local economies and infrastructure to become vastly less reliant on oil. They're operating under the moniker of "Transition Towns" and there's a blog called Transition Culture dedicated to documenting their experience and promoting the broader adoption of the idea.
Now none of us can say for sure what will happen in the next forty years. Maybe we'll develop the technology to permit us to continue something like our current society in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way. But that's a bloody short period of time. It seems smarter to me that we should look for wisdom in the culture of our pre-oil ancestors rather than gamble the future of everything on us actually pulling off a technological miracle.
For the time being, my vision of 2050 involves a lot less moving about of people and products. We'll still have the ability to travel... but as with so many other things we'll have learned to appreciate it more and will use it much more wisely.
But to live up to the title of this blog we're going to have to go quite a bit further. Time to get back onto the topic of oil, I think, and how utterly dependent we are on the energy it provides us for transportation.
To recap, there are two essential problems with our oil supply: our burning of it is a major contibuting factor to global warming, and we're burning it so fast it's probably not going to last more than another couple of decades anyway. What's more, there aren't yet any technologies which we can confidently say will be ready to step in to keep our vast fleet of vehicles moving as the oil wells dry up and/or global warming gets so serious we don't dare drive any more.
Stop for a moment, and try to imagine a world with only half as much fuel available for transport as we have today, and at twice the price. Imagine that every second airline flight was cancelled. Imagine that you could only drive your car to work every second day (or for two car families that one car had to be taken off the road). Imagine half of all road-based goods delivery being cut. Half of the bulk cargo ships permanently anchored.
It should be immediately obvious to you that any significant decrease in oil supply is going to have a huge impact on the civilisation we call "the developed world". And in stark contrast to the basic assumptions of economic growth, the availability of oil would continue to decrease quite rapidly.
Civilisation in 2050 will either be based on some revolutionary transportation technology... or it will have dramatically restructured in a kind of reverse-globalisation. Actually there's already an accepted term for this: "localisation".
This idea is going to feature pretty prominently on this blog in the future. I know there's already plenty to worry about with the warming and the drought, but I think this one's probably just as important and equally urgent.
Tonight I'm going to add permanent links over on the side to two other blogs. The first is Chris Rhodes' Energy Balance and it's become essential reading for me. It can be a bit technical/analytical at times but frankly that's the value of it: Chris manages to put actual numbers against things like the comparison of present oil consumption vs the amount of land required to grow the equivalent amount of corn etc for producing ethanol. He helps separate fantasy from reality. And he has a great grasp on the implications.
Please take a moment to at least skim some of Chris's posts - this link gives you about half a dozen of them which include reference to localisation.
The other blog I would like you to check out is also from the UK. There's a fascinating movement springing up over there in which small communities (mostly rural but there's also some city action) are quite deliberately adapting their local economies and infrastructure to become vastly less reliant on oil. They're operating under the moniker of "Transition Towns" and there's a blog called Transition Culture dedicated to documenting their experience and promoting the broader adoption of the idea.
Now none of us can say for sure what will happen in the next forty years. Maybe we'll develop the technology to permit us to continue something like our current society in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way. But that's a bloody short period of time. It seems smarter to me that we should look for wisdom in the culture of our pre-oil ancestors rather than gamble the future of everything on us actually pulling off a technological miracle.
For the time being, my vision of 2050 involves a lot less moving about of people and products. We'll still have the ability to travel... but as with so many other things we'll have learned to appreciate it more and will use it much more wisely.
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