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Energy use around the world is largely acknowledged to cause environmental degradation due to the sources and ways in which societies harness and use fossil fuels which pollute soil, water and air and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, contributing to anthropogenic climate change (Goldblatt et al 2005). One way to help reduce humans’ environmental footprint is to assess our individual energy consumption and attempt to reduce this.
An individual’s energy use can
be analyzed by dividing activities into different sectors: transport, household
and consumption of goods (Goldblatt et al 2005). To assess my own consumption,
I will be examining an average year’s worth of activities from a Canadian
perspective, as that is where I have spent my last few years. I will also
critique the basic energy analyses that are available and discuss the hidden
energy costs endemic to developed countries.
I propose that while I am an
environmentally aware person, I register as an average Canadian energy user for
general household electricity use; heating, lighting and appliances (Statistics
Canada 2010). As well, environmental awareness seems to have little impact on
energy consumption reduction, either due to societal inability to alter change
or personal reluctance to mitigate consumption behaviour (Gatersleben and Vlek
1998)..
My average yearly energy consumption
is likely close to the Canadian average of approximately 94.6MWh per year
(Ménard 2005). The factors that make myself and other Canadians such
energivores are geographic, economic and social. Geographic reasons include the
sheer size and breadth of Canada that increases the travel distance for people
and their consumer goods (Ménard 2005). The economic factors relate to the
energy intensive resource extracting industries that the Canadian economy is
based on: “mining, forestry, petrochemical, pulp and paper, aluminium smelters,
refining and steel manufacturing” (Ménard 2005).
Transport
Due to the geography of Canada, the
energetic cost of transportation is massive. The transportation sector is
divided in two; half of the energetic demand is used to transport people and
the other half is used to transport their goods (National Energy Board 2012).
According to the Energy Diet
Challenge Calculator, my yearly transportation energy demand is 2.68MWh for
public transit, including the metro and the bus, and a staggering 17.4MWh for
air travel (Canadian Geographic 2012). At this point, looking over my numbers,
the most straightforward way of reducing my energy consumption would be to fly
less. However, let us continue to examine my other sources of energy
consumption.
Household
Statistics Canada provides
energy consumption information at the household level, but doesn’t account for
wide variability characteristic of Canadian homes, in terms of size,
inhabitants and modernity of insulation and appliances. For example, the energy
use at my city apartment, located on the top floor of a triplex would be
drastically different than at my country home, which is a large detached home.
In the household, energy, as electricity is used for heating, cooling,
lighting, hot water, appliances and personal electronics (Statistics Canada
2010). Canadians used 29.4MWh of energy in 2007 in their homes, with my
province of Quebec registering as the lowest consumers at 26.1MWh per household
(Statistics Canada 2010).
The province of Quebec,
purports to have 61% of energy use as electricity, with an average household
using 15.8MWh and the residential sector representing nearly 20% of the total
yearly energy use for the province (Ménard 2005, Statistics Canada 2010). Based
on the Energy Diet Challenge Calculator, for where I live, my average yearly
household energy use is approximately 14.6MWh, based on using hydroelectric
power for heating and electricity (Canadian Geographic 2012). The climate in
Canada is a limiting factor to how much energy can be saved in a given year.
Consumption
In a given year, I consume thousands of dollars worth of
goods that demand energy to produce and transport. A study of over 50 average
food products found that an average food item travelled nearly 5000km in
Canada, accounting for massive energy demands in transportation costs, not to
mention the energy associated with the fossil fuels used to grow the crops
(pesticides, fertilizers, fuel for farming vehicles), transform and process it
(CAEEDAC 1998, Xuereb 2005,). Clothing also hides extremely high energetic
costs (Ozturk 2005). Electronics are also a big source of personal energy
demand and increase the total household electrical demand (Coleman et al 2012).
It is difficult to judge the energetic cost of my consumer habits but I believe
that this opens up bigger picture questions, relating to the hidden energy
demand of our day-to-day lives. In this sector, I could pledge to consume less
in order to lower my yearly energy demand, but as a frugal student, my
consumption habits are already at a relatively low level.
Based on the numbers that I
have found, my household and transportation demands equal almost 35MWh per year.
As an average Canadian, I carry a nearly 95MWh per year energy bill, meaning
that my goods cost me approximately 60MWh per year.
As for reducing my
yearly energy consumption, the simple fact of relocating to the UK will
drastically reduce my average energy consumption, as household energy use is
geographically and climatically dependent (Druckman and Jackson 2008).
According to the World Bank, the UK energy use per capita is less than half of
the Canadian average (The World Bank 2012).
Hidden Energy
The hidden costs of energy
seem to be everywhere and completely disregarded by average energy consumption
calculations and audits. For instance, the literature is extremely vague about
what is taken into account to measure energy. Does it account for the distance
between where the energy is produced and where it is used? In Quebec, the
hydroelectricity must travel much further to the end user, losing energy along
the way, compared to England where distances aren’t nearly as vast. Energy
calculations focus on the end-user, putting the onus on them for energy
reduction and ignoring the possibility of decreasing production by determining
other areas where energy waste and loss occur.
This assessment also
disregards the energy costs of living in society that are taken for granted and
difficult to account for. By this, I mean the energy required to run the
infrastructure that we use on a daily basis. It isn’t difficult to quantify the
basic amount of energy that I use in my household by running my computer for the
length of time it takes to write this assignment. However, determining how much
energy is used to run the physical infrastructure of the Internet is much more
complicated. The massive data centres that are used to store our communal
information require vast amounts of electricity and Greenpeace estimates that
1.5 to 2% of the world’s total energy is used by these data centres to run the
world wide web (European Commission 2012, Greenpeace 2011).
The current approach of energy
reduction puts pressure on the consumer to reduce their consumption, by using
incentives and disincentives, be they educational or economic. One person
reducing their energy use by 20% might help mitigate climate change and
environmental degradation, but I believe that we need a systematic
re-evaluation of how we view energy consumption that accounts for the energy
items we tend to forget about and puts the onus on producers as well as
consumers.
References
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Diet Challenge: Footprint Calculator. Available:
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2012.
CAEEDAC (The Canadian Agricultural Energy
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Agricultural and Food Sector. Final Report For Agriculture and Agri-food
Canada Contract no. 9058-968-0000-9600 Dr. B. Grace and Dr. R. P. Zentner
Scientific Authorities. 1 (1), p. 1-42.
Coleman, M., Brown, N., Wright, A., Firth,
S.K. (2012). Information,
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