Solar and wind power is growing worldwide, but so is electricity consumption: as a result, renewables are often only added to the energy mix, rather than replacing fossil fuels.
Reducing energy demand would make net zero more achievable, but it recieves far less attention than decarbonisation efforts. This may be due to a perception that managing energy demand would be politically unpopular, requiring governments to make radical interventions into people’s lifestyles and spending.
Oliver Broad, Senior Research Fellow at University College London, tells Alasdair that such fears are unfounded. His team’s research found that the UK could reduce energy demand by 52% without new tech or overly disruptive societal change, and has worked with policymakers and public focus groups to demonstrate political acceptability.
Definitely not a tabu. We’re currently implementing the 2000 watt society in Switzerland. It’s a framework many decisions regarding housing and energy production flow from.
Officially we promise to do a lot of things for the climate in Switzerland. But the Parliament and Government do not want to hear about restricting anything. In reality we are going to miss our 2030 objectives, but they are going to claim that there is nothing we should change. The 2000 watt society is not going to hold the second some AI industrialist convince them it is absolutely necessary for the economy.
That’s the problem with our rightwing politicians and government that finally needs to be balanced towards professionals who want to solve actual problems.
Unfortunately we still lie to ourselves about how our farmers do their best for the environment.
I wish that concept was more well-known. I think I stumbled upon it the first time when I read the ministry for the future. However that concept includes stuff that makes people get defensive very quickly. E.g. switching to a vegan diet, reducing reliance on cars or sharing living spaces with more people (I guess the last one is so far out there that many don’t even consider it).
Some of those things can probably be achieved otherwise, but it’s going to take way more resources than … well, not doing those things. Electric cars require more resources than public transport, reducing energy for heating per person requires more insulation if you live alone…
Does the implementation of this in Switzerland include approaches relating to degrowth or is it mostly based on technological improvements?
There is very few housing where some space is shared (I’m not talking about student dorms). They’ve built them as a pilot and it is controversial. Most housing being built trends towards being bigger area-wise per person, so modern 1- or 2- bedroom apartments are significant larger than older ones.
Vegan diets are slowly increasing but Swiss diet is heavy on dairy and meat. I’ve been vegetarian for over 15y, but the average Swiss still eats 3x the amount of red meat recommended by doctors.
The approach leans heavily on things we already do right (energy production is mostly carbon free already), and adopting new tech and standards, mostly by getting rid of gas and oil heating and improving insulation, HVAC systems and geo thermal heat pumps.
Concepts like degrowth or sufficiency are discussed and maybe individually introduced, but it’s still not very prominent.
I’m curious whether the 2000 Watt goal can be achieved without some kind of “degrowth”, but it’s hard to argue with the current approach, as it still sounds so much better than what most other nations are doing.
As for housing and apartment sizes, I think that’s a trend that’s visible in almost all developed nations. I’m not sure how it was in other European countries, but at least in Germany up until a few generations ago it was not that uncommon to live in a house with multiple generations. (That’s a point that maybe doesn’t really belong here, but one could argue that there is no “real” housing crisis - in the sense that it’s self-inflicted - as living space per person and the size of apartments have been increasing over the last few decades, so obviously there won’t be enough housing)
Increasing use of HMOs in the UK though, largely by the poor. Used to live in one when it was all I could afford.
Landlord was a cunt and taped over the thermostat to prevent us turning the heating on. So I ran high electrical loads to warm my room up instead. Should have mined bitcoin.
That’s an interesting concept, sounds similar to the german WG (Wohngemeinschaft), but that’s, to my knowledge, also mostly used by younger people that are still studying or similar.
Should have mined bitcoin.
And since we’re already straying off topic, germany “recently” introduced a law where you have to limit rooftop solar production to 60% of the installed peak power (you’re not allowed to feed more than that back to the grid). Now I’m wondering whether I should start mining bitcoin at my parents place, despite my disgust for bitcoin. I’ll have to see whether I can get some E-waste to put together an appropriate rig, I’m definitely not getting new hardware for that, if at all.
I doubt we can get there with only technological advances, but building more efficient infrastructure (also in public transportation) isn’t a bad thing except for cost and emissions of construction.
The conversation where to cut the lavish lifestyles that hurt the environment most will be a long and difficult one, but I believe there are many options and people don’t have to adopt every single one of them to make an impact. People are already changing their diets, sell their cars, go on vacation to nearer places and find creative ways to use the space in their houses.
And specifically for housing: building denser in urban areas is in the interest of the market that can capitalize on it.
I’m still optimistic because with the exception of city governments a majority of our politicians are right wing or conservatives right of center who are all very friendly to businesses. And look how far we’ve come already despite it all.
2kW is an insane amount of energy surely? Even in the dead of winter we use far less than that. For a house of 2, highest per month usage was 600kWh, or 20kWh/day, so under half that goal or under a quarter per person.
That is without even trying and when I was “working” from home with my gaming/shitposting PC running all day as well. I am curious to see how it changes now that I have switched jobs and play games/shitpost on my phone all day in the office instead.
It’s 2 kW total primary energy consumption, including everything. Transportation, industrial production, food production, your own electricity consumption, everything
Suppose food would be harder to calculate, I use a bike for transport though.
Did I math that right? 1500kwh/month? That’s a lot isn’t it?
Or is that total energy, not just what is on the power bill?
Did I math that right? 1500kwh/month? That’s a lot isn’t it?
A gallon of gasoline contains about 37 kWh of energy. A liter would be about 10 kWh.
It takes about 3.3 kWh of energy to produce one pound of beef (7.3 kWh/kg).
So most Western countries consume far more energy per capita than 1500 kWh/month. Transportation is a huge part of it. So is agriculture.
Yep. I mean… the wikipedia article is right there, linked in the comment… according to it, Switzerland had a primary energy consumption of 5.1 kW per person in 2008 and reached 4 kW per person in 2020. So still quite some way to go
It definitely is taboo in conservative hell-holes like the USA
But I am glad the rest of the planet isn’t so fucked
