2000W Challenge

[SteamyTea]

Been on about this for a while now, probably 20 years.

Last night, Inside Science asked what the world may be like with unlimited energy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hx4x

 

 

Environment

2000-watt challenge: How to reduce your energy use and still live well

In theory, it’s possible to live well while using energy at a rate of just 2000 watts – a quarter of the average for people in the US. Our environment reporter took on the challenge. Here’s what he discovered

7 February 2023

Listen to this article

By James Dinneen

 

The 2000-watt challenge requires you to lower your energy use

Jason Ford

THE first thing I did was turn off the lights. Then I unplugged everything. On reflection, I reconnected my fridge. Next, I made a list of all the other ways I consume energy. Gas-powered boilers heat my apartment and water. I cook on a gas stove. I take the New York City subway to work. For longer trips, I drive or hail a ride, and I fly. Then there’s the fridge, washing machine and dryer, elevators, a computer, phone, even my toothbrush. I add to the list anything I buy that requires energy to make and transport. Plus the food I consume or throw away. Nearly everything I do requires energy.

Energy is a hot topic right now. Rocketing fuel prices precipitated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the transition to renewable sources to limit global warming have focused people and governments on reducing consumption. With this in mind, I wanted to see whether I could drastically cut my energy use. I had read that, in the 1990s, Swiss researchers calculated that just 2000 watts per person would be enough for everyone to live sustainably and still have a good quality of life. So that became my target. This was the first day of a personal, month-long “2000-watt challenge”.

I used an online calculator – once I got the Wi-Fi back on – to estimate my current energy use. In the US, each person consumes energy at a rate of 8600 watts on average. I didn’t think my lifestyle was particularly extravagant, so I was surprised to find I use even more than that. Clearly, I had a long way to go.

 

Online calculators can help you calculate your daily energy consumption

Jason Ford

A watt is a measure of power or, put another way, the rate of energy transfer (see “What’s watt”). For much of human history, people consumed little more energy than that which was embodied in the food they ate. On a per person basis, “that’s perhaps 90 watts on average”, says Sascha Nick at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Fuel for cooking and heating added more watts, as did animal power for agriculture and transport: 1 horsepower, a unit coined by inventor James Watt (after whom the watt is named) to promote his improved steam engine, is equivalent to 746 watts. Complex societies with construction, metalworking and pottery added a few hundred more. “The Roman Empire had a consumption of perhaps 500 watts,” says Nick. “And it didn’t use electricity at all.”

Today, industrialised societies use vastly more energy, exploiting mainly fossil fuels to power the global economy. The average total, or “primary”, energy consumption per person is highest in Iceland coming in at 17,000 watts in 2021. The US, at 8600 watts, was number 11. By comparison, per-person energy use was around 4200 watts on average in the European Union, 3400 watts in China and 3300 watts in the UK. But there is massive inequality globally: people in India used 800 watts and in Bangladesh they used just 310 watts. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than 2.5 billion people worldwide lack access to enough energy for basic needs such as cooking and cooling.

 

Unplugging electrical items can help reduce your energy bills

Jason Ford

The unprecedented increase in energy consumption in high-income countries – and the environmental consequences it entails – has prompted energy researchers to ask: when energy becomes available far beyond the minimum needed, what is sufficient to live well? It is a question worthy of Socrates. What constitutes enough? What is a good life? So it is hardly surprising that there is no consensus among economists or energy experts. “I’m not confident yet to define an actual threshold of sufficiency of material consumption,” says energy researcher Narasimha Rao at Yale University. “But I know it’s well below the maximum that you see in many countries.”

Two-thousand watts is one answer. Back in the 1990s, it was the amount of energy available to each person on Earth if all the energy produced was divided equally. Based on this and on studies that found diminishing returns to quality of life beyond this level of consumption, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich calculated that using energy at a rate of 2000 watts – equivalent to using 48 kilowatt-hours per day – was sufficient for each person in Switzerland to consume without sacrificing their enviably high standards of living. The team also concluded that aiming for the ambitious but feasible 2000-watt target would be a means of helping Switzerland reduce its greenhouse gas emissions (see “Energy sources and their emissions”).

Home energy use

I first read about the 2000-watt society in Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future, which was published in 2020. From a not-too-distant future where Switzerland has achieved this goal, a chipper character points to the country as an example of the wisdom of using less: “It took paying attention to energy use, but the resulting life was by no means a form of suffering; it was even reported to feel more stylish and meaningful to those who undertook the experiment.” This notion that living at 2000 watts wouldn’t be so hard stayed with me and, when the price of energy jumped last year, I thought I would try it for myself.

 

Your home energy use can contribute significantly to your total energy consumption

Jason Ford

The first thing to do was to estimate my total usage – which anyone can do with an online calculator. This also helped me see how my energy usage breaks down into different areas. Transportation accounted for about half, due almost entirely to flying. Food and other things I bought accounted for about a third, while home heating and electricity made up the rest. Probably because I live in a small apartment, this footprint was a bit different from the average US resident whose living and office space tends to make up the largest proportion of energy use, followed by transportation (especially by car), food and consumer items, electricity and finally their share of public infrastructure. In Europe, living and office space also make up the greatest share on average, but food and consumer items tend to use more energy than transportation.

In total, my energy use was running at 9400 watts. I was definitely going to need help if I were to have any hope of meeting the challenge.

First, I consulted Amory Lovins, a professor at Stanford University in California and founder of a sustainability think tank called the Rocky Mountain Institute. He is perhaps the world’s best-known energy efficiency guru and he walks the talk. He lives in a beautiful home he built in Colorado that features every energy efficiency hack imaginable. “It’s actually 6000-year-old passive Chinese solar architecture,” says Lovins. “I just updated the technologies.” His house has a rooftop tank that heats water with sunlight. Multi-paned windows improve insulation. The property was built facing south to get more heat from the sun, using materials selected for their small energy footprint. A greenhouse serves to both help heat the house and grow a crop of banana plants. All this means Lovins maintains a high standard of living while his home generates enough power to charge his electric vehicles and export some electricity to the grid.

 

Read more:

Solar panels that work at night produce enough power to charge a phone

 

With the right technology, the amount of energy needed to maintain a high standard of living is “probably under 2 kilowatts”, says Lovins, maybe even as low as 1000 watts. However, for most people, such technologies aren’t in reach yet. What’s more, those that are available don’t necessarily reduce our energy usage in the long term. That is because of the rebound effect, a well-known phenomenon by which people use the savings gained from efficiency to consume more. For example, as car engines have become more efficient, we have bought larger cars that require more fuel to power them.

Besides, adopting energy efficient technologies wasn’t going to help with my hastily organised 2000-watt challenge because I had just a month and no budget. So I decided to focus on the other approach to reducing energy consumption: altering my behaviour.

There were practical changes I could make straight away. For instance, I made sure nothing in my apartment was on or plugged in unless someone was using it. I air-dried clothes in the stairwell instead of using the dryer. I shared data from my electricity meter with a company called OhmConnect, which sent me a text when electrical demand was high and gave me an incentive to use less – in the form of “watt points” I could exchange for prizes – if I cut my use during that period. I found I could temporarily save around 150 watts by unplugging the fridge for an hour without opening the door.

 

Cycling can help to reduce your energy use outside of the home

Jason Ford

All this certainly helped me save energy. But at best I had only reduced my usage by around 1000 watts. In fact, the online calculator had shown that electricity accounted for only about 5 per cent of my total, so I could have used none and still ended up far above 2000 watts. I would need to make other changes. So I took shorter showers and used cold water to wash dishes. I continued to bike whenever the weather permitted and took the subway when it didn’t. I bought more of my groceries from the farmers’ market down the street than from the supermarket. And I ate more vegetarian meals.

Reducing energy waste

All this only took me down to 5700 watts according to the calculator, with many of those savings coming from not flying. One big problem was the aging gas boiler heating my poorly insulated 120-year-old apartment. It was a major cause of my surprisingly high energy use – but also beyond my control. As in many old buildings in New York, my radiators are controlled by my landlord, who also lives in the building and likes it hot. In winter, the only way to cool down is to leave windows open. In summer, cooling requires inefficient window air conditioners. Reducing those watts would require retrofitting the building with energy efficient heat pumps and improving the insulation. But as a renter, I couldn’t do that, even if I had the means.

The point here isn’t to complain about my radiators. What the story illustrates is that it is very difficult to live at 2000 watts unless you live in a 2000-watt society. “You start to get to a point that the society around you, the environment you live in, prevents you going beyond,” says Stephan Tanner, an architect who specialises in efficient buildings at the design firm Intep and a long-time proponent of making the US a 2000-watt society. What those limits are depends largely on where you live and how much money you have. For me, living in New York, walking or taking public transport is relatively easy. But in many other places, especially elsewhere in the US, people have no choice but to drive to work or to the grocery store. The changes required to address that aren’t something that an individual can manage.

“Much of what we do in society and life is a matter of how we organise society,” says Nick. He has been consuming 2000 watts or less for more than a decade, but living in Switzerland helps. In 2017, the government there committed to achieving a 2000-watt society by 2050. To that end, Swiss cities are boosting public transport infrastructure and making car use less attractive. They have also built energy efficient hospitals and retirement homes. From an average of about 6000 watts in 2000, per-person energy usage in Switzerland is now 4030 watts.

 

Read more:

Over 100 cities have made public transport free – others should follow

 

Beyond Switzerland, few other societies have adopted the 2000-watt target. But countries are focusing more on reducing demand for energy. Policies like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, REPowerEU in the European Union and Japan’sGreen Transformation have put hundreds of billions of dollars towards energy efficiency measures, such as retrofitting buildings and promoting the use of electric vehicles. Countries have rolled out energy awareness campaigns too, including It All Adds Up in the UK.

The fuel crisis is one motivation. “That might be what will start to expand our consciousness,” says Christina Hoicka at the University of Victoria in Canada. Improved energy efficiency has already paid off: the International Energy Agency estimates that such enhancements saved at least $680 billion in energy costs among its member countries in 2022. Using less energy also cuts greenhouse gas emissions directly and makes decarbonisation easier to achieve. “If we electrify everything, we have to massively increase the size of our renewable energy system,” says Hoicka. That will be far easier if there is less demand. One widely cited study found that reducing energy demand through efficiency and changes like urbanisation and digitalisation could limit global warming to 1.5°C without the need for unproven carbon capture and storage technologies and without sacrificing economic growth in higher or lower-income countries.

 

Using no electricity at all may only decrease your total energy use by a small amount

Jason Ford

As for my own humble 2000-watt challenge, I regret to say that it failed miserably, at least by its main measure. For now, inefficient buildings and infrastructure make it very difficult to consume at a rate of 2000 watts and maintain a high standard of living in the US without making a major investment in energy efficiency – and it isn’t much easier elsewhere.

 

Read more:

High-tech wood filled with air cavities could insulate your home

 

But I did learn a lot (see “Six ways to use less energy”). And I don’t plan to stop trying to achieve 2000 watts just because this challenge is over. For instance, it is clearer to me that decisions about what I eat and how I get around are much more important than how long I leave the lights on. And next time I choose somewhere to live, I will be thinking more about how it is heated, how well it is insulated and how energy efficient the appliances are. That way, I can focus more on small actions that produce sizeable energy-efficiency gains.

This experience has left me more mindful about where the energy I use is coming from too. I feel less disconnected from the infrastructure and industrial activities that support my way of life. I am also more cognisant of the overabundance of energy available to me – and the unfairness that so many people don’t have enough. “Enough should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling above which no one can rise,” according to Robinson’s character from the future. “Enough is as good as a feast – or better.”

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What’s watt?

The watt is the unit of power used to describe the rate at which energy flows: 1 watt is equivalent to 1 joule per second. A 20-watt light bulb left on for an hour uses 20-watt-hours. Your electricity bill will show how many kilowatt-hours you have used (1 kilowatt is 1000 watts). Dividing that by the number of hours during the billing period will give your average continuous supply of electricity in kilowatts. The 2000-watt target – which can also be seen as 48 kilowatt-hours per day – refers not just to electricity, but to your total average primary energy consumption. In other words, it includes all sources of energy (things like gas, wind and wood), any energy used to produce those sources and the energy lost due to inefficiencies of conversion and transmission. To meet the challenge, this must not exceed an average of 2 kilowatts.

Energy sources and their emissions

Different energy sources produce different levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Coal burned to generate electricity creates more than burning natural gas, for example. And solar creates none. And there are also sources of emissions unrelated to energy such as food rotting in landfills. In the 1990s, when Swiss researchers first envisioned a 2000-watt society, it included a target for emissions equivalent to 1 tonne of carbon dioxide per person. Back then, there was more concern about running out of oil than about climate change. However, that target was revised to net zero in 2015, following the Paris Agreement, which committed countries to limiting global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. To try to achieve this, Switzerland has aggressively invested in renewable energy in parallel with its work on energy efficiency. Since 2000, emissions resulting directly from energy use have decreased from 8.5 to 5.6 tonnes per person. However, emissions associated with imported goods have increased during that period. The emissions target is still much more challenging than the energy target.

Six ways to use less energy

Turn down the thermostat:

We all have to keep warm, but staying a few degrees colder can save up to 10 per cent of energy for heating. Potential savings depend on many factors, such as the weather where you live.

Use less hot water:

Heating water accounts for around 20 per cent of home energy use on average. Reduce this by using cold water to wash clothes, making sure the dishwasher is full and taking shorter showers.

Walk, cycle and use public transport:

One study found that public transportation use in the US saved the equivalent of 4.2 billion gallons of petrol in a year.

Use efficient appliances:

Electric induction stoves are about three times more energy efficient than gas stoves. Search for labels on appliances that rate their efficiency.

Eat more vegetables, preferably locally grown:

Vegetarian diets use approximately a quarter less energy than diets that include meat.

Retrofit your home:

Improving home insulation and using an energy efficient heat pump rather than gas or oil heating are big investments, but making them can cut energy use by more than 40 per cent, depending on where you live.

James Dinneen is an environment reporter for New Scientist based in New York

Edited February 10, 2023 by SteamyTea

[SimonD]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

For example, as car engines have become more efficient, we have bought larger cars that require more fuel to power them.

 

Good article. I'm still bemused how the political and economic narrative around growth has failed to change and embrace a model of energy reduction. And as alluded to in this article, it's not an individual process or act, but one of whole systems and markets, but it's still shrouded by some incorrect assumptions like:

 

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

That is because of the rebound effect, a well-known phenomenon by which people use the savings gained from efficiency to consume more. For example, as car engines have become more efficient, we have bought larger cars that require more fuel to power them.

 

When you scratch below the surface, the picture is more complex. I don't think it's the rebound effect that is actually guilty here (e.g. simplistically if people install LED lighting, they don't rebound by saying, 'oh, I can now turn up the heating a few degrees because most people really don't understand the concept of energy and its use); it is clear, for example, that car manufacturer's wilfully design their cars to grow between each version, so the consumer is given less choice, or even unaware of the shift. I was driving down the motorway the other day and passed by an old Saab 900 Turbo once considered a large car (I used to load up motorbikes into the boot of mine for transport) and was surprised by how tiny it looked even compared to a couple of new Minis and then a Model X Tesla.

 

Then there's the psychological manipulation that plays on people's fear and some social desire to keep up, that then drives them to buy an SUV because they feel safer, for example.

 

When you look at energy reduction figures in countries like Sweden, for example, that have benefitted massively from the rollout of heat pumps given that it is a country dependent upon direct electric heating and cooking, their entire grid has seen huge reductions in demand, which hasn't rebounded at all. So in essence, I think we have to question what technology implementation relates to the rebound effect and how does that arise. But maybe the linked article explains that but it's behind a paywall?

[SteamyTea]

19 minutes ago, SimonD said:

But maybe the linked article explains that but it's behind a paywall?

Which link, will see what I can do.

 

Maybe worth pointing out to the academics that if the information they 'discover' was open for public scrutiny, messages may be though faster.

 

Was it this one?

 

Climate targets at risk as green tech triggers higher energy demands

 

ENVIRONMENT 2 March 2021

By Adam Vaughan

 

Efficiency improvements in the technology at steel plants can lead to a greater demand for steel

Sebastian Kahnert/EPA/Shutterstock

 

The world is failing to account for a “rebound effect” that could wipe out more than half of the savings from energy efficiency improvements like cleaner cars, making the goals of the Paris Agreement even harder to hit.

Improvements to energy efficiency, from LED lights to better steel-making arc furnaces, are seen by many authorities as a top priority for cutting carbon emissions. Yet a growing body of research suggests that human behaviour and economics mean a major chunk of anticipated efficiency savings are lost.

A team led by Paul Brockway at the University of Leeds, UK, looked at 33 studies on the economy-wide impact of a phenomenon known as the rebound effect. First comes the direct rebound: for instance, when someone buys a more efficient car, they may take advantage of that by driving it further. Then comes the indirect rebound: fuel savings leave the owner with more money to spend elsewhere in the economy, consuming energy. This contributes to the macro effect of growing the overall economy.

 

Although the 33 studies used different methods to model the rebound effect, they produced very consistent estimates of its impact, leading Brockway and his colleagues to conclude that the effect erodes, on average, 63 per cent of the anticipated energy savings.

“We’re not saying energy efficiency doesn’t work. What we’re saying is rebound needs to be taken more seriously,” says Brockway.

The idea that increased efficiency may not deliver the hoped-for savings dates back to the Jevons paradox, named after the economist William Stanley Jevons who, in 1865, observed that more efficient coal use was leading to more demand for coal. The last review of the economy-wide rebound effect was in 2007. The new analysis is the first to pull together the explosion of research since.

 

Worryingly, the influential energy models that governments and companies rely on to examine how future emissions and energy demand may unfold aren’t good at capturing the rebound effect. The team looked at 17 scenarios from energy models, including ones used by the International Energy Agency, the UN climate science panel, BP, Shell and Greenpeace. “Most of the models missed out large numbers of the channels which contribute to rebound effects,” says Steve Sorrell at the University of Sussex, UK, a co-author of the new study. One scenario assumed a rebound effect of just 10 per cent.

“The message is these rebound effects do definitely need to be incorporated in any scenarios. If they haven’t been incorporated, emissions are likely to be even greater,” says Roger Fouquet at the London School of Economics.

If the rebound effect does prove to be as big as suggested, it means future global energy demand will be higher than expected and the world will need far more wind and solar power and carbon-capture technology than is currently being planned for. “It’s fair to say it will make it harder to meet the Paris targets if we don’t properly account for rebound effects in modelling and policy,” says Brockway.

But that doesn’t mean nothing can be done to limit the rebound effect. One answer is to double down on energy efficiency and do twice as much to achieve the same effect, says co-author Gregor Semieniuk at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Sorrell says more carbon pricing, as well as more ways to capture the financial savings from efficiency and force them into investment in green technology, could also help us tame the rebound effect.

 

Journal reference: Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2021.110781

Edited February 10, 2023 by SteamyTea

[SimonD]

5 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Which link, will see what I can do.

 

Maybe worth pointing out to the academics that if the information they 'discover' was open for public scrutiny, messages may be though faster.

This is the one I think is referenced about the rebound effect:

 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269315-climate-targets-at-risk-as-green-tech-triggers-higher-energy-demands/

 

Yes, I have this discussion on a fairly regular basis with some profs and researchers I know working in this area - it becomes a closed club, a little like The Conversation website that closes down the discussion to academics only, even some academics that write about topics where they have zero implementation or real world knowledge and just a research background, always risky when dealing with complex real world problems.

[ProDave]

I use 6000kWh in a year.  There are 8760 hours in a year, so that's an average of 684 watts continuously.

 

Do I meet the 2000W challenge?

[SteamyTea]

Just now, ProDave said:

I use 6000kWh in a year.  There are 8760 hours in a year, so that's an average of 684 watts continuously.

 

Do I meet the 2000W challenge?

No.

 

You have to count all your energy usage.

So take your drive to the gym to use there showers, as an example.

Pro Rata the energy used in the journey, the energy used to power the gym, extra clothes washing, the extra food calories you need to replace the expended energy.

You also have to Pro Rata the societal energy costs, so just about everything except 'you'.

 

[SteamyTea]

16 minutes ago, SimonD said:

This is the one I think is referenced about the rebound effect:

Done, added it in