Low Impact

A hallmark of modern life is the TV screen as the centre of the living room, and the primary evening activity. Even the “Friends” sitcom pointed out this fact with Joey once commenting: “No TV?! Then what is all your furniture pointed at?”

But as TV’s have taken on a bigger role in our lives, they’ve also started to consume more power. There’s a few reasons for this. One is simply a matter of size. The undeniable trend in televisions has been for them to get bigger. As people chase the cinematic experience in their own living room, people have moved from 50cm screens to 100cm as a minimum. All that extra screen… Continue reading

The Australian Bureau of Statistics just released their 2008 Year Book where they present a variety of statistics, including a number on energy production. There’s an inevitable lag in reporting due to the time taken to collect and analyse the statistics. Consequently, the 2008 Year Book discusses energy production in 2005/2006 and finds that in that year Australia’s energy production consisted of 98% non-renewable sources (like coal and gas), and only 2% renewable sources (like solar and biofuels).

Not terribly impressive!

The energy produced is measured in Peta Joules (PJ), and adds up to 16,729 PJ. Contributing to the 98% non renewable figure, 49% is black coal, 28% is uranium, natural gas is 10% and crude… Continue reading

As I’ve mentioned previously, my household subscribes to green energy - consequently, my electricity provider sources the equivalent of my power consumption from wind power sources. This means that, disregarding the greenhouse gasses emitted during the wind turbines’ construction, there is no CO2 emitted for my day-to-day power consumption.

This is in stark contrast to most Australian households whose power is sourced from coal power plants. Not only is there a great deal of greenhouse gasses emitted during the construction of the power plant, but each kilowatt-hour generated results in almost 1 kg of CO2 being emitted.

But despite being on green power, it still makes sense to reduce our electricity consumption. One simple reason is cost - the less power you use, the lower your electricity bill!… Continue reading