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1.
How People Use Energy
Archive
of Past Articles for Chapter 1
2011 April 17. When It Comes to Carbon Footprints, Location and Lifestyle Matter. Excerpt: A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that who you are and where you live make a big difference in which activities have the largest impact.
Carbon footprints are a measure of the greenhouse gases released during the production, use and disposal of products and services. The production phase includes all processes between the time raw materials are extracted from Earth until they reach consumers as finished products in stores. The study considers the carbon footprint of all household economic activity, including transportation, energy, food, goods, services, water and waste.
As an example, the report highlights the carbon footprints of two fictitious households: an upper-income couple living in San Francisco with no children, and a middle-income family with three children living in St. Louis, Mo. Each of these households contributes to the atmosphere about the same amount of greenhouse gases per year, but the sources of those emissions are very different, the study found.
2010 March 25. Audit Finds Vulnerability of EnergyStar Program. BY Matthew L. Wald, NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — Does a “gasoline-powered alarm clock” qualify for the EnergyStar label, the government stamp of approval for an energy-saving product?
Like more than a dozen other bogus products submitted for approval since last June by Congressional auditors posing as companies, it easily secured the label, according to a Congressional report to be issued Friday. So did an “air purifier” that was essentially an electric space heater with a feather duster pasted on top, the Government Accountability Office said.
In a nine-month study, four fictitious companies invented by the accountability office also sought EnergyStar status for some conventional devices like dehumidifiers and heat pump models that existed only on paper. The fake companies submitted data indicating that the models consumed 20 percent less energy than even the most efficient ones on the market. Yet those applications were mostly approved without a challenge or even questions, the report said.
Auditors concluded that the EnergyStar program was highly vulnerable to fraud....
Previous reports have suggested that the EnergyStar label is not always a complete or useful guide to the best consumer choices. Last October, for example, the inspector general of the E.P.A. said that 100 percent of the computer monitors that carried the EnergyStar logo had indeed met requirements. But so did 80 percent of the monitors that did not have the logo; the manufacturers had apparently not sought approval. For computer printers, 95 percent of the ones with the logo qualified, but so did 60 percent of the ones that did not have the logo.
And some consumer products lacking EnergyStar approval consumed less energy than those that had it, the audit found....
2005.
Historical
Perspectives of Energy Consumption Excerpt:
Throughout history, man has developed
ways to expand his ability to
harvest energy. The primitive
man found in East Africa 1,000,000
years ago, who had yet to discover
fire, had access only to the food
he ate so his daily energy consumption
has been estimated at 2,000 Kcal
or 2,000 dietary calories. Energy
consumption of the hunting man
found in Europe about 100,000
years ago was about 2.5 times
that of the primitive man because
he had better methods of acquiring
food and also burned wood for
both heating and cooking. Energy
consumption increased again by
almost 2.5 times as man evolved
into the primitive agricultural
man of about 5,000 years ago
who harnessed draft animals to
aid in growing crops. The advanced
agricultural man of 1400 A.D.
northwestern Europe again doubled
the amount of energy consumption
as he began inventing devices
to tap the power of wind and water,
began to utilize small amounts
of coal for heating and harnessed
animals to provide transportation.
The dawn of the age of industrialization, ushered
in by the invention of the steam engine, caused a
3-fold increase in energy consumption by 1875. Among
other things, the steam engine allowed man to unlock
the Earth's vast concentrated storage deposits of
solar energy - coal, gas and oil so he no longer was
limited to natural energy flows. Whereas increases
in energy consumption had been gradual throughout
history, once industrialization occurred, the rate
of consumption increased dramatically over a period
of just a few generations. The technological man of
1970 in the U.S. consumed approximately 230,000 Kcal
of energy per day (~115 times that of primitive man)
with about 26% of that amount being electrical energy....
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