By Fuad Al-Tawil
This is a great example of seeing things differently. It makes life interesting, sometimes dangerously so.
Before I attempt to explain this when applied to climate change, it’s important to say that both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are correct answers, depending on your perspective. We need to be clear what we are referring to; help with what?
The climate change we see unfolding is caused by human activity releasing more greenhouse gases (ghg) than natural mechanisms can absorb. This increases the concentration of ghg in the atmosphere, which in turn cause more of the sun’s energy to be trapped, increasing temperatures on earth. We can see the early signs of the consequences of such temperature rise, coming very close to many natural and irreversible tipping points.
Many of us remember the messaging around turning off those pesky chargers and standby settings on our electrical devices. This message started in earnest around the turn of the century, it made perfect sense to me. If everyone turned off their charger/standby, we’d save a huge amount of electricity and avoid associated ghg emissions.
I see this message is still alive today, less so now that standby power is regulated at under 1 Watt. Hang on a minute, let’s just do the maths on how much energy that would be in the UK as an example:
- There are 8760 hours in a year, so 1W would be 8.76 kWh. That’s only 0.25% of the average UK household (3.5 MWh p.a.), so better to put my effort into finding bigger items.
- But if there are 3 such devices in each of our 28 million households, that would be 736 GWh per year or the equivalent of some 210,000 household’s annual electricity consumption.
Wow, that is an impressive saving, why would we not actively promote this message? At today’s grid Carbon Intensity of ~0.25 kg CO2e/kWh, it’d be avoiding some 184,000 tonnes of ghg emissions every year, just by turning off 3 standby devices in every household.
Unfortunately, this is only a large number when compared to my personal consumption. The saving remains insignificant (0.25 %) in terms of UK electricity consumption. Electricity consumption is ~18% of total UK energy consumption. In effect, this action would reduce UK energy use by a mere 0.05%, not much when we probably need to reduce this by 50%.
To have a meaningful reduction of our ghg emissions (i.e. help with climate change) we need to keep away from the “if everyone did a little” or “every little helps” message. Instead we need to encourage everyone to work out their ghg footprint and reduce this by the amount needed to remain within the 1.5oC tipping point. Starting with ourselves of course!
I did say ‘yes’ is also a correct answer. It is still helpful to get people to do a little, but this has more to do with making people aware of the risks around climate change and helping them start a journey of behavioural change. It also helps with making people feel better, an important motivator for behavioural change.
When we are so close to the 1.5oC tipping point only large reductions, done quickly, can reduce the likelihood of avoiding this. It is up to each of us to decide what it is we want to put our efforts towards, everyone is different. Every effort is worthwhile, as long as it does not increase ghg emissions.
Fuad Al-Tawil is a member of ACT