How much do we use?

One of the things that is hard to communicate to people, in the context of reducing energy or water use, is just how much we use, and just how little we really need to use. Using less has many benefits -- mainly that we save money, and cause less destruction to the natural systems that support us.

I want to convince you that when people talk about reducing consumption, they're not talking about hardship or being a neo-Luddite. They're talking about being a little bit less wasteful and profligate.

Energy

A typical Australian household uses more than 25 kWh/day. This is an extraordinary amount of power, and is an average consumption of more than 1 kW continuous. To put it in perspective, it is equivalent to one-and-a-half draught horses working for you -- all the time, day and night, without rest. If people had to do this work, it would take five to eight energy slaves [1], working contstantly, to provide it.

The other thing to appreciate is that, for every 1 kWh of electricity you use in your home, 3 - 10 kWh of energy have been used in mining, processing, transporting, generating, distributing and transmitting that electricity to you. This is another reason to avoid electricity use where possible [2] and use lower grade sources of energy.

Cars

This is brought into sharper focus when we consider cars. 1 L of petrol contains about 10 kWh of energy. If you drive 8 - 12 km, you will probably use about 1 L of fuel, which is the equivalent of a draft horse working for about 12 hours. When a moderately fit adult can comfortably cycle that same distance in about 40 minutes, it becomes clear what a waste of energy cars are!

Water

The average Australian household uses more than 300 L of water per day. When you consider that a four-person household would drink about 20 L per day, that is a lot of water! Also reflect that Australia is the driest continent in the world. I think that this kind of water use will not be sustained, because the cost to provide the water will become too great.

Conclusion

When people talk about reducing consumption, they're not talking about hardship or being a neo-Luddite. They're talking about being a little bit less wasteful and profligate.


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Links:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Slave
[2] http://guesstimatedapproximations.blogspot.com/2014/10/principle-use-lowest-form-of-energy.html

This article was written by Angus Wallace, and first appeared at guesstimatedapproximations.blogspot.com