Specific actions that will reduce greenhouse gas production:
Personal
This section concentrates on those changes which closely relate to
private energy consumers.
In most cases reducing your greenhouse gas production, either by cutting the amount of energy you use or by consuming less goods, will save you money. In many cases it will make you fitter and healthier too.
If you already do most of these things then you could look at the
government section and press your local member of parliament
to act on some of those points.
You could also inform me (email address at top of
this page) if you can suggest any way I might improve this page.
If you have similar pages on the Net you could inform me and I will add
a link, and you could link to this page.
- Think
- Whatever you do, think about whether it is going to cause more
greenhouse gasses to be produced. If so, is there a different way of
achieving the same result without the greenhouse impact?
Importantly, before you buy any product, think about the greenhouse
implications in the manufacture of that product and how much energy it is
likely to consume.
- Invest your savings ethically
- In Australia (July 2013) the big banks loan billions of dollars to
coal miners.
Not only is coal mining a horribly polluting and unsustainable industry, but
some of these companies are placing the Great Barrier Reef at risk because
of the new ports and pollution due to dredging, but will also lead to hugely
increased shipping over the reef and then there's the fact that they are
effectively funding faster climate change.
As of 2013/07/18 it seems to me that
Heritage Bank could be ethical in
this sense, but it only has branches in Queensland and northern NSW.
An organisation called
Market Forces aims
to provide some help in where you can ethically place your money.
- Do an energy audit
- For about $60 you can buy a power consumption meter.
You can plug this gadget into any three-point power socket and then plug
any other 240-volt appliance into it; it will tell you how much power
the appliance is using.
Not only will it tell you how much power your TV is using when on standby,
but it can measure how much your fridge or freezer use over a 24-hour
period.
Knowing how much power things use helps to reduce unnecessary power
consumption.
- Green power
- Changing to 100% accredited
green power makes your electricity supplier buy sustainably generated power with which to supply you.
I believe that this is the single biggest move we can easily take to reduce our greenhouse impact as consumers.
My friends and I have been surprised at how little extra our power bills are;
green power increases my domestic power bill by only about 13%.
- Replace your conventional (internal combustion engine, ICE) car with an electric?
- Burning each litre of petrol releases about 2.3kg of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So if you drive a vehicle that uses a typical 8 litres per hundred kilometres and drive a typical 15,000km per year your vehicle will be releasing about 2.8 tonnes of CO2 each year.
You could avoid this by replacing your ICE powered car with an electric one and charge it from your own solar panels, or buy green electricity to charge it.
In 2021 buying an EV in Australia will cost you from Aus$40,000 upward.
So in terms of capital cost reducing your emissions by buying an EV, $40,000 saves 2.8 tonnes per year, or each thousand dollars saves 70kg per year. Compare the cost of emissions savings from an EV with those from installing solar power.
- Join a group
- Join an environmental group that works toward making your town,
region or country more sustainable.
- Calculate your greenhouse gas production
- To at least approximately calculate how much greenhouse gas you are
personally responsible for releasing into the atmosphere does not take a
lot of time or effort.
I found it a useful exercise; my figures are
elsewhere on
this site.
There is also a
greenhouse impact calculator on this site.
- Consume less
- Before you buy something you probably give a bit of thought to whether
you can easily afford to pay for it.
In the future try to also think about whether you really need it.
Not buying it will reduce the amount of greenhouse gas production that you
are responsible for by the amount that went into producing that good.
- Bicycling
- Try to use a bicycle rather than a car.
Bicycling is probably the most energy efficient way of getting
from one place to another. It has the added bonus of keeping you fit.
Of course it does not require fossil fuels (except for building the
bike).
(On other pages is a discussion on
Weight-to-power ratio
and Payload ratio if you are at all
interested in the technical aspects of low-weight or low-power vehicles
compared to high-weight and high-power.)
- Walking
- Walking should be encouraged as a way of getting children
to and from school,
as a way of getting to shops, and as a way of commuting to jobs.
Both walking and cycling will also reduce the obesity that is at present
an epidemic.
- Climb the stairs
- It is better for your health and for the atmosphere if you climb stairs
rather than using a lift.
Generating the electricity consumed by the motor that runs the lift results
in greenhouse gas production.
- Gymnasium
- Do you drive to work and use a gymnasium to keep fit or keep your
weight down?
Perhaps you drive to the gymnasium?
Consider riding or walking to work instead, you will save the cost of
running your car, and by keeping fit you might not need to go to the
gymnasium, and save money there too.
- Public transport
- Use public transport rather than your own car; it reduces your greenhouse
gas output.
Less fossil fuel is burned, per passenger, by a
bus or train than by a
private car; also if more people travel by public
transport then less money need be spent, and less energy consumed, on
building and upgrading roads.
- Solar water heating
- Not only will you cut your greenhouse gas production, but you will
save lots of money in the long run if you install solar water heating.
To get hot water in the days when the sun doesn't shine either use a
gas booster or, better yet, use an electric booster and buy 100%
accredited green power.
- Water heating
- Whatever sort of water heater you have you can save energy by not
heating the water to a higher temperature than you need.
Most, or all, water heaters have a setable thermostat on them.
Set the thermostat to get the water hot enough for a comfortable shower;
maybe 55°C.
(In some places the law may mandate a minimum temperature of 60°C to be
sure of killing legonella bacteria.)
If you need some hotter water for dish washing or whatever, you can always
heat some in an electric jug.
- Be careful with your hot water
- If your water is heated by electricity or by burning fossil fuels
you will cut the amount of greenhouse gasses you are responsible for by
having either shorter or fewer showers and being careful to not use more
hot water than you need when washing your hands, etc.
Consider installing a
solar water heater, it will save you
money in the long run.
It could also be worth while looking into putting more insulation on your water heater tank.
- Fridges and freezers
- Do you have more than one fridge or freezer? Do you really need both?
If your fridge or freezer is more than about 15 years old you should look
into replacing it with a more energy efficient modern model.
(My wife and I repleaced an old freezer and it will pay for itself in five
years from electricity savings.)
- Save electricity
- Most of Australia's electricity is generated in green house polluting
fossil fuel fired power stations.
They produce a large part of Australia's carbon dioxide.
Consider buying green power; this is by far
the biggest thing that you can do in your home – for the least amount of
trouble and for little cost – to reduce your greenhouse impact.
If your home heating and cooling is controlled by a thermostat then set the thermostat for the lowest comfortable temperature in winter and the highest comfortable temperature in summer. Wear warm clothes inside in the winter and cool clothes in summer. Turn off your heating and air conditioning when you go away for a while.
Do not use an electric or gas clothes drier if you can avoid it; spin dry and then hang your clothes outside to dry using natural air circulation and sunshine (if any). Converting water into water vapour require a huge amount of energy, 2257 kilojoules for each litre (Engineering Toolbox). It takes more than five times as much heat to convert boiling water to vapour than is needed to raise the same volume from freezing point to boiling point. Some artificially heated clothes driers are more efficient than others, but the best of them are responsible for huge amounts of greenhouse gas production.
When buying electrical appliances, try to buy those that have high star ratings and are energy efficient. Consider how much more power you will be using before you buy additional electric appliances; large-screen TVs can use as much power as a fridge.
When you buy a new computer, consider a lap-top (20 Watts) instead of a desk-top (90 Watts). But try to use the lap-top while it is plugged in rather than running it unnecessarily on its batteries; the battery charge/discharge cycle is only something like 50% efficient.
Use only efficient lights (fluorescent, compact fluorescent, and LED), get rid of all your old incandescent (tungsten filament) bulbs. LED (light emmiting diode) lights are becoming available to replace variable brightness halogen lights. Turn lights off when you don't need them. Don't turn on the light if natural light can be used.
Wait until you have a full load of washing before running your washing machine.
Don't boil more water than you need. This might seem trivial, but it is probably something you do often and bringing water to the boil with an electric jug requires quite a lot of electricity.
Microwave ovens
These can be an energy-efficient way of cooking; about half of the power they take from the wall socket goes directly into whatever they are heating. If they run on low power settings they cycle from full power to no heating at all; you can usually hear the changing. A microwave will probably use less power than a conventional oven because it is much quicker, but it may not be better than a cook-top.
Standby power consumption
This, Chinese made, 'Prima' fan uses from 37W to 46W, depending on the setting; much less than a refrigerated air conditioner.
Turn appliances off at the power point rather than leaving them on standby. The fan in the illustration uses 60W when running – whether set on low, medium or high – and still uses 30W if plugged in and not running. (This is the highest standby power consumption that I have measured for any of my appliances.) A lot of electricity is wasted when appliances are switched off but left plugged into a live wall socket.
Remote control
Whenever you buy an electrical appliance avoid remote controlled models if you can; they generally use significantly more power when left on standby (as with the fan in the image on the right) and the little bit of exercise you get by getting up to turn the manual models on or off will do you good.
- Solar power
- Consider buying a solar power system to put on your roof.
In 2021 a 5kW solar power system will cost you about Aus$6,000. If the power that you buy from the grid is largely generated by burning coal and gas each kilowatt-hour you take from the grid will involve the release of around a half a kilogram of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Your 5kW solar system will generate about nine megawatt-hours of electricity in a year. That power will displace power from the grid and will reduce the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere by about 4.4 tonnes each year.
So in terms of capital cost, if you reduce your emissions by buying solar power $6,000 invested saves 4.4 tonnes per year, or each thousand dollars invested saves 730kg per year. Compare the cost of emissions savings from a solar system with those from buying an electric vehicles.
- Wind power developments
- If a wind farm is proposed near you,
support the development.
- Clothes drying
- Both
electric
and gas clothes dryers should be avoided.
It is much better to spin dry and then hang your clothes out in the open
air. Try to choose a place that has good air circulation and sunshine
if possible.
- Recycled paper
- Less energy is consumed in making recycled paper than in making paper
from wood. It also conserves trees.
Consider buying unbleached paper rather than bleached paper, its manufacture
causes less environmental harm.
- Buy second hand or recycled
- If you can buy second hand or recycled goods you avoid being
responsible for the greenhouse gasses released in producing the new
product.
- Eat less meat
- Ruminants (sheep, goats, cattle) belch considerable quantities of
methane, a strong greenhouse gas. Also, the way that many domestic
animals (chooks, cattle, pigs in particular) are 'factory farmed'
requires a lot of resources. Cultivating grain to then feed to stock
is very inefficient and consumes large amounts of fossil fuels – leading
in turn to the release of large amounts of greenhouse carbon dioxide.
Eating open-range, non grain-fed meat, is less damaging to the atmosphere
because since they find their own food less resources are required to
produce each kilogram of meat.
- Eat locally produced fresh foods
- Transporting foods over long distances consumes a lot of fossil fuel
and results in the release of corresponding amounts of greenhouse gasses.
If you eat locally produced foods you avoid this.
Processing foods also consumes fossil fuels; it is better if the food is
heated just once.
Generally fresh foods will be more nutritious than
processed foods and locally produced foods will be fresher than foods
transported over long distances.
- Buy no more food than you can eat
- Throwing out food that has gone stale before you can eat it is, in
effect, producing greenhouse gasses unnecessarily (because of the
'embodied' greenhouse gasses in the food).
- Roads and paths
- Try to use roads less, bicycling and walking paths more.
The more people who use them the more pressure there is on government to
improve them.
Six big and heavy 4-wheel-drives and one small fuel-efficient car in the Flinders Ranges. Are the gas-guzzlers needed? Our little car (the Jazz on the left) weighs about half as much and handles the dirt roads with ease. It is also capable of towing up to one tonne. 
The little Mazda 121 is easily capable of towing a half-tonne bale of straw on a trailer - The car you drive
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Consider buying an electric or a hydrogen fuel cell car because they do not produce greenhouse emissions.
Can you get by with a smaller car than the one you have now? Could you buy a small one and just use your big car when you really need a big car? Consider the payload ratio of the car you drive. When you replace your car consider buying a hybrid or a fuel efficient small diesel model.
Don't buy a new car too often. A huge amount of energy goes into the building of cars. On the other hand, if your car is old and fuel-inefficient, it may be worth upgrading to a more fuel-efficient model.
- Use a trailer
- Rather than buying a big car that you only really need once in a while
consider getting a little car with a tow-bar; then you can tow a trailer
whenever you need to carry a bigger load and keep your greenhouse
emissions down all the other times (as well as saving on the cost of buying
and the cost of running a big car).
- Using you car less
- If you can't walk, ride a bike or use public transport, consider
car pooling.
Can you get a ride with others who work in the same area, or give them a
ride to work?
If you drive your kids to school, consider starting a 'walking bus'. You will save greenhouse gasses and improve your health and fitness and that of your kids. (Organise a group of parents so that one adult will be available to walk with the kids to and from school each day.)
When you must drive, travel a bit more slowly, you will save both greenhouse gasses and fuel. (In my experience, travelling at 90km/hr rather than 110km/hr reduces fuel consumed per kilometre by about 15%.) Also avoid fast acceleration and unnecessary braking.
Before you drive, think whether you really need to go at all; consider walking or cycling.
Keeping a shopping list and going to the shops once every few days rather than several times a day will save you money and time as well as saving greenhouse gas production.
- Educate yourself about energy
- Learn how much power the appliances in you house use.
Learn how
various types of heaters work, and whether they
are effective
at warming you or whether most of the heat goes into the air and then
the warm air rises to the ceiling and the heat is largely wasted
(see graphic below).
Learn about the various forms of energy and how one form can be transformed
into another form.
Learn what "energy efficiency" is all about.
- Power tools
- Don't use a power tool when you can use a hand tool.
Don't use a power blower if you can use a broom.
Use a bucket and sponge rather than an electric pressure pump
car washer.
- Building a home? Make it energy efficient
- Consider installing and using all the
passive home heating and
cooling features listed below.
Build your house facing north.
Research all the energy saving options for new houses on the Net.
- Home heating and cooling
- First: as far as possible use passive methods.
- To cool your house in summer, open all your windows and doors as soon as the evening temperature outside is cooler than inside; close your house up again in the morning as soon as it is warmer outside than in. To warm you house in the colder part of the year make similar use of any warm day.
- Build a trellis on the northern side of your house and grow a deciduous vine on it. This will shade your northern wall in summer and let in the sunshine in winter.
- Consider some of the commercially available reflective coatings that can be stuck to your windows; they reflect much of the radiant heat that would otherwise come in from outside.
- Double glazing is very effective at cutting down on the heat that can go through your windows.
- Some form of shutter could be installed outside of your windows; these greatly decrease undesired heat entry or loss.
- Place insulation above your ceilings, or adding to the insulation you already have. There are several types of insulation, thick 'bats' of fibrous material can be placed on top of your ceilings, or sheets of material that reflect heat can be placed immediately below your roof (on an existing roof this will involve lifting and replacing the roof). Ideally do both.
- Heat only the part of the house that you are using rather than the whole of the house; better yet, use forms of heating that warm you, not your house. Do you need to heat your bedrooms, laundry, toilet and bathroom at all? An electric blanket uses a tiny fraction of the power needed to heat a room; most of the power goes to warming you, very little is wasted. An electric radiator used only to warm you when you really need it in the bathroom will use far less power than heating the room.
- Don't set the heating in winter any higher than it needs to be for people appropriatly dressed for winter (perhaps 20°C) and don't set the cooling in summer any lower than it needs to be for people appropriately dressed (perhaps 26°C) and consider using a fan, either on its own or in conjunction with an air-condtioner; a fan uses little power and moving air will cool you more than still air.
Consider using wood-fired heating (wood is, or can be, sustainable and greenhouse neutral). A wood stove can also heat your water in winter. (See solar water heating elsewhere on this page.)
If you need to use electrical heating consider heaters that predominantly radiate their heat rather than heating the air in a room. Radiant heaters can heat you more than the rest of the room, thus saving power. Heaters that warm the air close to them without mixing it with the cool air in the remainder of the room are best avoided; the warm air simply rises and forms a layer close to the ceiling while the lower part of the room gets little benifit; see the heat map on the right. A convective heater with a fan is generally better than one without a fan because the former mixes the warm air with the cold.
Thanks to Australian Consumer's Association (Choice) for this
illustration.
"This heat map of a test room clearly shows the stratification effect created by a convection heater when there's little air movement in the room: the yellow bar at the ceiling represents about 22°C, the purple bit (where your cold feet would be) about 14°C."
It is important to consider where the heat from a heater will go; warm air rises, cold air falls.
Reverse cycle air conditioners can use much less power for a given amount of heating than many other types of electric heaters. For cooling consider using a much more energy-efficient evaporative air cooler, below.
Consider using a fan to cool you rather than an air conditioner; it uses much less power. A fan doesn't cool the air, but you feel cooler in moving air than you do in still air at the same temperature. A ceiling fan can also be useful in cold weather for bringing warm air from the top of a room (where it is of no use to you) down to where the people are.
This, Chinese made, 'Prima' fan uses from 37W to 46W, depending on the setting; much less than a refrigerated air conditioner.
Evaporative air coolers can use much less power for cooling than reverse cycle air conditioners, so long as the humidity in your area is usually low. To be effective an evaporative air cooler needs to have dry air comming in from outside and the moist air leaving the house; you will most likely need to have some windows at least a little way open. Be aware that many evaporative air conditioners and coolers are very poorly designed and inefficient.
- Work from home
- If you can work from home part (or all) of the time rather than
commuting to work, do it. Travelling, even by public transport, is one
of the greatest produces of greenhouse gasses.
- Ethical investment
- If you have investments, consider either pressing the companies
involved to become sustainable or moving your investments to ethical
and sustainable companies.
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