Energy
Homes and energy
Our homes use so much energy they are responsible for over a quarter of the total UK carbon emissions. Our homes also cost us, on average, around £1200 per year to heat and power. Most of this expense comes from heating our homes, for example, a typical 3-bed semi will cost around £800 to heat (both space and water heating) and bigger, or detached, homes can cost a lot more than this to keep warm.
Carrying out a Home Energy Check yourself or getting an assessment with Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) done will help you understand how your home can be more energy efficient.
Resources
The gas, coal or oil, we use to heat our homes are known as primary fossil fuels. Fossil fuels will eventually run out. They are a ‘finite resource’. The electricity we use to power our appliances is still predominantly created from burning gas and coal – approx. 35% and 40% respectively. Hence it is sensible to use them sensibly and efficiently to ensure they will last us as long as possible.
A lot is talked nowadays about the notion of ‘peak oil’ or ‘peak gas’. These are terms that are commonly misunderstood. They do not mean that when we reach ‘peak oil’ that oil supplies are running out; rather that we have reached a point where our daily demand for oil has outpaced the daily supply of the stuff. This tipping point, whether it happened in 5,10 or 20 years (the jury is still out on the exact timing), will mean that suddenly the producers of the world’s oil will start hiking the prices up even more than they are currently – as the forces of increasing demand and reducing supply come into play.
The Bristol had the first city council to commission a report on Peak Oil and how it would affect our city. Click here for more.
Climate change
The overwhelming body of scientific evidence paints a clear picture: accelerated climate change is happening. It is thought to be caused mainly by human activities, and it could have many serious and potentially damaging effects in the decades and centuries ahead. Scientists are in agreement that the earth is warming, and that greenhouse gas emissions from our homes, from industry, from our cars and planes—rather than natural variations in climate—are the primary cause. Due largely to the combustion of fossil fuels, atmospheric concentrations of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), are at a level not seen for more than 400,000 years.
As a result of increases in these gaseous emissions, an enhanced ‘greenhouse effect’ (another term for accelerated climate change) is trapping more of the sun’s heat near the earth’s surface and gradually increasing global temperatures. The exact level of these increases are still open to debate, but a rise of just 2 degrees over the next century is enough to cause great, disruptive changes to the world’s climate systems. As we have been pumping great quantities of these gases into our atmosphere for about 150 years, we are committed to a certain amount of warming; our main mission today is to ensure future quantities of greenhouse gases are kept to a minimum to try to mitigate even bigger potential temperature rises.
The UK government has a target of reducing CO2 emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.
Security and prices
Energy security, and security of supply, is a big issue for most of the developed world, the UK included. In the mid-1990s, the UK became a net importer of both gas and oil for the first time since the discovery of large reserves of fossil fuels in the North sea in the 1970s. Nowadays we are ever more dependent on imported oil/gas from more and more distant locations; with a number of the regions we rely on being in the volatile Middle East.
The security of energy supplies is intrinsically linked with energy prices. When the UK was supplying its territories with oil/gas from its own waters prices were much more stable and supply not prone to disruption. It is thought that, as we come closer to a situation of world peak oil, supply issues will become more acute and that will undoubtedly be accompanied by higher fuel prices . The more the UK can equip itself with local, distributed, diverse energy supplies the more inured it will be against both security and pricing issues in the future.
This section was produced in collaboration with Paula Owen Consulting. An energy and climate change agency specialising in advice and training in all things energy and carbon related. Visit us at: paulaowenconsulting.co.uk
Paula is working closely with us at Bristol Green Doors through her work with Carbon Leapfrog.
