Energy Use I Am Directly Responsible For

Phil Scadden, a Dunedin based scientist, recently wrote "Sustainable Energy - without all the hot air: a New Zealand Perspective" using data from the Ministry of Economic Development, Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and the Electricity Commission. More: http://withouthotair.com/ and http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/wiki/sustainable/en/index.php/NZ

The report includes this chart:

Energy Use You Are Directly Responsible For


So Stuff, Cars and Planes makes up 70% of energy use I am personally able to do something about. I need to be thinking more about "Stuff".

1. Stuff 39% - We try not to buy much stuff, and when we do we try to buy second hand. TradeMe is great for that. We try to limit our purchases to the Wellington region.
2. Cars 25% - We sold our Toyota 1400 back in 2004. Since then we've managed to car share, hire, do without, use public transport, taxis and cycle.
3. Planes 15% - We're trying not to fly. We haven't been on a long haul flight since 2005.
4. Food 12% - Since Adam was born in Oct 2007 either Michelle or I have been at home every day of the week. So we're doing a lot more hm cooking. I'm not what the energy implications of that are. I don't think we've done anything to reduce our food related energy budget.
5. Home energy 9% - Most of this blog has been about my home energy projects - which has been fun.

Pelmets

I'm now working on installing pelmet above all the curtains. Pelmets help stop/reduce hot air being "sucked" behind the curtains as the cold air next to the glass falls to the floor. It also helps that our curtains drop all the way to the floor.


This is my first version - unpainted at this stage. That's the cheap heat pump I installed back in 2004 - still chugging along, keeping us warm. It's not as quiet as newer/fancy ones - but it does keep us warm.

More detail on my pelmet construction here.

Cheers, Paul