Saving your energy

I've just watched the news on T.V., where people were being interviewed about price increases for electricity and gas. There seemed to be a lot of blame apportioned to the energy companies, but I'm not sure that's the whole story.

We could endlessly debate the merits of profit-making private energy suppliers versus the old system of public-sector gas and electricity boards. But we'd still be watching T.V. news stories about price increases.

The profits of the energy companies are the most obvious and visible aspect. The less obvious one is that the gas we use in our homes, and to fuel our power stations, is increasingly coming from abroad. The U.K. isn't self-sufficient in gas, even though we have all the North Sea oil and gas rigs. They can't meet the demand on their own, so the gas we use is being piped from further and further afield.

The longer the pipeline, the more it costs to operate and maintain it. Also, when you deal with overseas countries, you often deal in overseas currencies that can change in value - as you'll know if you've been abroad on holiday. More importantly, when the energy companies buy the gas, they're only a middleman. The foreign gas supplier can put their prices up when they want, and if the energy companies or their customers (that's you and me) aren't willing to pay the extra, then the supplier doesn't have to give it to us. But because there are limited places to obtain gas, the choice of alternative supplier is also limited.

Obviously, if the supplier's price is too high, then few energy companies would buy from them at all. But the point I'm trying to make is that your home energy supplier doesn't have as much influence on prices as you might think.

So the way to pay less for your household energy in the long term is to cut back on use. Changing supplier might also save you save you some money, but the wholesale price to your supplier will likely be the same, and it's the one thing you can't change.

You could also look at more efficient appliances when it comes time to buy replacements. For example, wood burning stoves are touted as a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to a gas fire. We're still trying to figure out if a wood burner is cheaper overall though, as the cheapest log burner we can find is around £400, plus fitting and some necessary building works. When an electric fire costs around £100, and a basic electric heater is less than £20, then I'm not really sure which is the cheapest option overall. Will the increased cost of electricity outweigh the low purchase price? I don't know, but I think I'd need my calculator to work it out!

In the meantime, the cost of energy will increase, and unfortunately, none of us will have much choice but to carry on paying for it. The best we can do is try to use less, which will help the environment too.

Image: Gas Flame by George Shuklin, Public Domain. Obtained via http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gas_flame.jpg

In Transition

I've just finished watching a documentary film called In Transition. It's about communities that are trying to become less dependent on oil, and products made from it.

I thought it was worth mentioning, because unlike many films of this genre, it manages to do this without any hysteria or evangelism. Sure, some of the people interviewed are die-hard environmentalists. But most of the people are just ordinary folks trying to make a small change, and in the process, making new friends in their local neighbourhood. Like the chef who proudly announces that all the ingredients for his dishes come from within a 50 mile radius of his kitchen, and he personally knows the farmer who supplied the meat.

There were a few technical terms in the film that weren't explained fully (I'm guessing there probably wasn't enough time). So if phrases like "Peak Oil" don't mean much to you, then you might not get the most out of the film. It's still worth watching though. There's a different film that explains these terms in a wonderfully simple way, which I'll share in a future post.

Here are some great quotes from the film that I couldn't help noting down:

 - In the US, a carrot travels an average of 1838 miles in order to reach the dinner table.

 - In the UK, 50 percent of all vegetables and 95 percent of fruit come from overseas. There are crops like garlic that we could grow in the UK, but instead we import them from China and other countries.

 - In England, 142,000 acres of orchards have been cut down in the last 100 years (I've noticed myself that even in the British apple season, we import apples from overseas).

All of this means a lot of transportation, which invariably uses oil. A consultant presenting the issues to a local council meeting summed up the problem: "We're moving from a time when our consumption of fossil fuels - be it oil or gas - is the key factor in our economic success, our sense of wellbeing, our personal prowess; to a time when our dependency on fossil fuels is our degree of vulnerability".

Despite this, I thought the film ended without any definite conclusions. However, there was an invitation for viewers to send in their own stories on video for use in a sequel.

You can now watch the film online for free, in the window below, or via Vimeo.Grab a mug of tea first - it runs for about 50 minutes.


In Transition 1.0 from Transition Towns on Vimeo.