CURBING WASTE: Simple actions like cutting back on food waste or properly inflating tires on your car could collectively cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as one billion metric tons.
Image: © iStockphoto.com
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
Energy efficiency seems to make rational economic sense—the less energy used, the more money saved. Yet, in the real world it's actually competition with neighbors rather than cost savings that can drive people to turn down their thermostats, install insulation or simply switch off the lights when they leave a room. Such is the lesson of a host of efforts, ranging from a group called OPOWER's comparative use utility billing to switching from miles per gallon to rate vehicle efficiency to gallons per mile.
Now a new collaborative study from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Garrison Institute's Climate, Mind and Behavior Project reveals that such simple actions—from taking one fewer flight per year to wasting less food—can add up. The environmental group estimates that if all Americans adopted 14 such steps over the next decade the country would avoid one billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020—or the equivalent of the entire annual greenhouse gas emissions of Germany.
"Much of this is eliminating waste—and most waste costs you money," says NRDC's executive director Peter Lehner. "If all Americans did take a fairly modest range of actions, most of which actually save you money, we can make a big difference."
The recommendations, in addition to flying less and wasting 25 percent less food, include: carpooling or telecommuting once a week (75 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) saved by 2020, if adopted by all Americans); maintaining your car or truck, such as keeping tires properly inflated (45 million metric tons of CO2e); cutting the time spent idling in a vehicle in half (40 million metric tons of CO2e); better insulation at home (85 million metric tons of CO2e); programmable thermostats set higher (80 million metric tons of CO2e); reducing electricity demand from appliances that are "off," so-called phantom demand (70 million metric tons CO2e); using hot water more efficiently, such as washing clothes in colder water (65 million metric tons of CO2e); buying EnergyStar appliances when old ones wear out (55 million metric tons CO2e); replacing incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents (30 million metric tons CO2e); eating chicken instead of beef two days a week (105 million metric tons of CO2e); increased recycling of paper, plastics and metals (105 million metric tons of CO2e); "responsible" consumption, such as buying less bottled water (60 million metric tons CO2e).
"We make bad decisions all the time," says Sabine Marx, associate director at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, thanks to incomplete information or other barriers to action, like high up-front costs for things like insulation. Overcoming those "doesn't mean we have to manipulate people's minds," Marx says, but rather make good decisions easier.
For example, rates of organ donation vary widely within Europe, from 100 percent in France and Poland to 17 percent in the U.K. and just 4 percent in Denmark. The difference cannot be ascribed to different cultural views about organ donation but rather whether the country in question has a policy that is opt-in (check this box if you want to donate your organs) or opt-out (check this box if you do not want to donate your organs). "We think we're rational," says economist John Gowdy of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. "But really it's the person who designs the question on the back of a driver's license who made the choice for us."
NRDC, the Garrison Institute and others hope to bring this kind of choice editing to the world of personal behavior. Part of this is a result of ongoing frustration with broader policy measures, particularly at the national level, when it comes to confronting climate change. "If Congress does enact something, it will be completely inadequate to the task," says Gus Speth, former dean of Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. It would be a "first step," however, Lehner notes. The primary benefit of personal action is that it can start immediately, he adds.
But Lehner admits that his organization has no idea how to convince people to undertake these 14 steps in the next decade on their own. And there is significant danger that any energy efficiency undertaking ends up ultimately increasing energy use. "The rebound effect is quite clear," Speth notes. "You buy an EnergyStar refrigerator, but you buy two of them. We have to bring overconsumption into this. How do we get out of this consumerist trap we've been in?"
Economists Hunt Allcott of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University offer one answer in the March 4 Science: more funding for research into the "behavioral factors that influence energy consumption."
For example, programs like OPOWER's that compare electricity use among neighbors have been shown to reduce electricity use by 2 percent at a cost of 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. "If scaled nationwide," the economists wrote, "a program like this could reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from electric power by 0.5 percent while actually saving $165 per metric ton of reductions." And all from a simple bar chart—paired with a smiley face for energy-efficient behavior—on an electric bill.
See what we're tweeting about
28 Comments
Add CommentThere must be a financial incentive to consume less energy. If energy use could be personalized for users, and those consuming at very low levels were given tax credits and extra deductions in an energy scale inverse to income scaling--those that consume less earn more, it might help.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is also part of the global conspiracy /sarcasm/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnxiously awaiting the hysteria about how the climate doesn't need to be saved...
candide....please, no more arguing between the warmies and deniers. Instead, let's all work together to obtain good scientific data and then act according to the data, instead of all the politics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@sparcboy, sounds good to me, but how do you respond to those that question the data and the basics of how it is collected, especially with irrational questions?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisP.S. - A single post really isn't an argument without another party, a snide statement maybe...
"...really it's the person who designs the question on the back of a driver's license who made the choice for us."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood interaction design saves lives!
gary: "There must be a financial incentive to consume less energy."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this---------------
There already is.....consume less, and your electric bill is less.
Would you mind to interest how the forest monk in THAILAND spent their day life.How they carry on their life,then you will know how extra energy you consume.TO SAVE THE EARTH IS HOW YOU SAVE YOU NEED. NIRVANA.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd like to see SciAm go on a 14 step program to stop oversaturating the readers with global warming articles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love the comments about needing a financial incentive to save energy. Saving energy saves money- that is the financial incentive. Those of use who care or who want to save money just need to change our habits and be rewarded with lower bills!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there any actual fact that will cause the editors at SA to stop promulgating this hoax?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWait. I already know that answer to that.
"I'd like to see SciAm go on a 14 step program to stop oversaturating the readers with global warming articles." - Soccerdad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSoccerdad refuses to be educated.
"Is there any actual fact that will cause the editors at SA to stop promulgating this hoax?" - Frgough
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrgough also refuses to be educated.
For some... Death is the only release from a life of self imposed ignorance.
Yet again we all dance around to avoid the real issue. Human overpopulation is going to kill this planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReducing energy consumption only delays the inevitable.
No one leaving a message here is an expert on climate, including me. Neither are the editors of SA. Climate is very complicated we have to depend upon experts. 97% of climatologists believe that humans are significantly raising the temperature of the planet. Could the experts be wrong? Of course, and it's possible that 20 years from now we'll be told that based upon additional data and improved climate models that global warming is not longer a valid worry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor now, however, we have to go with the data we got and the interpretation of the data that experts make. Prudence would dictate that we act as though global warming is a real danger until the experts change their minds.
MCAce,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you sure it isn't 97.2%?
No doubt about it dude. Smiley faces can save the world!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLou
www.online-anonymity.us.tc
I agree with Jarvan, without population reduction it's a lost cause. Now, how is that even possible when our economy can't seem to exist without "growth".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow do you propose implementing population control without taking away women's rights, sterilisation, communist government intervention (ie. china), and every other unethical breach of human rights.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTurning off your lights and consuming less is a much better option.
How about we think realistically instead of regurgitating the same drivel.
@ no quizzle: "How do you propose implementing population control without taking away women's rights, sterilisation, communist government intervention (ie. china), and every other unethical breach of human rights." Now isn't that the question of the decade. Reducing the population directly gives the impression of causing some sort of holocaust, and nobody in their right mind would suggest something like that, because even if it would work (I'm NOT saying it would) everybody would condemn whoever suggested it. Sterilization is next in line, but then there's the issue of who gets sterilized and who decides who gets sterilized. Logically the "better fit"- people who are smarter, more hard-working, with fewer genetic defects, would be untouched, but again, everybody would condemn such actions as racist and evil, so that idea is out the window too. I disagree that taking away women's rights would reduce the population, from what I've read the opposite is true, it is in places where women have fewer rights that population growth is fastest, because the women literally can't say no when their husbands want sex, and they can't make them wear condemns either. And of course there is also the possibility of not taking direct action, but rather educating people as to the consequences of the exploding population, and providing easily accessible condoms. But then there is the issue of conspiracy theorists promoting the idea that it is all a conspiracy by the evil white people to wipe out Africans (I think South Africa had a problem with this, I'm not sure though, it might have been somewhere else). Also, there's the 800 million member Catholic church which is stuck in the Bronze Age on issues of family planning, they are only making things worse in that regard. Heck, even our favorite inmate Kent Hovind has promoted the idea that the "New World Order" will try to reduce the world's population to about half a billion so they can more easily control people, and he has a decent sized following of uneducated sheeple here in the US. So, yeah, population growth is the elephant in the room, and every possible method of disposing of the problem has enormous obstacles of one form or another. Unless we go interplanetary (I want it to happen soon but I doubt it will), our population will come down quite a bit, either by us or Mother Nature. But by not polluting, at least we can buy some time before the population must decline (or we colonize other planets, in which case nothing to worry about).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou may be correct there is no such thing as climate change that works for me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am more concerned about SMOG that makes it impossible to breathe, strange stuff gets in my lungs, and I get sick for weeks, how about we get rid of SMOG!
Almost everyone I know is always making bad jokes about LA and its SMOG. What about the smog in Denver, Phoenix, Portland OR, China, England, etc I bet they would like to get rid of SMOG. CLEAN AIR WOULD BE WONDERFUL!
Everyone knows SMOG is caused by cars, coal burning, andmethane in the dumps, etc. LA has not incinerated anything since the early 50's so wood burning can't be the problem.
What I am getting at is...What would be so bad about cleaning up the air? I sure can't come up with any drawback in clean air.
Climate change seems to be the problem...ok you could be very right these is no such thing as climate change, I can get my arms around that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I have a problem with is...SMOG...that stuff that makes it impossible to breathe, and when you breathe strange stuff gets in my lungs, which make you sick for weeks, how about we get rid of SMOG!
Almost everyone I know is always making bad jokes about my hometown LA and its SMOG. On by the way did you know Denver, Phoenix, Portland, London, China, etc. have SMOG. Everyone knows and says it is from driving cars, coal burning, methane in the dumps, etc... LA has a real problem. FYI, LA has not incinerated anything since the early 50's, and all the other places have cutback on driving and we SILL HAVE SMOG. What I am getting at is...What would be bad about HAVING clean air? I cannot come up a single drawback with any clean.
@ fisixisfun,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou read me wrong on the womens rights bizzo.
I support 'Half the Sky', so I know what you are saying.
What I meant was, women's right to choose whether to keep a child/abort a child/the amount of children/whether it is safe to go through with a pregnancy etc.
Because where does it end.
But then again to become a type I civilisation, the one world government thing is pretty much inevitable.
We just got to keep as many rights as we can, cos you know it's most likely gonna be a 'man' making these decisions and look at the way that's turned out so far...
- Fact: Arctic sea ice, lowest recorded level 2008
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- Fact: icebergs the size of states cleaving off in Antarctica
- Fact: Vast majority of glaciers retreating
- Fact: CO2 levels at highest measured levels in more than 600,000 years
- Fact: disproportionate number of weather records set in the last 10 years
- Fact: Seqa levels have risen, especially over the last 20 years
- Opinion (unsupported): mans activity has nothing to do with this.
"How do you propose implementing population control without taking away women's rights, sterilisation, communist government intervention (ie. china), and every other unethical breach of human rights." - Confused Little Boy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou make having a third child so economically burdensom that it is exceptionally uncommon.
Still FonCused?
"What I meant was, women's right to choose whether to keep a child/abort a child/the amount of children/whether it is safe to go through with a pregnancy etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause where does it end." Confused Little Boy
It only ends when population levels stabalize, for the larger the number of people, the more they intrude on my rights and the more their freedoms must be curtailed as a result.
Still FonCused?
An improvement : Instead of reducing time spent idling in your car : Buy an electric bicycle to ride around on, if you are too tired after a hard day's work to pedal. Say goodbye to traffic jams and keep your car for occasional necessary long runs. The cost per mile is derisory. Invest your resulting savings in green technology...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is true, but it means that to increase incentive the energy cost should rise
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI already do all those things and more and have done all my life. It's not about what you don't do it's about what you do. I have saved thousands of dollars by living a conservative lifestyle. I may be saving the planet, but I know for sure I am saving my money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this