 | Physicist and the IEA: facing the facts on energy in our lives |
A “wake up and smell the coffee” article in The Times of London reminds us of some truths about energy we use to get us up and running every day. The article covers physicist David MacKay squaring off against the IEA as he knocks flat misconceptions about our gadgets and the widely-believed good done for the climate.
The Times of London article is one of many to review a new e-book by MacKay, physicist at Cambridge University. As written, take-home message from the article is that appliances left plugged-in are perhaps the least of our worries.. For example: your phone charger “consumes only 0.01kWh a day”, and switching off your phone charger for a day saves as much energy the same as a hot bath, or driving an average car for one second. Going farther above and beyond cars and chargers, What about planes? MacKay calculates a roundtrip flight from London to Cape Town uses “nearly as much as the energy used driving an average car 50km a day, every day, all year.”
These are only light-weight soundbites. The article carries the right message – don’t lose sleep at night if you left your coffeemaker plugged in all day, but definitely don’t feel satisfied if that is your good deed for the day – there are much bigger appliances to fry.
But a more serious review of MacKay’s work by an expert is necessary to explain how the book is particularly well-organized and accessible, covering the basic areas applicable to energy and peppered with easy arithmetic, all the while staying engaging and entertaining.
Facing the facts in this fashion helps clarify the implications of the recent report on consumer electronics by the International Energy Association (IEA). Of course, the IEA employs many intelligent people, many physicists, and some perhaps more in-touch with gadgetry than MacKay. As well, the report does indeed report a coherent snap-shot of electricity consumption by end-use purposes and devices. The report analyzes trends (expect 3.5 billion mobile phones, 2 billion TVs, and 1 billion personal computers by 2010; many of us can already count 20 to 30 gadgets and appliances in our home). It has helps to re-frame an intentionally provocative Associated Press (AP) headline, “Charge your iPod, kill a polar bear?”
But the IEA recommendations lead us to believe in a scenario where cutting 40% of household electricity with current technology avoids 260 GW and $130b before the year 2030. The policy prescription they propose to get maneuver consumer momentum in the right here is not incorrect – it is incomplete.
While the report was tabulating a little-studied aspect of gadget fetishism, it did not adequately address that the whole electricity bill is greater than the sum of its parts. Cutting load demand by increasing device efficiency is good in theory, but the physical reality and consumption the habits obvious in historical trends reminds us that the power supply deserves a more central place in this question.
Reading MacKay might lend help to seeing through the IEA study, good as it may be. We need insight into how fewer, better gadgets might relax the pressure on newer, bigger power supplies. After all, current electric power technology is the horse that pulls the gadget cart, and it isn’t going to be put down any time soon.
Looks can be deceiving, but MacKay’s site is chok-full of useful insight.