I don’t think that anyone explains the predicament that we humans are in more clearly and intelligently than Richard Heinberg. I was disappointed to miss his Edmonton talk in February, but lo and behold, the entire thing was captured on youtube for our viewing pleasure (by no less than the City of Edmonton itself).
I watched all six 9-minute videos, and I recommend them to everybody.
Heinberg tells it like it is:
Left: Home Depot’s modern, efficient lighting. Right: Rona’s wasteful, antiquated lighting.
One of the hardest things about being aware and concerned about the environmental crisis is witnessing how many profitable planet-saving measures are ignored. Take lighting. Investments in new lighting technology can often pay themselves off in two years or less.
That’s why I’m frustrated with the approach taken by Rona Home and Garden. Rona’s President and CEO Robert Dutton recently claimed that “at RONA, we are committed to sustainable development from a social, economic and environmental perspective. This includes making a difference in Canadian communities…” (source).
And yet Rona store at 10450-42nd Avenue is wasting huge amounts of polluting electricity and money by lighting with 1960s-era technology. And that hurts my Canadian community.
Rona’s Dirty Old Technology
I did a walk-through recently, and came up with the following estimate of the 42nd Avenue store’s electricity use from lighting. This estimate is almost certainly biased in Rona’s favour because there is much information that I don’t know, so I’ve given Rona the benefit of the doubt as much as possible:
On the other hand..
The efficient lighting used at, say, Home Depot’s 6725-104 Street store (pictured above at left), could provide the same amount of light at a burn rate of 129,000 Watts.
Assuming that Rona has its lights on one hour before and one hour after closing, its lights are turned on for about 113 hours/week (source). If it updated to modern lighting, the Rona store on 42nd Avenue could save 3503 kWh per week, worth about $350. In case you’re counting, that’s 182,156 kWh and $18,216 per year.
Given that a kWh of electricity in Alberta is responsible for about 1 kg of carbon dioxide, Rona could therefore reduce the emissions of their store by 182 metric tonnes per year of CO2, while saving money in the process. It would be like taking 35 cars off the road for good.
Until Rona cleans up its act (in a profitable venture, I might add), its green claims will continue to ring hollow. Come on Rona Home and Garden! Do Edmonton and yourself a favour. Stop your polluting ways.
Note: My information comes from a contact that I have in the lighting industry. I believe that it is biased in Rona’s favour, and does not include factors such as motion sensors and variable lighting modes that could be incorporated with new technology.
The Bricor Hand-Held Showerhead only uses 4.2 litres (1.11 gallons) per minute
I've never needed a reason to conserve water. Simply knowing that half of the world’s population lives without easy access to it is enough to make me grateful for my easy life.
Other than gratitude, the reasons to conserve water are excellent:
Toilets account for roughly 1/3 of our water use. In the Mill Creek Net Zero Home we installed dual-flush toilets.
Our Toto Dual-Max toilets “get the job done” while keeping water use to a minimum.
We decided on Toto Aquia Dual-Max toilets because they reportedly worked well, and our plumbing supply company stocked them. So far, so good. read more... »
North American Natural Gas Production as of 2002
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"It’s not that hard to predict what will happen in the future (I will die; Fifi, my son Fallon’s stuffed orca, will eventually need restuffing, etc.) but it is very hard to predict with any accuracy when things will happen."
Robert X. Cringely (in a recent blog post)
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In 2003, the AUMA held a conference called the Alberta Municipal Energy Efficiency & Greenhouse Gas Conference. I always laughed at the title, because the real reason we were all there was high natural gas prices. "Expensive Natural Gas Conference" would have been more accurate, as prices exploded circa 2000, and suddenly we cared about greenhouse gases.
Conventional natural gas production (ie. the old, easy way to produce gas) in North America has been on the wane for some time now. It has most probably peaked and will continue its decline forever. This fact led many, including myself, to be alarmed at the prospects for natural gas going forward. I asked myself "how will the hundreds of thousands of energy-hungry houses and buildings stay warm in 2030?" I think that everyone should be concerned about the availability of finite resources instead of assuming that someone else will figure it out for us.
Unfortunately for the climate, a resource called shale gas has come into play over the past few years. Apparently there is a lot of it, and it is being brought on stream in large quantities. So the price of natural gas has dipped significantly, and the pundits are starting to talk about gas as a major player in North America for the next long while. While there are many unanswered questions about shale gas (such as how much energy is needed to get it out of the ground and the steep rate of well depletion), it seems that a continent-wide snooze button has been pressed on the subject of heating our homes and fuelling our industry with a depleting, finite resource.
We waste what is cheap, so cheap energy is bad news on many fronts. Interest in green building will decline, investments in renewable energy will be less than they would have been with pricier gas.
It’s frustrating that the apparent near-term abundance of natural gas will keep so many people apathetic about energy. Yet every day we approach the physical limits of growth. It’s not hard to predict that we will hit them. It’s not even hard to predict that we will hit them soon. What is hard is to get people to care when the price signal isn’t there, and when we have just bought ourselves another few years of complacency on the natural gas front.
Of course, peak oil is another story entirely.
