The focus is on going green in today’s eco-conscious world. But sometimes what scores you points in one purchase won’t even raise an eyebrow in another. Let me give you one example.
Imagine I sold my 5 litre petrol V8 car (before you recoil in horror, no, I don’t have one) and bought an all electric Toyota Yaris. The eco-warriors would rush to applaud me and buy me an organic carrot juice out of appreciation.
Yet if I made an equally worthy transition and ripped out my gas-fueled cooking hob for a totally electric induction hob (same fuel as my imaginary Yaris), the same eco warriors wouldn’t even look up from their cold lentil soup. You have to ask why.
The same factors prevail in both transactions. Both outgoing products consumes a fossil fuel derived from hydrocarbons. The car, petrol, the gas hob, natural gas. Both new products consume electricity. Why then the difference in perception?
all in the eye of the beholder?
I would say it was conditioning. Cars are bad. the cure is to buy a bicycle or an electric or hybrid car. Cooking isn’t seen as bad yet, so throw as many pebbles in that particular pool and you’ll never get a ripple.
No, you’ll have to wait until Climate Rebellion start to glue themselves to your worktop before that happens. You have to question the intelligence of the green lobby if they can make such a profound judgement in one area then totally ignore the same criteria in another.
turning up the temperature on UK heating
Here in the UK, the Government has made a bold commitment to ban gas central heating boilers from new-build houses. Hurrah, the greens shout.
But the (endangered) elephant in the room is the only non-fossil or carbon fuel alternative is electric heating. The problem is, that form of heating hasn’t had any development for over 50 years and is horrendously inefficient, consuming vast amounts of electricity as it basically works by introducing a virtual short circuit to generate heat, dissipating the voltage to ground (think of it as pouring away the soup you’ve just cooked) and generating heat as a side effect only.
The irony is that the demands on the National Grid if everyone did that would black-out the UK and force us into importing – yes, you guessed it – fossil fuels to generate the electricity to heat our nice new homes.
the spark of an idea or a damp squid?
The huge issue with electricity as a form of consumed energy is that you simply move the nasties down the cable. You need to generate the power to be green, not simply plug into the existing electrical infrastructure.
I have no problem with more efficient consumption. LED lamps, for example are infinitely more efficient than incandescent lighting. Better engine management in modern vehicles is similar; It just does the job more efficiently. But the operative term is efficiency, not dogma.
We need to look at innovation, not windmills or waterwheels that were great for medieval villages but to power a major industrial nation for centuries to come?
Nuclear, hydrogen fuel cells and other innovations are being starved of investment because there is too much focus on expediency and being seen to be green. Just because we paint something green, it isn’t necessarily an eco solution. I do like my induction hob though…