[Greenbuilding] living within means was ENERGY STAR Clothes Dryers Program Launch

[John Salmen]

There is a contradiction here as Americans with 'means' tend to consume more
not less. US energy consumption finally peaked in 2000 but that coincided
with both loss of jobs and personal wealth (income/means). 

 

Efficiency is tangible - defining sustainable usage is less so. US still
consumes double the energy of the EU on a per capita and 20% of world
energy. 

 

One of the paradoxes of how we look at efficiency in north America is that
it requires consumption of 'energy efficient' products to be efficient. 

 

The average US home size in 2009 was 2700 square feet (compared to 1400 in
1970) - how does one even begin to live within that box and live within some
global concept of 'means'

 

From: greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Reuben
Deumling
Sent: July-30-12 7:36 AM
To: Green Building
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] ENERGY STAR Clothes Dryers Program Launch

 

Corwyn's of course right on the money. 
My point was a smaller one: even within the limited if ubiquitous framing of
energy efficiency, many of our key appliances of today do not win over those
made 70-75 years ago.

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 4:53 AM, Corwyn <corwyn at midcoast.com> wrote:

I think you are losing the definition of efficient here.

However, the point is NOT to be as efficient as possible.  The point is that
we need to live within our means.  For energy, that means that if we aren't
using it sustainably, it doesn't matter how efficiently we are using the
energy.  If it is not sustainable, we will run out, and doom our descendants
to be without.

Efficiency often makes things worse.  Case studies have shown that
increasing efficiency of some machine sometimes INCREASES the total energy
used by the aggregate of all of those machines.

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