{"id":910,"date":"2010-04-26T15:36:48","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T19:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=910"},"modified":"2010-05-20T14:16:40","modified_gmt":"2010-05-20T18:16:40","slug":"40-less-electricity-a-new-york-city-energy-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=910","title":{"rendered":"40% Less Electricity? An NYC Energy Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by Ingrid Wiegand<\/em><\/p>\n

Throwing away stuff from earlier years after doing this year\u2019s taxes, I came across a bunch of ConEd bills from 2003. Just for the hell of it, I decided to check the \u201cAverage Daily Electric Use\u201d graph that ConEd provides every month, and compare it with my current use. Wow! Was I surprised! When I added it up and averaged it, I had reduced the kilowatt hours I use every year by 40 per cent, and I was hardly trying. Take a look.<\/p>\n

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In the summer of 2002, my peak use for the month was 24kwh; in 2009, it was 12kwh. My lowest in 2002\/3 was 10kwh; in 2009\/10 it was 7kwh. Six years ago I averaged 14.6kwh\/day; over the last 12 months, I averaged 8.9.<\/p>\n

What have I been doing? Well, for one, I\u2019ve gotten good at turning off lights I\u2019m not using. Even though my bathroom has a skylight, the six 25-watt lights over the mirror used to be on most of the day, never mind in the evening. Even when the sun was shining directly into the bathroom, I\u2019d forget to turn the lights off because the sun was so bright you didn\u2019t notice any lights were on. The under-cabinet kitchen lights: the same.  On a rainy day, if I went into a bedroom to turn a light on, it might stay on even if the sun came out. I was a regular American, squandering energy like a perk that was going to expire if I didn\u2019t use it.<\/p>\n

Then I got the message. Energy is <\/em>a perk that\u2019s going to expire, but the perk turns out to be the habilitability of Earth with a capital E. It wasn\u2019t that I was a total jerk: I\u2019d been recycling my plastics, glass, metal and paper for years, because I knew that it was getting picked up and \u2013 well, recycled. But electricity? It was like the water a fish swims in, taken for granted \u2013 until it the price went up and it got my attention.<\/p>\n

I replaced all my incandescents with CFL\u2019s, excluding the ones over the bathroom cabinet, because CFL\u2019s with candleabra bases weren\u2019t available until recently. Because several of my lighting fixtures use halogen bulbs, it turned out I only had four regularly used incandescent lights beside the ones in the bathroom, but I noticed the difference in my bills right away.  I also got a new, much more efficient air conditioner. A new refrigerator is in the offing, and that should make an even deeper dent.<\/p>\n

It took months, but I\u2019m really good now at turning off lights when I leave a room. (I even turn off the lights in public bathrooms when there\u2019s a switch.) More recently, I got a set of electric plug controls with a remote. I put one where I plug in my computer surge protector so that all my computer-related stuff really<\/em> sleeps when I do. It\u2019s not like Verizon isn\u2019t keeping all the email that\u2019s coming in while I sleep, so my Outlook can collect it in the morning.  I put another on the plug for my main tv\/cable\/VCR connection. I kind of check once a week that there\u2019s nothing I want to DVR during any night, but it turns out that\u2019s not often, so that hasn\u2019t been a problem. A third disconnects my stereo system, mostly to keep the clock from sucking up juice at night, but also because anything that operates with a remote will do its vampire bit if allowed.<\/p>\n

Can Americans cut their energy use enough, soon enough to make a difference \u2013 not just on climate change, but on all the things that affect electricity use, like the amount of coal burned or the number of new electricity-generated plants required? If I can do this with a New York apartment, think what the average American can do, with a house that on average, contains 45 light bulbs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that residential electricity use is only about nine per cent of the energy picture, but most of the rest comes from our insatiable consumerism, from wanting more and still more of everything. But once you start turning off your lights, once you get careful about wasting energy, you start to think, when you\u2019re shopping: \u201cDo I really need that?\u201d It\u2019s the beginning of a different way of life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ingrid Wiegand Throwing away stuff from earlier years after doing this year\u2019s taxes, I came across a bunch of ConEd bills from 2003. Just for the hell of it, I decided to check the \u201cAverage Daily Electric Use\u201d graph that ConEd provides every month, and compare it with my current use. Wow! Was I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[425,284,164,427,90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=910"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1011,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/910\/revisions\/1011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}