What to learn from the Australian EPC?

Here is an Australian Energy Performance Certificate. You can compare the UK version here. Some obvious differences are:

• More, small scale / easy recommendations (good)
• Includes water efficiency (good)
• Linked to a govt loan programme (good in principle)
• Happy-smiley design (bad!)

Oh, and wait a minute - worth mentioning that the Australian government pays ~£120 for each certificate. Sounds good, but in practice it's been a nightmare for everyone involved. The $10,000 loan element has since been withdrawn - too expensive and too complicated, apparently. A lesson for any new UK government thinking of launching a similar scheme.

Carbon Census Song

So here it is, the Carbon Census Song - our contribution to the Take One Small Step competition. If you'd like to support us click here to watch the 1 minute video and give us your vote. Many thanks to Joy Mills for putting this together.

Introducing the Carbon Census Rule of Thumb

How much power do you use when you're not using any power? Surprisingly, not zero. Take my house for example: it's a quiet Saturday afternoon, the family has gone out and everything is turned off, but our power monitor is reading 170 watts. How so? After 5 minutes poking around I found the culprits: microwave, radio, TV, DVD and a list of other things.

These devices draw a tiny amount of power, but they draw it all the time. That's the problem. So I spent another 5 minutes figuring out how much this 'background demand' is costing me. According to a really rather elegant coincidence, it turns out that 170 watts of background demand will cost about £170 a year. That's about 1 tonne of CO2 or 30% of the average UK electricity bill, just for stuff I'm not even using.

Let's call this the Carbon Census Rule Of Thumb: 1 watt of background power costs £1 a year.

(Interested in why this works? There are about 10,000 hours in a year, and a kilowatt hour of electricity costs about 10p. Well, just under 10,000 hours actually and just over 10p, but the rounding cancels out making the answer nice and easy.)

Lib Dems adopt Reverse Pricing

Great news, the Lib Dems have committed to introduce reverse pricing in energy. I believe they are the first major political party to do so, let's hope the other parties follow suit.  Here's what the Lib Dems say:

Protecting low income households is a good idea, but not with a social tariff. It would be better to help low income households consume less energy (e.g. by switching away from electric heating) than to subsidise prices. For more info read our article of 26 March which introduces the reverse pricing idea.