E-Day O-Dear
Remember it was E-Day yesterday? Well, E-Day was actually a 24 hour period from Wednesday into Thursday.
The whole point of E-Day was to reduce demand for energy by switching off unneeded devices, turning things off standby mode (mobile phone chargers, electric toothbrushes, PCs, TVs, Sky digiboxes, etc) and make an impact on energy use in this country just for one day!
And what happened? Well, E-Day seems to have been an unmitigated... DISASTER!
OK, that's a bit strong, but did we reduce our demand and use of energy? Did we f***!
Official figures from the E-Day site show that energy demand actually went up. OK, it was a cold night in some parts of the country but it was a pretty poor result.
Despite the effort that went into this action it's a disappointing result to a great idea.
One comment on the BBC website made us chuckle even though it was a tad on the sarcastic side; it went a little something like this...
"Maybe they should have used more energy in promoting E-Day"
Yeah, right... very funny.
The organisers of E-Day had expected a drop of something like 2-3% in energy demand whereas energy use actually went up by 0.1%. The 2-3% figure is apparently the same as if two whole coal-fired power stations had been "removed" from the national grid. That would have been quite some saving.
Let's hope there's a bit more interest in the next E-Day and we can all make a bit more effort, aye?
Comments
Lincolnshire Family (not verified)
Mon, 03/24/2008 - 16:06
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We started on the road to cutting our energy bills about five years ago. We couldn't afford to go out and buy new energy saving appliances in one go so instead we gradually replaced items as they reached the end of their lifes with low energy ones. We did change our lifestyle quite a bit too though. We are a family of five in a medium sized three bedroom house.
Our annual electric bill was just £200 last year with British Gas. Currently 4 to 5 units per day.
Our hot water, heating and cooking plus clothes drying, kettle boiling, toast etc is all done on a solid fuelled AGA. Previously we'd been burning anthracite (coal) but last year we started using wood instead as it is more eco friendly.
Our Total household energy bill including the electric, wood, coal and BBQ gas was £750 for the last year. At a time when everybody else was complaining about escalating fuel bills our bills actually went down! It wasn't easy to reduce it though and it took a lot longer than we had planned.
We knew about E-day but to be honest we couldn't cut anything else off as our 4 units daily is already extremely low usage for a family of our size.
Sadly most of the general public are either not aware of the savings possible or are too unwilling to give up their giant plasma screens etc.
The environmental groups and the media don't help matters by putting so much emphasis on small things such as energy saving bulbs and not leaving things on standby when they actually account for a tiny percentage of annual bills.
While we use energy saving bulbs in every light and we don't leave items on standby the largest savings were replacing the washing machine with a very efficient model, swapping the large 32" tubed TV with a small 18" LCD, insulating the bathroom and getting rid of the electric oil filled radiator, moving the fridge to the coldest room instead of the warmest and using a laptop instead of desktop PC - these things alone shaved £400+ a year off our electric bill.