Something like half a year ago, there was a short article in the Economist that highlighted a fascinating chart made by Vattenfall, one version of which is below. The issue is about reducing carbon emissions and the cost of cutting them. Different measures cost different amounts of money. In the chart below, the measures below the horizontal line have a negative abatement cost – by doing these things, all parties involved would cut consumption and save money. As pointed out in the article, at a macroeconomic level they would therefore boost, rather than reduce, economic growth. And the good news is that there are quite a few of these “low-hanging fruit” also; check out the chart (click to enlarge):
So it would appear that these “win-win-win” cases are the actions that we should take immediately without any hesitation – the result is so clear that of course these things are already being done, right? Right?!
I wish. Stuff like lighting improvements and better insulation pays themselves back in remarkably short times, yet almost nobody cares about doing anything about it. Again quoting the Economist article:
People find their electricity bills too boring to think about [..] people clearly do not care enough about cost.
How incredibly sad.
For more information, see the resources below. I would recommend checking out at least the Vattenfall PDF presentation and the short Economist article.
Resources:
- Economist: Irrational incandescence
- Vattenfall: curbing climate change
- Vattenfall: Global Mapping of Greenhouse Gas Abatement Opportunities
- Australian Government Greenhouse Gas Abatement Programme
- Compact fluorescent bulbs from bulbs.com (for 110V only)
