We pay an estimated monthly amount, but our meters are read and our home energy use (gas and electric) is calculated once a year. When our bill comes each year, it’s always the time to think about how much energy we are using and why, and think about how we can improve things. Since our bill just came and I was thinking about these things, I thought I would do a post about it and see if I got any interesting feedback from my fellow bloggers.
Anyone reading this has to understand my priority is using less energy without spending money in the process. I realize this can be a controversial position to take, but I have never believed much in the idea of doing good by spending more money.
I don’t buy the most expensive food available thinking it is the healthiest, I don’t buy every fertilizer and pesticide available thinking it’s going to make my garden grow better and I don’t think going out and buying all the latest energy saving appliances is doing any favors for the environment. I prefer to focus on the ways I can save energy that don’t involve buying things I wouldn’t need to buy for other reasons anyway.
Of course when I do need to buy a new appliance, I am always looking for the greenest alternative available for a reasonable price.
There are a number of personal circumstances that cause me to consume more energy than I would otherwise. My house is larger than most people in Amsterdam have, it’s not very well insulated and the windows are leaky. I have closed off as many rooms as possible and leave them unheated, and made as many small repairs as I can to the leaks. We also have our home thermostat on a timer and keep it as low as possible. The climate here is mild, and mostly our heat is off unless we turn it on because we’re cold. I would replace all of our windows with new double glazed windows if I could afford it, but realistically this is years away, and probably not until the windows are completely falling apart anyway. There are other similar decisions we have made that end up using more energy.
The Major Appliances
As it turns out most of our major appliances are pretty modern and new. In the last 3-4 years all of them gave out in one way or another and we had to replace them. We used the opportunity to get the most energy efficient models we could find. We have a new refrigerator, chest freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, clothes dryer and hot water/central heating combo unit.
I realize the clothes dryer is probably a controversial item for some people. Actually, until about 3 years ago we air dried all of our clothes on racks and didn’t own a dryer. This made laundry an almost constant chore and wet laundry a permanent fixture in our house. The Dutch government had an offer of a €200 subsidy when you bought a new energy efficient gas dryer, and since the price of a new dryer was €320, this covered most of the cost. It was a little bit of luxury we decided we wanted, and decided considering the 15 previous years we had done without a dryer it was an okay thing to do.
A gas dryer is common in the US, but very rare in Europe. I hired a plumber to install the gas line, and he said he had been a plumber for 30 years and never seen one before. As far as I’m aware, a gas dryer is significantly more energy efficient than an electric dryer, but it’s hard to know for sure because you can’t make a direct comparison of the two. A gas dryer certainly costs a lot less to use.
I have my doubts of the energy efficiency of my washing machine. It received both top ‘A+ ratings’ for energy/water use and cleaning clothes. After I installed it, and read the instructions, I became acquainted with the ‘intensive wash’ button. The instruction manual explained this option should be selected for all but the most lightly soiled clothes. Apparently the washing machine received it’s A+ rating for cleaning clothes with the button pressed and it’s A+ energy/water rating with the button not pressed. A portion of the energy efficiency rating is a result of a high spinning speed meaning the clothes come out drier. They then supposedly need less time in the dryer, but I have a very energy efficient dryer anyway. We also need to give all of our clothes an extra rinse or they are too soapy, putting the water efficiency in doubt.
What seems so far one of the best purchases is our water/central heating unit. We’ve had it a year now, and our gas use is much lower. The old one was also supposedly energy efficient, but the new one is clearly much better. Our gas bill is almost €500 less (30% reduction in energy use) compared with last year. Perhaps if I had given the matter a little more thought, I might have done better installing a solar hot water heater and buying a smaller and cheaper heating unit, but now that I have the new unit this isn’t economical any more.
The Other Things
Beyond the major appliances, we have a TV (old style CRT type) together with the usual stack of VCR, DVD player, satellite box, etc. We have several computers, which we normally turn off but are sometimes left on overnight. Together with the computers we have a wireless network and adsl connections with the associated hardware, all of which stays on all the time.
We have a conventional electric oven with a gas top, as well as a separate microwave/toaster oven. We have a few other kitchen appliances, vacuum cleaner, mobile phones, a couple of radios and a few other minor things.
We are not fans of compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), and don’t own any. Rather than buy one more expensive consumer item, with it’s own waste disposal problems, I prefer instead to use normal light bulbs with a lower wattage and be more diligent about turning off lights when they are not used. We also have a number of halogen lights.
I realize not using CFLs is going against the popular trend now, and another controversial decision on my part. The energy my lights use is a small percentage of the overall energy consumption in our house, and I have saved far more energy in other ways than I could by switching to CFLs. CFLs are made with heavy metals, and especially if you don’t have a way of properly disposing of them when you are done, are not environmentally friendly. In my case, most normal light bulbs are made in Europe, but the CFLs are made in China, have to travel farther and don’t support the local economy as much.
Probably the most important reason I prefer normal light bulbs is because the technology behind them is too old to be patented, unlike CFLs which are patented by companies like Philips.
It seems to me the reason it’s so important we all switch to the new light bulbs has much more to do with corporate profits than protecting the environment. The Dutch government has promised to phase out normal light bulbs soon, at which point we won’t have a choice any more because it won’t be possible to buy them.
Anyway, this pretty much sums up the hows and whys of our energy use.
Choosing an Energy Supplier
I guess like many places now, it’s possible to choose an energy supplier and buy your gas and electricity from many different suppliers, some of whom claim to be greener than others for different reasons.
There’s a strong emotional impulse to buy your electricity from a company that claims to generate is all from wind or solar power, or other renewable source. At the same time it’s not that clear to me this is actually the case.
Everything is interconnected, so there is no guarantee a particular electron comes from any particular company, and indeed we are promised if anything happens to the company you buy energy from like it goes bankrupt or their generation facilities fail, you will continue to get energy from some other company.
Since the so called dirty power plants will continue to operate, even if I pay more money for green energy from another company, what’s to say I’m not just subsidizing the use of dirty energy by someone else. In theory the dirty power plants will generate the same amount of energy regardless if I buy it, so if I buy green energy won’t that just make it cheaper for someone else to purchase the dirty energy?
The issue of clean and dirty power generation is much more politics than anything else. Companies are the biggest consumers, and governments establish prices with subsidies and taxes, which determine what energy companies decide to purchase. Treaties like the Kyoto Protocol establish limits that are likely to have a much more significant impact on how power is generated than what energy company I choose.
In the case of Europe, the electric markets have been privatized with one important exception, standard ‘grey’ electricity from the local energy company. I don’t like the idea these energy markets have been privatized, and I prefer to continue to buy my electricity from a regulated source as long as it’s possible. Remember what happened to the state of California and Enron a few years ago?
In theory it’s possible to save money by switching energy supplier, but in fact prices fluctuate a lot and it’s not always true in the long run. In order to keep your costs low, you may have to keep an eye on prices and frequently change energy companies. I prefer to save money and be green by using less energy than by switching companies.
These are the reasons I’ve chosen not to choose a ‘green’ energy company.
The Bottom Line
Gas:
Use: 1660m3
Usage Costs: €1002.73 annually (€83.56/mo)
CO2 Emissions: 2948 Kg
Electricity:
Use: 4507 kWh
Usage Costs: €1007.44 annually (€83.95/mo)
CO2 Emissions: 2572 Kg
Fixed Costs:
Gas: €170.05 annually (€14.17/mo)
Electricity: €87.65 annually (€7.30/mo)
Taxes and Subsidies: €-198.02 (€-15.59/mo)
It’s a little interesting the CO2 emissions are on my energy bill now, but especially for the electricity I question how accurate or biased it is.
Is the electricity figure only for my energy company, the country as a whole or a European average? The answer is very important to understanding the meaning of this figure, and I don’t know what it is.
Update: After doing a little research I found a little more information about the CO2 emissions for electricity. It is related to the choice of energy supplier, in my case ‘grey’ electricity from the standard supplier, probably from the natural gas plant near Amsterdam.
I also discovered my gas use is a little below the national average of 1820m3 per year, my electric use a lot higher than the national average of 3500kWh, and my overall CO2 emissions also a little higher than the national average of 5221Kg.
Where Does it Go?
The gas is mostly used for central heating and hot water, but some is used by the stove top and clothes dryer.
My working assumption is my electricity usage is divided up roughly as follows:
Dishwasher and Washing Machine: 50%
Lights: 10%
Computers and Internet: 15%
Everything Else: 25%
Everything else means mostly standby appliances, refrigerator, freezer, TV and kitchen appliances. I should probably break this down a little further, but many of these things I’m not sure how much energy they consume.
We’ve done our best to reduce the number of standby appliances that stay on, but we still have a few.
We just bought a more energy efficient computer for primary use, so maybe next year our energy use for this will be less.
On average, we use our dishwasher and washing machine for about one load each per day (our washing machine is much smaller than most standard US models).
So how does all of this compare with the decisions you’ve made, your usage and costs?
I’m not sure if this is what you would have expected, but here’s what we’ve done.
We’ve gone from an electric stove/oven to propane. We cannot get natural gas where we are; we no longer allow our children to leave their computers turned on. Why do they want to do that anyway?
Our main source of heat (which we need about 6 – 7 months out of the year)is grade 2 kerosene, burried tank but the furnace fan is electric. We supplement by using a woodburner. The guys bring home trees that have been downed in storms and such. Cleaning up people’s wooded lots as long as they are hardwoods. No trees get cut down.
We used to have a non-electric night each week. This led to playing board games and reading a book aloud. When we read a book that we all liked, we had several non-electric nights in a row 😉
We hope to incorporate solar energy, at least to heat our water.
Lynn,
Thanks for the comment. There are so many people living all over the world under different circumstances, and I think it’s really interesting to learn how different people address this issue.
I like the idea of an non-electric night!
As far as leaving computers on, we sometimes download large files from the Internet or work on programming projects that mean we have to leave the computers on for an extended period.
It really only occurred to me while I was writing this post that I don’t have a good reason for leaving the Internet and wireless network on all the time — I guess it’s just the feeling that it’s there and ready for use in case it’s needed.
I’m going to think about a good way of switching this off when it’s not being used. The problem is sometimes the frequent surge of power being turned on and off wears out this kind of equipment faster. Maybe we can do without the wireless network.
We live in the Mid atlantic region so although we just replaced our washer/dryer with a substantially more efficient set, we air dry all our laundry for about 6 months of the year.
My kids’ sport clothes are made of some weird synthetic material that is virtually dry once my washer’s super efficient spin cycle is done, so i air dry these year round.
We haven’t switched all lights to CFL’s (can’t with many of our fixtures) so like you, we keep the lights off as much as possible. Last night three of us were reading in the living room with one lamp on. It meant we were all squashed together on the couch but that is warmer anyway.
Our biggest energy drain is our hot water heater. I would like to switch to a tankless system. Anyone out there using one already? What is your experience?
Ours is a tankless system. Not many people in this part of Europe have a tank.
Mostly it’s great. The only thing that can be an issue is that is does both hot water and central heating, and can only do so much all at the same time.
It’s not really an issue with the one we just bought, which is very strong, but our previous system and the one we had years ago when we lived some place else could really only do one thing at a time. That meant if you took a shower, the central heating would go cold, and if you turned on the kitchen sink while someone was in the shower, the shower would go cold.
With only two of us it wasn’t so bad. It just meant we had to be a little careful when we turned on the water, and be willing to accept a cold splash in the shower every once in a while. With more people in the same house, there’s more of a chance of more people trying to use the hot water all at the same time. It just depends on how many people you are, how many bathrooms, and what your tolerance for the occasional mishap is.
Also like I said the newer systems seem to be able to do more at the same time than the old ones, so this may not be much of an issue any more. Ours is a Nefit brand, and it was expensive but we like it. It uses less energy than a water tank and you have unlimited hot water because it’s heated on demand.
A tankless system works well with a solar water heater on your roof, because the tankless systems almost always accept hot water input and only heat the water as necessary. That way you always have hot water, but when possible it will be heated by the sun. In this way too, you may be able to buy a cheaper conventional tankless system, because the solar heater will do some of the work so the cost may end up being almost the same in the end.
In cold climates solar hot water heaters have to be drained from time to time and other measures have to be taken to protect them from freezing, so expect it to need a bit of extra care.
I haven’t owned a clothes dryer for over 7 years. In the spring and summer and partial fall of the year, the clothes are hung outside. The rest of the year, they hang inside near the wood/coal burning stove, which we also use to cook with as it is located on the main floor off the kitchen.
Anthracite coal is a natural resource where we live…. I know people don’t like the coal as an energy source..but the stove heats our entire house, drys our clothes and cooks our food…so it is kind of a trade off.
There are still many places in Europe where people burn coal. In particular Wales, other parts of the UK and some other places with a history of coal or coal mining.
When we bought our house there was a fireplace where coal was probably burned. The flue had been removed during a renovation about 10 years earlier, and once the flue was gone it was no longer legal to replace the flue or use the fireplace. The fireplace itself wasn’t very special and only about 50 years old, so we just removed it so we had more space.
I don’t think it’s legal to burn coal any more in Amsterdam, but some people still have wood stoves. New houses aren’t allowed to be built with wood stoves, and as people remove the wood stoves or flues they aren’t allowed to replace them.
There’s nothing really wrong with burning coal or wood, as long as the air quality can be maintained. This is something that’s pretty hard to do in cities these days, but outside of cities it’s often no problem.
I think the people who are against the burning of coal are trying to compare burning it at home with a coal fired power plant. In my opinion you just can’t compare someone burning a few kilograms to keep their house warm, with a power plant burning tons of the stuff so people can run their air conditioners off the electricity.
We’ve got all CFL lights in our house, the result of working at many green fairs promoting cloth nappies alongside the energy efficiency people who so often had CFL freebies.
As a result of thinking carefully about peak oil issues and local sustainability, we’ve moved towards valuing wood/coal as our best heating provider. Currently our water is electrically heated as the kitchen fireplace is too old for a permit. In winter we heat the lounge and all the bedrooms with a wood burner and our home maintenance goals are all about improving insulation. We’ve made good progress in the 14 months we have owned this house.
Our other consideration energy-wise is car use. We run one car for our four person household and aim to keep it that way. I’d like to get our weekly petrol use down but living in wetville with no public transport makes that challenging.
Thank you everyone for the great comments on this post!
As far as the car goes, that’s an issue for us too. We have a Honda Jazz (called a Fit in some places), and was one of the most fuel efficient choices we had when we bought it. We drive way too much right now, and we are trying to figure out ways of driving less. Steph needs the car for work, and that won’t change. In search for gardening space, I have been driving long distances, and I am going to try to cut down on this.
In terms of other lifestyle choices aimed at conserving energy, we are both vegetarian and we have cut way back on air travel in the last few years. We are also very careful about wasting food in general, because producing almost any food outside of a home garden or a local organic farm is very energy intensive.
All of these lifestyle choices probably make a much bigger difference than home energy use, but it all matters in the end.
New year is time to report the use of water where I live in Denmark. We (two) spent 72 m3 of tap water. It’s fairly low, but then we have skipped the daily shower, washing ourselfes at the sink instead, in favour of a weekly shower. I suffer from MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity), and being gentle to my skin improves health a lot.
I never use public transport in morning rushhour – too much perfumes spoil my ability to work. Therfore I go by car, toyota yaris verso, running 18 km/l through center of Copenhagen.
We live in a house in a garden, heated by gas, using 1636 m3 a year, house being insulated and windows superlow energy dobbleglazed. We also are strict about opening windows 2-3 times a day for 5-10 minutes, as this removes airparticles and lower the humidity. With low humidity air absobs less energy heating, thus saving gas and money.
Our electricity consume is 2388 Kwh. We have over the years been buying lowenergy material when it was necesary to change an item. Little by little most of our lightbulbs are shanged into compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). They need speciel recycling, but even without it is a good choice, since the saved electricity would produce more waste (lot of coal based electricity around here). A their light doesn’t include all wavelengths, we mix a little other bulb types in. We use the clothdryer in winter, rest of the year we dry cloth on strings in the garden. Neighbors do the same, as garden dryed cloth has a much better smell and texture. You could say it’s a surviving virtue of former times housewives.
All electronics, tv, pc etc. is disconneted every time after used, as we don’t like to pay for nothing (standby use can be shockingly high)
It’s a good thing to contemplate annually on the energy expenditure.