Wednesday, August 19, 2009

The energy crisis

There's much talk of looming energy problems - it's a staple of Nick Drew's blogging and even The Economist has now turned its attention to it. Today I see Brian Gongol has netted a story about battery development and how it could support the energy infrastructure.

But how much could we still do in the way of more efficient use, and non-use, of energy? According to this DTI report based on 2001 stats, the home uses 31% of the nation's energy (see Chart 1.3 on page 9). Chart 1.6 shows that in 2000, space heating accounted for 40% of all non-transport energy consumption.

More woolly pullies?

7 comments:

James Higham said...

Stay home in bed, under the duvet? More sex to warm the body?

Sackerson said...

Great ideas, keep 'em coming.

Paddington said...

I can only hope that controlled fusion is possible, and that we crack the problem soon.

dearieme said...

Ban central heating - in our climate it's just for cissies anyway.

Paddington said...

I remember those days - a coal fire in the living room, so that my front was hot, and my back cold. The bad thing is that those fires are horribly inefficient.

Anonymous said...

"the home uses 31% of the nation's energy"

And this is a bad thing?

People live in houses; they need to cook and keep warm. Isn't that pretty much the whole idea of life?

Sackerson said...

Anon, yes - but we could accomplish some of these things much more efficiently. They way we use ienergy in the UK makes us a hostage to Putin and others.