Comments on: Where are electricity demand reductions coming from? Not from where we hoped http://www.carboncommentary.com/2009/05/31/620 A critical appraisal of issues in the move to a low-carbon economy Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:59:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: energy reduction http://www.carboncommentary.com/2009/05/31/620/comment-page-1#comment-2172 energy reduction Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:21:44 +0000 http://www.carboncommentary.com/?p=620#comment-2172 <strong>energy reduction...</strong> After reading this post about My Battle For Alternative Energy: Backyard Climate Blog | ScienCentral ..., I am not sure I understand what you are trying to relate. Please expand on your thoughts a little more. Thanks... energy reduction…

After reading this post about My Battle For Alternative Energy: Backyard Climate Blog | ScienCentral …, I am not sure I understand what you are trying to relate. Please expand on your thoughts a little more. Thanks…

]]> By: Energy-Saving News http://www.carboncommentary.com/2009/05/31/620/comment-page-1#comment-2117 Energy-Saving News Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:45:40 +0000 http://www.carboncommentary.com/?p=620#comment-2117 <strong>Paltry Energy Efficiency Leaves UK Facing Large Post-Recession Emissions Rise...</strong> Recent analysis of the UK reduced electricity consumption implies that energy efficiency measures are still too scarce to impact emissions and competitiveness after the current economic recession. Electricity use in the UK for the first three months of... Paltry Energy Efficiency Leaves UK Facing Large Post-Recession Emissions Rise…

Recent analysis of the UK reduced electricity consumption implies that energy efficiency measures are still too scarce to impact emissions and competitiveness after the current economic recession.
Electricity use in the UK for the first three months of…

]]> By: Richard Patterson http://www.carboncommentary.com/2009/05/31/620/comment-page-1#comment-2115 Richard Patterson Tue, 02 Jun 2009 07:23:49 +0000 http://www.carboncommentary.com/?p=620#comment-2115 Electricity: you plug stuff in and it just works. We have a cultural meme about the meaning of electricity as a commodity everybody is entitled to use with the expectation of casualness and thoughtlessness. When the switch is flipped or a plug is inserted, we have a brain process mode for this action. It is in the same mode as the psychology experiments where rats are trained to press a bar to affect some change. It takes place from the brain's automation mechanisms, conditioned over years of habit and reward. Conversely, it simply is not practical to introspectively ponder each KWH. Humans like to think of themselves as rational, thoughtful, aware and purposeful creatures, as though all actions were sourced in the brain's equivalent of full active processor mode (FAPM). Fact is, if we had to run all of our actions through FAPM, we wouldn't get much accomplished in a day's time. We have created our own environments for occupancy and production with enormous levels of complexity and choice. As a service to our needs and desires, electricity is applied in trillions of points of drain to ground. We might be forgiven for this jig-jag of wasteful power drainage, except perhaps the seven thousand coal-fired power plants are fundamentally changing our home planet into an unknown and potentially sorrowful loss of the precious elements of an inherited biosphere. Personally, I don't imagine any way to change the elasticity of electricity use of sufficient magnitude until we apply automation, information and control in a tight relationship between real time direct service to human need with demand management as a system in place of the frivolous, thoughtless and careless permission of drain points like so many footprints on the sidewalk on Times Square. It is a different view of the meaning of electricity--not a commodity we attempt to price as cheaply as possible, but an enabler of human services integrated with presence, need and elegantly appropriate technology. But, who among us is willing to turn aside from the profligacy of modernity and industrialism that is willing to exploit the frontier outside our front door, for the adaptation of aware technology that lives in tune with each of us with a satisfied and fulfilled existence, as it modulates power in synch with the way our brains work and the way our lifestyles unfold? Electricity: you plug stuff in and it just works. We have a cultural meme about the meaning of electricity as a commodity everybody is entitled to use with the expectation of casualness and thoughtlessness. When the switch is flipped or a plug is inserted, we have a brain process mode for this action. It is in the same mode as the psychology experiments where rats are trained to press a bar to affect some change. It takes place from the brain’s automation mechanisms, conditioned over years of habit and reward. Conversely, it simply is not practical to introspectively ponder each KWH.

Humans like to think of themselves as rational, thoughtful, aware and purposeful creatures, as though all actions were sourced in the brain’s equivalent of full active processor mode (FAPM). Fact is, if we had to run all of our actions through FAPM, we wouldn’t get much accomplished in a day’s time.

We have created our own environments for occupancy and production with enormous levels of complexity and choice. As a service to our needs and desires, electricity is applied in trillions of points of drain to ground. We might be forgiven for this jig-jag of wasteful power drainage, except perhaps the seven thousand coal-fired power plants are fundamentally changing our home planet into an unknown and potentially sorrowful loss of the precious elements of an inherited biosphere.

Personally, I don’t imagine any way to change the elasticity of electricity use of sufficient magnitude until we apply automation, information and control in a tight relationship between real time direct service to human need with demand management as a system in place of the frivolous, thoughtless and careless permission of drain points like so many footprints on the sidewalk on Times Square.

It is a different view of the meaning of electricity–not a commodity we attempt to price as cheaply as possible, but an enabler of human services integrated with presence, need and elegantly appropriate technology.

But, who among us is willing to turn aside from the profligacy of modernity and industrialism that is willing to exploit the frontier outside our front door, for the adaptation of aware technology that lives in tune with each of us with a satisfied and fulfilled existence, as it modulates power in synch with the way our brains work and the way our lifestyles unfold?

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