Cambridge people & planet

Elec­tri­city, heat­ing, trans­port­a­tion, con­sum­ing: on aver­age every cit­izen uses 6,000 Watt per day – too much, as experts com­plain. They would like to reduce energy demand to a third of this, mak­ing major cuts to cur­rent life-styles necessary.

A life with 2,000 Watt per day is feas­ible. It is not a slo­gan alone, but based on ser­i­ous sci­entific cal­cu­la­tions. In an exhib­i­tion in Ber­lin called “Ener­gie = Arbeit” (energy = work) energy experts demon­strate, how the demand for elec­tri­city, oil, coal and heat can be driven down sig­ni­fic­antly – if cit­izens, politi­cians and entre­pren­eurs are will­ing to co-operate.

The con­cepts are prin­cip­ally known – lim­it­a­tion of hous­ing space, intel­li­gent trans­port­a­tion con­cepts, con­scien­tious con­sum­ing. Already in 1998, the ETH in Zurich for­mu­lated a vis­ion for a 2,000-Watt soci­ety (Vis­ion einer 2,000-Watt-Gesellschaft). A per­man­ent pro­duc­tion of 2,000 Watt – with this amount, the energy needs of every cit­izen on earth should be covered by the year 2050, regard­less whether they live in an indus­tri­al­ised or devel­op­ing country.

The amount of  2,000 Watt has not been ima­gined arbit­rar­ily, it is the earth’s aver­age energy demand per-head. Only because in many poorer coun­tries a sig­ni­fic­antly lower amount is con­sumed can the indus­tri­al­ised coun­tries afford the extremely high amounts they use.

Low energy con­sumers include Uganda (40 Watt per head), and Haiti (106 Watt, all based on data from 2006). While India reached 532 Watt in 2006 and China reached 1,879 Watt. These fig­ures are still rising. When cal­cu­lat­ing the energy con­sump­tion, all forms of energy usage are taken into account – whether they are heat­ing, elec­tri­city, the petrol/gasoline used by vehicu­lar trans­port or travel by aero­planes – then con­ver­ted into Watt-hours and then added up for a whole year.

A Com­mon Amount for All Humans

The idea of a 2,000-Watt soci­ety could con­trib­ute to the solu­tion of the con­flict between indus­tri­al­ised states and the rest of the world that led to the fail­ure of the cli­mate change con­fer­ence at Copen­ha­gen.  The 2,000 Watt could, that’s the idea, be valid for all humans equally.

But how ambit­ous such an idea is, can be seen when look­ing at the cur­rent con­sumer data from West­ern Europe and the US. The lat­ter are far ahead with 11,000 Watt, but the aver­age West­ern European, for example in Ger­many, already uses almost 6,000 Watt.

A reduc­tion to 2,000 Watt at first sounds like a drastic cut in life-style. The sci­ent­ists at ETH Zurich have cal­cu­lated, what can be done with 2,000 Watt per day:

• Use a warm shower for two hours
• Run 50 wash­ing machines
• Travel 64 kilo­metres in a car (using 7.5 litres of pet­rol per 100 kilometres)

The exhib­i­tion “Ener­gie = Arbeit” illus­trates, how the tar­get of a 2,000-Watt soci­ety can be reached (see the table “2,000-Watt soci­ety for­mu­lated for Ger­many” below). Elec­tri­city gen­er­a­tion, mobil­ity, con­sum­ing and hous­ing – there is not an area in life that does not require dra­matic change.

“The 2,000-Watt-Society is, in prin­ciple, pos­sible”, says Hans Her­tie, of the ifeu-Institut für Ener­gie– und Umwelt­forschung, Heidel­berg. His insti­tute has cal­cu­lated a scen­ario for the exhib­i­tion, in which the energy-usage is reduced to a third for a West­ern European.

The tar­get of a 2,000-Watt soci­ety can­not be reached for noth­ing. The elec­tri­city gen­er­a­tion has to be com­pletely changed to renew­able ener­gies, the scen­ario demands. The neces­sary high invest­ment into de-centralised power gen­er­a­tion will require also increased elec­tri­city pri­cing, the experts agree.

The largest con­tri­bu­tion to sav­ing energy is achieved in the sec­tor of hous­ing. Insu­la­tion and mod­ern win­dows, how­ever, are by far not enough to reduce the cur­rent 1,600 Watt to 440 Watt. Single houses use more energy than liv­ing in com­munal hous­ing – and many West­ern Europeans would have to agree to give up on their ideal of per­sonal prop­erty by not own­ing their own houses. This is one of the demands, that would lead to energy savings.

Closely con­nec­ted is a new mobil­ity. The keywords are: city of short-distance con­nec­tions, renais­sance of the bicycle, car-sharing instead of personally-owned cars. Com­muters, who travel long dis­tances between their own houses and the office, do not fit into such a concept – neither does fre­quent air travel.

Con­sum­ing itself offers a large poten­tial. The need of an aver­age West­ern European, cal­cu­lated at an aver­age of 1,780 Watt, would have to be reduced to 700 Watt per day. This requires that people mainly con­sume items that have a high degree on longev­ity. The amount for food could be reduced by more than 500 Watt, if the West­ern Europeans, for example, could lower their meat con­sump­tion and move over to loc­ally pro­duced food.

All these changes in con­sum­ing beha­viour would be dif­fi­cult for many people, some might see it even as an eco­logy dictatorship.

Trans­lated and expan­ded by Erich Meyer, Copy­right 2010.

Based on an art­icle by Hol­ger Dambeck

Fur­ther URLs can be found on:

• Exhib­i­tion “Ener­gie = Arbeit”
• Vis­ion einer 2,000-Watt-Gesellschaft by ETH Zurich
• IFEU — Insti­tut für Ener­gie– und Umwelt­forschung Heidel­berg GmbH

Appendix 1