I don't think that follows, but it's always worth looking at what actually saves power.
1 minute at 2 kW, maybe 4 times a day is an average of 5.5 W. There may well be lots of other things averaging more than that in a house. An incandescent bulb for a couple of hours will use that much.
Right, so you have 10 devices in your house, where you manage to save 5.5w per day. Thats 55w total. Congrats, you've saved yourself 1.1p per day. Over a whole year, that may be enough to buy a beer.
In the days where a light bulb was 60-100w, then turning it off when you left the room for a few minutes made sense, as that does add up, 10 times quicker. But, cos the EU is pretty damn good, they pushed us to stop using highly inefficient light bulbs, and instead rather than using 60-100w, we're using 5-10w per bulb. We've already made the big leaps in energy efficiency in many cases. It used to be that we were told to turn a TV off completely, and not leave it on standby cos it used so much power. Since 2013 all TV's sold in the EU have had a standby consumption of 1W or less.
Using this logic, since all individual items is relatively small usage, people may as well do nothing other than cut back on their home aluminium smelting.
Yes. One of the biggest mistakes the green campaigns have made is making us believe that our personal choices would be able to make a real difference. Sure I may be able to find a way to save myself 100Wh over a day. I may be able to save a few units of what ever it is my heating comes from by turning the thermostat down and huddling under a blanket to watch the TV. But every single one of them will reduce my quality of life disproportionately to the environmental returns we get. Why would I want to make my home colder, when out the window I can see an Oil refinery[1]. Everything we do in our own homes short of installing a heat pump, and installing fuck tons of insulation. Is marginal gains. 2/3rds of a fuckall here, half a buggerall there. It's a rounding error on a rounding error of a nothingth in the grandscheme of things. And all it does is make us feel miserable to make us feel like we're doing our bit.
This is not the time for individual actions on small scales. We need MASS change across whole of society. By far the biggest user of electricity in the UK is the petrochemical industry[2]. Same as the biggest user of Cobalt is oil refineries. And there we can't recycle it at the end of it's life. This is something that is lost in the "But if we all drive EV's the grid will explode!" arguments. A reduction in oil based fuel consumption, should see a reduction in the need for energy in oil refineries. Will it be 1:1. No idea. But if we can switch off a few oil refineries, it's gonna make a massive improvement.
We're fixated on the whole air travel bad thing, and I must admit I fell for this one big time too. Is air travel horrendously polluting? yep. For many of us, a single flight will be the biggest single emission of CO2 in our year. But, aviation is 2% of global CO2 emissions. If we reduce that by half, that means we've cut global emissions by 1%. Not quite a rounding error, but it's hardly massive. If we can convert Cement, and Ferrous metal production to not rely on fossil fuels, and make them zero emissions. We'll take over 10% off global emissions. At that point things are starting to have a measurable impact.
Make transport zero emission, that's another ~10%. Those heat pumps I talked about making space heating zero emission, that's another ~10%. Now we're at 30%. Now it's starting to make an impact. "But how do we power all this!?". Well I got a radical suggestion: BUILD RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION SYSTEMS. We're using about 34GW of power in the UK. The largest wind turbines in the world are 16MW each, even at a capacity factor of 50%, that's 5000 turbines. One every kilometer for a line 500km long, and ten lines in total. Built offshore. Have you seen the size of the offshore wind resources we have? Any spare power can be used to make H². Add a few grid scale batteries. And then, cover the built environment in solar. Look around at all the big flat roofed buildings in our towns and cities. Warehouses, supermarkets, superstores. Cover every square meter that we can with solar. Cover the carparks with solar. Give people free solar on any suitable roof they have. The UK has amazing renewable energy resources available, we just have to use them. And before you all scream "But how are you going to pay for it?". Easy. Tax the fucking rich.
Insulate Britain have got a lot of press, and on the face of it their argument is sound, if we insulated every building in the UK it would improve our energy efficiency. But, I think they'd find a much better impact if they could persuade the government to fund heat pump development. If the UK government was to turn round to industry and say "We'll guarantee the purchase of 10000000 heat pump units, from the first company that can make them for £1000 each." Coupled with a voucher system so that people can have a heat pump fitted to their home and their gas boiler or shitty storage heaters scrapped, for free. The time for piecemeal tinkering was 30 years ago. Now we need big decisive action that will actually have an impact. Shivering in a cold home wrapped in a blanket, having carefully measured out just the right amount of water for your cup of tea, might make you feel like you've done your bit, but really all you're doing is making your own life worse, while letting industry pollute with impunity.
Sorry if that sounds defeatist. But That's the reality. You may save yourself a few quid each year on your bills, but unless you are on a pretty low income, it's unlikely to have a meaningful impact on your bank balance.
J
[1] I can't, there's tree's in the way, and it may be storage rather than a refinery, but you get the idea.
[2] Trying to get reliable source on this, so hold off your [citation needed].
