This seems remarkably low given the utility we get out of them. I was expecting at least an order of magnitude more.
The headline particularly seems weird given the actual numbers. Lots of things take 2% of power, why not target them?
I did ask why they kept the house so cold and was told "because we can". I got it: they had a really hard start off in life and were now able, through parental sacrifices etc, and their own hard work, be able to basically show off and keep their house cold in summer. I've seen the same in TX - my brother worked for EDS near Fort Worth a while back (20 years back). The attitude is the same there and again, I understand the individual stories of being able to conquer something that they could not growing up. Obviously you also get the "because we can" from multi millionaires too but for what sounds like a different reason but is really the same.
In the UK we constantly get badgered about water use. The fucking stuff falls out of the sky with monotonous regularity. The place is a series of islands. The Atlantic is off to the left and that's a lot of water. What is really wrong is our management of the stuff. There is rather a lot of technical debt in our water management system and it will need real money to fix.
Faffing about a TV isn't going to save the world - that bollocks is for politicians and fossil fuel companies to victim shame consumers instead of giving a shit.
A TV uses eleccy and that can be solar/wind/unicorn farts or good old fashioned gas or liquidised puppies.
My home's underfloor heating is eleccy and hence seriously expensive but I am told that my supplier - Shell Energy - only uses renewables to deliver it (Shell? RLY?). I originally signed up with a "green" supplier but they went bust along with a few other shyster energy suppliers hereabouts when the shit really hit the fan. Ukraine invasion nightmare. OPEC opportunistically taking the piss as usual and massive companies filling their boots post a pandemic.
I can almost feel the pain in Saudi and Shell.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/reports/2009/sta...
I think you meant to state that Florida's energy (not electricity) expenditures are amongst the lowest in the US.
A Tesla model S has between 60-100kwH battery depending on the model.
So a TV can be powered for 1/10th-1/20th a year with one Tesla charge.
In the US, our electricity generated ~0.85lbs of carbon emissions per kWh. Some places (California) can run part of the day entirely renewably. The EPA says a gallon of gas generates 20 lbs of carbon. A single car tank of 20g generates 400lbs, while a Tesla would generate 85lbs, and a year of TV would generate 765lbs. a model s Tesla has a 400m range, while the average American car has 22mpg, so that’s why I picked a 20g tank.
If running the TV 24/7 stops 2 trips a year by making the home more pleasant, it’s a carbon positive. If those same people who like the “pretty photos” drive an electric car, each “tank equivalent” is 1/8th a year of TV.
I certainly don't have my TV on all the time, but I don't think much of my energy consumption as it is predominantly renewable and ultimately the superfluous usage is negated by any unnecessary driving due to my car's combustion engine. If anything, the larger concern is almost always expense, as prices here are roughly the same as there.
I don't have much of a point to make, just thought it was interesting to compare. My peers and I are pretty worried about the situation in the US, though.
TBH I'm not too worried. Not in the head-in-sand way, but in the optimism of the future way. The US largely has issues with coordination but tends to lurch in the right direction on things like this once momentum builds. The economics of it will inevitably lead to the healthy outcome, and enough people care to pressure big industries (slowly...). We've been rapidly converting to renewable energy lately, so we're starting to make big moves in the right direction. Thankfully we're a rich nation, and somehow have endless money to burn. It's hard to coordinate, since we have a geographically large nation to power, and an unfathomable appetite to use energy.
I'm jealous of your nation, which seems to have a sensible populace and leadership, relatively high wealth, and a relatively constrained geography with ample sources of power.
Edit: Hmmm. According to gpt-4, the average TV would incur about .02 kg of CO2 per hour of usage, assuming a typical electrical grid mix in the US. While it estimates that driving 1 mile emits avout 0.1 kg of CO2.
If that’s the case, 5 hours of TV is roughly equal 1 mile of driving. Interesting.
Of course, if the grid has a higher percentage of renewables or the car is electric, that changes things.
Beauty and art are important for human welfare and are worth spending resources on.
Neither beauty nor art are available through Netflix's streaming platform.
Indeed, even one of the greatest encyclopaedias in Norway mentions “Maslows behovspyramide” in their article about Maslow. https://snl.no/Abraham_Maslow (article is in Norwegian.)
Or learning how much is that?
And fixing DC power use is easy I comparisons.
Alone google s 24/7 renewable plan puts a lot of pressure on the industry
At least for the rich westerners, that data center is quite essential for the household electricity consumption
The problem is everything, all together. All the 2%s each need to take action in their own way.
Compare private passenger cars which are ~12% of global CO2 and there are no practical ways to decarbonize that.
This is different from the layman use,for us “trivial” means “Super easy.”
"One day Shizuo Kakutani was teaching a class at Yale. He wrote down a lemma on the blackboard and announced that the proof was obvious. One student timidly raised his hand and said that it wasn't obvious to him. Could Kakutani explain?
After several moments' thought, Kakutani realized that he could not himself prove the lemma. He apologized, and said that he would report back at their next class meeting.
After class, Kakutani, went straight to his office. He labored for quite a time and found that he could not prove the pesky lemma. He skipped lunch and went to the library to track down the lemma. After much work, he finally found the original paper. The lemma was stated clearly and succinctly. For the proof, the author had written, 'Exercise for the reader.'
The author of this 1941 paper was Kakutani."
To wit, German coal plants currently emit 10 times as much CO2 as the whole French airline industry.
Perhaps because those things are not increasing at the same rate and are not projected to exceed 2% in the near term.
https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-and...
It'll probably go to 10% in 2 decades if unchecked. The IEA analysis is completely outdated because it was made pre ChatGPT (As evidenced by the many references to crypto, which is no longer relevant).
Granted, its very easy to boost power efficiency in data centers, given the high margins and low pollution, so the industry is putting huge efforts into restraining power consumption in data centers.
Having lived much of my life without an Internet connection, I wouldn't overvalue the utility, either. My life is better, but not that much better today.
Okay, let's do; if you hadn't posted this comment (on HN, a social media platform), what would you have done with the time?