Energy — If everyone lived as we do we’d need 3 planets to support us

Q: How many Portobello folk does it take to change a lightbulb?

Typically 30% of your domest­ic elec­tri­city bill is spent on light­ing your home. An energy effi­cient bulb costs more to buy than a nor­mal one — but in its longer life­time it will save you about £36 per bulb.

If each house in the coun­try installed three energy sav­ing bulbs, it would save enough energy to run the coun­try’s street lights for a year.

If every­one in Europe switched we’d save 28 mega tonnes of CO₂ — the out­put of 12 medi­um sized power plants.

What if we didn’t just change our lightbulbs?

Energy used close to where it’s made saves 69% on effi­ciency, and avoids the aver­age 7.4% loss incurred in long dis­tance transfer.

As well as embark­ing on ways of dra­mat­ic­ally redu­cing our energy use through insu­la­tion, reduced car use, pro­du­cing food and everything we need closer to home, should we be cam­paign­ing for com­munity-owned renew­ables schemes in Portobello? … small-scale wind, bio-mass, sol­ar, wave power and small-scale hydro.

PEDAL sug­gests Portobello-pro­duced energy!