IT industry plugs into UK.gov green scheme Intellect, the UK’s trade body for the technology industry, has signed up to a government plan to phase out energy-guzzling consumer electronics products. The organisation's consumer electronics council will join the government-led scheme alongside the British Retail Consortium and retailers to look at ways that manufacturers …
...sounds impressive, but it's not so much in reality. Domestic energy consumption is about 30% of total UK energy use (alongside transport = 34% and industry = 22%). Lighting, appliances and electronics together come to only 9% of that domestic usage, or 2.7% of UK total. So even if standby power and light bulbs get "significantly reduced", the effect on total energy consumption will be insignificant.
But Something Must Be Done, so why bother whether there is any point to it?
Those stats are exactly the same thing the Govt has done with speeding stats to get a good excuse to wang out more speed cameras and reduce the number of trained traffic officers on the road - GATSOs cost less than pensioned up public servants, y'see.
besides, the if the Govt was serious about reducing carbon emissions, they would be pushing for nuclear far harder. The potential downsides of nuclear [some waste that needs to be stored, some sites that need to be built at a high carbon short term cost] are far smaller than the downsides of not building nuclear plants and relying on the woeful 'renewables' supplies, which make up about enough power to boil half a dozen kettles and two three kilowatt electric heaters. And that's if there is a breeze. On a quiet day they would barely power four Rampant Rabbits.
I hope GreenPeace remember that when the lights go out in the UK, and France is happily still watching telly without a problem once the oil runs out, thanks to them having a decent chunk of nuke-based electric And the oil *will* run out... In the not hugely distant future. Whch is a far, far bigger issue than carbon emissions, period.
Steven R
always seems to me that govs are constantly running round trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted... after they opened the stable door..
cars use the same amount of gas as 10 years ago because despite the increases in efficiency in the engine department, cars are now twice the weight with strengthening bars and airbags to meet govt targets on safety.
now they're eyeing set top boxes?? but aren't they pushing the whole "switch of your standard television set and watch something less boring instead on digital"?
digital radios.. what do they consume compared to stuff we've had for the last 60 years?
I'm not some neo-luddite, but (there it is), what do we really get out of it? Better sound quality so you can here the inanities of radio 1 in clearer stereo? 999 channels of repeats? Hands up if you've seen every episode of wheeler dealers or road wars at least twice.
if they were even remotely serious about this then they'd regulate all electrical equipment to have an off switch instead of standby, not as well as.. how about having a mobile phone charger where the input to the primary transformer was only active if there was a phone attached to it. just something to cut the electickery to the whole device when not in use. It's not hard.
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