GREENer HOUSE

My Rinnai

I saw frost for the first time in 2007 today. My wife has started to grumble about the cold. And the stores are full of heaters for sale, all of them claiming to be energy efficient. It’s time to review which heating options will warm your home without heating up the planet too much.

First, the worst: electric underfloor heating and open fireplaces. Talk to any underfloor heating salesperson, and they will tell you that underfloor heating is incredibly efficient. Talk to any homeowner who has had it installed, and they will tell you that their toes are very warm on the tiles (don’t these people own slippers?) and that their electricity bill shot up the day they turned on the underfloor heating.

The issue is not so much whether underfloor heating is efficient or not. It’s a form of central heating, and most South African suburban houses are not built for central heating. They have big, draughty, single-glazed windows, and uninsulated walls and ceilings. When I moved into my house, each room had a brick with big holes in it to let in outside air, for heaven’s sake. To centrally heat such a house with coal-derived electricity is an environmental abomination.

Open fireplaces have lots of charm, but two big drawbacks. The first is that most of their heat goes up the chimney, and in doing so, draws cold air into the house through any leaky door or window it can find. Nature abhors a vacuum. The second drawback is that, whether burning wood or coal, they emit lots of pollution up the chimney.

According to The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, by Michael Brower and Warren Leon:

On a per-household basis, the most polluting option is wood heat. The main reason is the very high emissions of particulate matter from uncontrolled fireplaces and wood stoves. Particulates are given a heavy weight in our air pollution index because of strong evidence that they cause serious health problems.

I hate to diss wood heat, because it is carbon neutral, presuming that a new tree is growing in the place of the one you are burning. A good compromise is a modern, super-efficient wood stove, such as the ones sold by Franco-Belge or Morso. The best wood stoves produce one-twelfth the emissions of a typical fireplace.

Electric heat in all forms is relatively efficient, but that isn’t a great help because generating the electricity from coal is very inefficient, and releases far too much pollution and carbon dioxide. If you are heating a relatively small space for a couple of hours in the morning and few hours in the evening, however, it is an affordable, environmentally tolerable option.

Research at the University of Pretoria found that the quickest, most efficient electric heater for warming a space is a fan-assisted heater with a thermostat. Fin radiator heaters—often called oil heaters because of the liquid circulating inside them—and other heaters without fans are slower to heat a room and let much of that heat drift to the ceiling.

Radiant bar heaters, which glow red, do not heat a space, but can efficiently heat any person who stays close to them. If you are staying put, reading or working, they may be your best option, particularly if you buy one with a low wattage setting. (1000 W or less) Leaving one of these heaters on when no one is in the room, however, is a complete waste. An electric blanket is another good option for anyone who isn’t moving.

If you are lucky enough to live in a Johannesburg suburb with piped gas, this is an excellent option, particularly now that South Africa is importing natural gas from Mozambique. Gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel and releases the least carbon dioxide, too. Bottled propane gas also burns cleanly, but its global-warming credentials are tainted by the fact that in South Africa much of it is produced from coal. Gas is also more efficient than coal-derived electricity because the heat from burning the gas goes straight into your house, bypassing the inefficiencies of generating electricity.

Burning gas in an open fireplace takes us right back to where we started, however, with heat escaping out of the chimney. My favourite gas heaters are the pricey, but super efficient ones made by Rinnai. My Rinnai has given me three years of faultless service. I keep large, 48 kg bottles of LPG outside my house, piped to a wall outlet where I connect the Rinnai. It produces heat in seconds and uses very little gas. (To find a local dealer, phone the distributor Jay MacDonald and Sons, 021 696 7930.) The only problem is that my children fight over who gets to sit closest to it when they turn it on in the mornings.

I’ll take a risk and produce an unscientific ranking of heaters from best to worst:

1. Gas heater with piped natural gas
2. Gas heater with LPG
3. Modern, efficient stove burning wood
4. Modern, efficient stove burning anthracite
5. Electric bar heater for warming people who are staying in one place
6. Electric fan heater with thermostat
7. Other Electric heaters
8. Gas fireplace
9. Wood fireplace
10. Anthracite fireplace
11. Electric underfloor

My wife called yesterday to say that she was at a shop, confronting a dilemma. She had to choose between a 2100 watt iron and a 1400 watt model. The salesperson told her that the 2100 watt iron was better because it was much more powerful.

I don’t like to make such decisions without thorough research, but I knew that our old iron was ruining clothes and needed to be replaced soon. So I gave her an answer so obviously in keeping with my reputation that she could have saved herself the call: “Buy the one that uses less electricity.”

Still, I worried that in my constant insistence on saving energy I had saddled my household with an underpowered iron that would need hours of extra labour to press out the wrinkles in our laundry. Ha! I checked the base of our current iron. This is an appliance so beloved of my housekeeper that she resisted its replacement even though was damaging clothes. The label read 1100 watts.

This is a constant theme of modern life. The mantra that more powerful must be better has soaked into every purchasing decision, from vacuums to vehicles. One of my best decisions in recent years was to ignore a salesperson’s advice to trade up from a 750 watt pump to a 1100 watt pump for my pool. Thousands of South Africans drive cars capable of driving 200 kilometres per hour on the German autobahns, even as a growing army of camera traps ensures that all of that extra horsepower is wasted. Philips, which made both of my irons, sells 11 models of steam irons in South Africa today, and every one of them boasts a higher wattage than my old iron.

My advice when confronted with the option to trade-up in power is simple. Resist. If the old iron worked just fine, did it really need to be using 90 percent more electricity? Clearly not. Our new 1400 watt iron works so beautifully that my housekeeper has forgotten she ever wanted to keep the old one.

I finally took my family to see “An Inconvenient Truth,” yesterday. This global-warming documentary has lasted for three months now at Cinema Nouveau, Rosebank, which suggests that the word-of-mouth has been positive. We were an unusually tough audience: I’ve already read hundreds of articles on global warming, while my children (ages 9-15) are accustomed to more entertaining fare. So I am happy to report that we tough critics give the film two thumbs up. (To read what other critics said, see this post.)
I was nervous taking my children to such a serious film. But as we walked out of the theatre, my son said, “that was a good movie, not the best movie I could have chosen, but a good movie.” I consider that high praise coming from an 11-year-old boy who has just sat through a serious, 95 minute documentary created for adults. When I stood up from my seat during the credits, my kids wouldn’t budge. They were watching the hints for reducing your personal contribution to global warming, which were interspersed among the production credits. “You already do all of those things, Dad,” said my eldest. I have a feeling that, at the very least, the film has helped them understand why their kooky father rides his bike to the post office and climbs up a ladder to clean his solar panels.

From my perspective, I found the film’s use of graphics enlightening. (And frightening.) I learned a thing or two, and the explanations of complex science were well thought out and organised. I thought that the movie successfully held the audience’s attention with a variety of perspectives, the human interest element of Al Gore’s life, and a sprinkling of humour.

My severest criticism would be that it seems very American. The brief asides about Al Gore’s political career may or may not interest South Africans. More worrisome is that in highlighting America’s role in global warming, An Inconvenient Truth inadvertently gives South Africans an opening to think, “we’re not the problem.” One graphic shows Africa’s tiny per-capita contribution to carbon dioxide production, next to America’s giant contribution. Since it was the only mention of Africa, it caught the attention of both my wife and my children. I explained to them that the millions of Africans who by necessity get around on bikes, buses, trains, mini-bus taxis and their own two feet take the credit for that low figure. If all Africans lived like the few South Africans who can afford R40 to see a movie, we would probably rival the Americans.

Eventually, An Inconvenient Truth will reach video stores and television screens. But I don’t suggest that you wait. Even an action-packed adventure film struggles to hold a viewer’s focus when competing with ringing phones and doorbells. This film deserves your full attention.

My family is away this week, so I’ve been playing with vampires. It’s not as kinky as it sounds. “Vampires” is the nickname for all of the nasty little electrical devices that suck juice from your electrical outlets even when they are supposedly off. The most common vampires are televisions and computer equipment in standby mode and battery chargers that are left plugged in even when they are idle.

I wanted to know how much these little suckers use in my house. Does their electrical consumption add up to something significant? The municipal electric meter was my measuring device. With no one else in the house to surreptitiously turn on a light, I could control exactly what was and was not drawing power.

First, to establish a baseline, I switched off all lights and geysers, and I unplugged everything, including the refrigerator. Over two hours, I used just under 0.2 kilowatt hours of electricity. I assume that means my security system draws a little bit less than 100 watts.

Then I plugged in every cellphone charger, battery charger and toothbrush charger I could find. I turned on two televisions at the switch and then zapped them “off” with their remotes, and I did the same with any video devices attached to them. I powered up the stereo amp and CD player. I plugged in my electric piano, but left it off. I booted up computers-then put them into standby mode-and I plugged in any printers or other peripheral attached to them. Finally, I plugged in two voltage converters that I use for a few appliances I brought over from America.

I want to emphasize that I was not using any of these devices. I wasn’t watching TV, listening to music or using a computer. None of the chargers had anything to charge. Nothing was plugged into the voltage converters. The lights stayed off and the fridge remained unplugged. The house was as dark and silent as you might expect it late at night when we are all asleep.

Two hours later, my municipal meter told me that I had used 0.5 kilowatt hours, which means that those thirsty little vampires were cumulatively lapping up 150 watts to do absolutely nothing. Left alone, that’s 3.6 kWh a day or 108 kWh a month, costing nearly R34 at Johannesburg’s electricity tariff. Over a year, I could be using 1 314 kWh, pumping well over a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and paying R410 for the privilege. It’s like having a leaky faucet that drips around the clock, but it’s leaking electricity instead of water.

Was my scenario extreme? Perhaps a little. Most people don’t have voltage converters. But otherwise our family lives like many suburban South Africans. Studies quoted by the Economist magazine in an article last year found that vampires account for 7 percent of domestic electricity consumption in France and up to 10 percent in some American homes. Vampires in the U.S. alone drink up the equivalent output of 18 typical power stations, according to the Economist.

I am sure that my family does not use all of those 150 watts as we sleep. My children know that remotes are for changing channels, not for switching televisions on and off; that’s the function of the button on the front of the TV. I turn my PC all the way off when finished using it, reaching behind the case to the switch at the back. And I only plug in chargers when they have a job to do. But this exercise did make me realize that there were gaps in my vigilance. I noticed that even when my electric piano was off, its AC/DC transformer at the wall was very warm, a sure sign that it was wasting power. From today, I have decided to switch the piano off at the wall when I’m not playing it. I will sleep better knowing that I have slain another vampire.

This blog is about practical changes that you and I can make in our daily lives to tread more lightly on the earth. It is not about broader environmental issues and policies. Still, I can’t help digressing a bit to touch on the explosive comments made by Tony Leon at Oxford University yesterday:

Rich people are good for the environment: they have fewer children, they can afford cleaner, efficient technologies, they use resources more efficiently, they don’t chop down trees for firewood, they don’t kill wild animals for food, and they have the time and the money to enjoy and protect nature.

I feel a little bit sorry for the Democratic Alliance leader. He has taken a lot of flak for the comment, and it was not in the context of arguing for the nerve-gassing of South Africa’s squatter settlements. He was pleading for business investment to uplift the poor of Africa. If you look at the rest of what he had to say, there was much to agree with.

Climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge that my generation and yours will need to grapple with in the 21st century.

The possibility of an increased incidence of extreme and massively disruptive weather events have the potential seriously to undermine the developmental goals of my country and the continent.

Yet we require rapid economic growth to meet the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals.

Does growth for us mean greater carbon emissions?

Almost certainly yes, at least in the short to medium term.

Does it mean we must not be mindful of our current, admittedly small, contribution to climate change? No. . . .

. . . I am not arguing that the developing world must aim for the ecological footprint of, say, the United States. That would compound the impending climate catastrophe, and hasten our collective demise.

Naturally, as we aim to improve the livelihoods of those in Africa, we must not bypass the goals of sustainability, and enter into the path of what is termed “overshoot”. . .

. . . South Africa now gets most of its electricity from coal, but in the future there is no reason why the whole of Africa could not get all of its electricity, and have much left over to export to Europe, without burning one ounce of fossil fuels.

It seems rather clear from these, more complete, quotes that the South African media once again has been quoting out of context. The only thing I can disagree with in these comments is the part about South Africa’s “current, admittedly small, contribution to climate change.” South Africa ranks 10^th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions on a per capita basis.

But I cannot ignore Leon’s comment about the rich, not because it is so extreme, but rather because it is so commonly held. I have heard it all before, from rich, complacent South Africans who believe that because they never directly snare antelope, shoot rhinos, or chop down trees, they are innocent of any environmental damage. There are several other variations of this pass-the-buck mentality: “I can’t do anything about the environment because its the big corporations that do the polluting;” or “It’s the Americans;” or the latest variation, “It’s the Chinese.”

I would love to show these people, just for one day, what South Africa’s air would look like if each poor person riding in a bus, train or minibus taxi was suddenly driving a Range Rover instead. And where would there be room for forests and animals if every shantytown dweller on a 6m x 10m plot was moved onto a half-acre garden? How many rivers would run dry when they started to water their lawns year-round? How many fynbos plants would wilt in the greenhouse heat after all those former shanty-dwellers switched on the electric underfloor heating in their 250 m² houses?

Yes, the rich have the potential to tread very lightly. Their wealth allows them to make choices about how they get around, how they eat, and how they heat their homes. The problem is that they rarely make the right choices.

To twist these facts into an argument for keeping down the poor for the sake of the earth would be even more ridiculous than Leon’s statement that rich people are good for the environment because they don’t eat wild animals. We must help the poor escape poverty not to save the earth, but to save our humanity, to save our souls. And we must create a world in which wealth and waste are no longer synonymous.

This is a momentous day for the environmentally conscious in South Africa for two reasons: it’s Car Free Day and it’s the South African premiere of “An Inconvenient Truth.”

So far, I’m handling Car Free Day pretty well. My children caught the spirit and walked to school. They even phoned four neighbour children to join them. It’s a 12 minute walk, and I’m embarrassed to admit that we drop and fetch by car far more often than we walk. But that’s what Car Free Day is all about—spurring people to look for ways to break old, car-dependent habits. Whenever we do walk to school, I find that everyone arrives at school in a good mood. I’m sure we’ll walk more in the coming weeks.

I managed to accomplish my only other away-from-home errand today by bicycle. So far, I haven’t been in a car. My wife, however, has driven today, and I know that it’s easy for me, with an office at home. We both commuted by subway when we lived in Washington, DC, but there is no comparison between the modern Metro system there and the public transport available where we live now in Johannesburg. I do have one neighbour who travels to his job at Wits by bus, however, and he doesn’t complain.

Carpooling is another option. I shared a ride to a choir concert this week with a fellow chorister and we vowed to continue our carpool during weekly rehearsals. The Johannesburg government is encouraging carpooling by setting up a database of people who are willing to share rides at RideShare or RideSmart. (They don’t seem to have made up their mind what to call it.) If you give them your home location, work location and work hours, they will tell you who else works similar hours and lives and works within 1.5 kms of you.

I would love to hear from anyone who had an interesting experience going Car-Free or who has tried RideSmart. I also would like to let people know about what similar efforts other cities are making, if any. Click on “comment” below to add your thoughts.

An Inconvenient Truth opens today at Cinema Nouveau theatres in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town. This documentary explores the issue of global warming, largely through the eyes of dogged environmental campaigner Al Gore. In the U.S., this film was one of the most successful documentaries in years, and received very positive reviews. Yazeed Kamaldien in the Star today dismissed the film as “boring.” Shaun de Waal of the Mail & Gaurdian warmed to it a little bit more, and made it his Movie of the Week.

I can’t judge yet, not yet having seen the film. But it’s worth contrasting Kamaldien’s review with that of Roger Ebert, perhaps America’s best known and most popular reviewer. In the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert wrote:

When I said I was going to a press screening of “An Inconvenient Truth,” a friend said, “Al Gore talking about the environment! Bor…ing!” This is not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and Gore’s concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and relentless. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

In other words, you owe it to yourself to ignore Kamaldien and make your own judgement.

I was returning from a wonderful trip to Mapungubwe National Park yesterday, and hit a terribly boring stretch of the N1, north of Pretoria. To stay awake, I played with the fuel economy gauge on my Honda Jazz. I usually reset this only when I fill the tank. (Average consumption 6.4 l per 100km if I’m driving, 7.1 if sharing the car with my wife.) Every 15 km, I reset the gauge, and changed the way I was driving.

At 120 kph with the air conditioning on, the gauge said the car was using 7.0 litres per 100 km. With the air conditioning off, this fell to 5.6 litres. This confirmed my habit of rarely using the air conditioner except for hot days on the highway. Even then, I switch it off for uphills—a procedure that I have not vetted with any automotive or air conditioning experts, but it makes sense to me. Keeping the air conditioning off, I tried another 15 kms at 110 kph. Consumption fell to 5.3.

Finally, I tried 100 kph. This was the shocker. I was using only 4.3 litres of petrol per 100 kms. I need to try this again to confirm this result, but if true, I could have saved more than 14 litres of petrol by driving at 100 rather than 120 on a hypothethical highway trip of the same distance. That would spare the atmosphere 35 kilograms of carbon dioxide. (Actually, it’s far more than that, because a third of South Africa’s petrol is derived from coal, so it results in more carbon dioxide, but I haven’t figured out how to calculate that yet.)

Yes, the trip would also have taken just under an hour longer each way, but I was having a pleasant time with my son, working on his history project on Mapungubwe. If I had been listening to a book on CD, I would have been in even less of a hurry. I wouldn’t drive 100 on a busy two-lane highway signposted at 120. Traffic would back up and drivers might start overtaking dangerously. But on a multi-lane, divided highway, 100 is a reasonable—and safer—speed. When I first learned to drive in the States, the legal limit on all highways was considerably lower than 100 kph. (55 miles per hour.)

Try this experiment—or a variation of it—on your own car, if it has a consumption guage. Let us know the results by clicking on “comments” below.